"What did the smok eat?" I asked Aleksander.
"Baranek" (a lamb) he replied.
"What was inside the lamb?" I asked.
"Sól" (salt) he replied.
Hmm... A variance from the legend that I once learnt. The Wawel Dragon was indeed baited with a dead lamb, though stuffed with sulphur rather than with salt. I can understand that whereas Polish children of yore would associated sulphur with meat preservation, pesticide and other agricultural processes, this substance is entirely alien to small Poles today. Anyway...
"So what happened to the smok once he'd eaten the lamb stuffed with salt?"
"He drank water... lots and lots of water."
"Good! And what happened next?" I asked, expecting the answer "He exploded".
But no. Mum answers this question and says that the smok then left Kraków for good and now lives in the Amazon river along with his friends, the crocodiles...
I was saddened by the way this legend of the founding of Poland's ancient capital has been sanitised for today's toddlers.
This morning I was discussing this with Marzena, whose younger daughter is of a similar age to Aleksander. Marzena said she was finding the same thing with the children's stories that she was reading to her children. Shortened, deprived of their emotional force and watered down to the point where they were barely recognisable, these modern-day versions of Poland's founding legends disappoint the parents who buy the books, she said.
The way previous generations of Poles had learnt the story was far more bloodthirsty!
The smok, who dwelt in a cave on the banks of the Vistula near Kraków, lived on a diet of young maidens, who were regularly sacrificed to him to prevent him wreaking destruction all around. [Moral: appeasement as a strategy is ineffective.] When all the maidens but King Krak's daughter had been fed to it, the King offered a prize of her hand in marriage to anyone who could defeat the smok. And so it befell a poor young cobbler's apprentice to come up with the idea of stuffing large volumes of sulphur into a lamb's skin and then leaving this for the smok to eat. Which he did, leaving him so thirsty that he drank so much river water that in the end he exploded, showering Kraków with body parts of dragon.
I hope that one day Aleksander will hear the full, unabridged version of this quintessentially Polish legend, and that Polish legends will not be further watered down in years to come. A nation's legends are part of the glue that hold it together down the centuries.
Here's the legend as retold on the BBC's Travel pages:
The [Wawel] castle has been the residence of Polish kings and queens for five
centuries, and there's even a Dragon's Den - the damp cave beneath a line of
turret fortifications is said to have housed a firebreathing beast that
terrorised local residents in the city's early days. The ruler, Prince Krak,
offered his daughter's hand in marriage to whoever could kill the dragon. Many
died trying before a young cobbler struck upon a scheme to stuff a sheep with
sulphur and leave it outside the animal's lair. When the dragon ate it, he
became unbearably thirsty and went to the river to drink - and the water caused
his stomach to swell until it exploded. The dragon died. And the cobbler? He and
his princess lived happily ever after.
I wonder what readers think? Is it better to wait a year or two and give children the unadulterated tale, bloodthirsty as it is? Are rapacious publishers, trying to get picture books of Polish legends (centuries out of copyright) sold to ever-younger age-groups, taking care first to tone down the emotional impact on sensitive toddlers? Should national legends be protected to prevent them from being watered down? Comments please...
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8 comments:
Hi Michael,
you are wrong in some places.
Firstly, Mum answers this question and says that the smok then left Kraków for good and now lives in the Amazon river along with his friends, the crocodiles... And... Greenpeace is happy. :))
Secondly, The smok, who dwelt in a cave on the banks of the Vistula near Kraków, lived on a diet of young maidens, who were regularly sacrificed to him...
Wow, wow, wow, so what a antigender heresy? And what the all-Human Watch movements on that? Zonk! :o
Thirdly, the King offered a prize of her hand in marriage to anyone who could defeat the smok. Sexism, watch-out the all-feminist movements. Zonk2! ... a poor young cobbler's apprentice to come up with the idea of stuffing large volumes of sulphur into a lamb's skin and then leaving this for the smok to eat. Which he did, leaving him so thirsty that he drank so much river water that in the end he exploded, showering Kraków with body parts of dragon. Horrable, real war crime. Zonk3! :o
A former legend was naturally written by a proto-Law&Justice writer. Wasn't that?
Legend infused by ideology: it reminds me of a post-war animated short "Za Króla Krakusa" (Zenon Wasilewski, 1947), where the cobbler defeats a swastika-wearing German knight! [and the dragon, after that].
It's all worthy of an eye-roll, but what's the alternative? Create a register of protected stories and fine people for publishing them in altered form?
In a way, it's good to see culture in the public domain, free for people to do with and change as they please. As long as the real legends stay alive...
Or, pessimistically: If...
Lovely story, thank you ! We sociologists call this the civilizing process:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Civilizing_Process
Iza mentioned she and Oles had bumped into you on Sunday but didn't give me any deatils.
It all started with a set of dinosaur print pyjamas. Then Daddy made the mistake of buying some dinosaur colouring books and ever since Oles has had a inexhaustible fascination for dragons and dinosaurs. As I'm in the role of a stay at home father Oles spends lots of time drawing - before it used to be Little mole, sheep, cows etc etc. Now all he wants to draw is dinosaurs. First his favourite was the rhino-smok (Triceratops) and that has since extended to the T-rex, Fish-smok and Stegasaurus and already he knows most of their full names. Now he quite often wakes up in a bad mood and asked why he was grumpy or if he'd had a bad dream (I know, a leading question) he replied he was scared of the smoki. When were you scared? In the morning he replied. Now, some of the things he says you have to take with a pinch of salt as he sometimes refutes them in the next sentence but just to play it safe, when he asked Mummy to read him the story about the smok wawelski at bed time Mummy changed the ending using her own imagination.
I'm certain he will learn the real story in due course. Children seem very matter of fact about the matters of life and pain at this age but then we really don't tell him about death very much at the moment. He has visited Granddad's grave and been told that he's with Bozia, where we'll all meet up one day, but that's about it. Other than that he discerns what a big or a little 'kuku' (hurt/pain/ injury) is. Having additionally had the misfortune of being nipped by one of our 65kg dogs (he fell on it's injured leg when it was sleeping while our backs were turned), resulting in having his head held down for stitches (the terror and the screams will never be forgotten, by me at least) and then having to return to hospital to have them redone due to infection only to end up spending over a week there (instead of one day) after contracting swine flu. Marvellous, eh?
So for the time being we try to keep the grizzly bits of life at arms length where possible just to give out adorable little 2 and a half year old a little respite :).
Michal - rest assured that Oles will hear all the legends "unwatered" in all the grisly and bloody and scary details when he's old enough not to wake up crying in the night because of them... I think, as a parent, one has a responsibility to judge what your child can safely assimilate and what he cannot..yet. I must say, I have not encountered too many "watered down' stories, but I do tend to tell him gentle, made up by myself stories or versions of the existing ones. For now he enjoys them and sleeps well :)oh, and sulphur would be associated more with the devil and hell combo, rather than meat preservation :)
Just been talking with Iza regarding your comment on food preserving and she thinks there might be some confusion between Saletra (sal petrae) and Siarka (sulphur) :)
@Iza, @ Adam - my apologies - I assumed that the Amazon bit was from the book, not mum wishing to spare her son's feelings! I probably wouldn't have written this post had Marzena not complained to me the next day about her dissatisfaction with her own children's story books.
Oleś's smok (who only eats sheep by the way, not people) returns after a long time to Wawel and .. better still, perhaps Iza can tell you herself one day.
Just as well that this chap (remember seeing his material demonstrated on Tomorrow's World all those years ago) http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/5158972/Starlite-the-nuclear-blast-defying-plastic-that-could-change-the-world.html was not around at the time of the real fire-breathing smok as armour from synthesised dragon skin would then most surely have been de rigueur. We might have had no dragon legends at all as pests, however volatile or awkward, most probably would have been got rid in a more business like manner and without all those damsels in distress:)
Oh, and I wish I'd spelt grisly correctly in my first note.
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