Familiarity, tradition and identity

Kraków, near the Barbakan. Christmas illuminations still on, many tourists still wandering around. I came across this fellow (below) who was surrounded by an American couple, several Spanish students and some middle-aged Brits, all taking photos with their phones. I waited until everyone got their selfies then took some snaps myself.

Here he is, familiar, isn't he - the Lajkonik or tatarzyna on his hobby horse, with long pointy beard, a marshal's baton (buława) in his hand, a pointy hat with crescent moon on it. He's familiar to anyone growing up Polish - part of the national myth, along with the Hejnał Mariacki that dates back to the Mongol invasion of Poland. It is something we learned about in Polish Saturday-school lessons in our British childhood, a simplified part of a simplified, mythologised story of our people.

But for the foreign tourists the figure is strange, unfamiliar - exotic; what does it prompt them to think about Kraków, about Poland, even subliminally?

What surrounds us becomes familiar. We move across geographies, more importantly we move through time. Walking the same West London streets that I walked over 50 years ago, I have seen old familiar things disappear and new things taking their place. The cars. The Austin A40s and Vauxhall Crestas were replaced by Hillman Avengers and Ford Grenadas, then Golf GTIs and Toyota Carinas, now Nissan Jukes and Audi Q5s. Road signs, street lights. High-street shops change. Dolcis, Tru-Form and Woolworth's have gone. The people that inhabit these streets change. Their clothes, even their smell. We've become more hygienic. Newcomers - at first from the former colonies, then from the Continent.

Things change, and if we are not aware of these imperceptible small changes as they happen, their loss can breed a longing for the past. And this subconscious longing, when linked to a resentment stemming from the lack of success in one's life, can make one susceptible to false myths peddled by populism.

Over the centuries the Lajkonik has come to symbolise something that never happened. The Krakovians didn't successfully repel the Mongol hordes - the Mongol hordes continued to invade, occupy, capture, destroy and harass Polish cities for the best part of 250 years, right up to the end of the 15th century. But at Corpus Christi, the myth is celebrated, the Lajkonik parades around Kraków's old town market square. He is a familiar part of Kraków's history and tradition, even though no one is quite sure how that tradition emerged.

I suspect that many national myths evolve in similar ways; King Arthur burning the cakes, King Canute bidding the tide not to come in, King Charles II hiding in an oak. Stories that through their familiarity form part of our national identity.

How we deal with the unfamiliar is problematic. Some of us are open to the new, we are curious, we do not feel threatened by change. Some of us are closed to it. And with that come dangers.

This time last year:
Black hat merry-go-round 
(I've found four so far this season)

This time two years ago:
Skarzysko-Kamienna and Starachowice, by train

This time three years ago:
The world mourns the loss of David Bowie

This time five years ago:
Where's the snow?

This time seven years off:
Two drink-free days a week, British MPs urge

This time eight years ago:
Depopulating Polish cities?

This time nine years ago:
Powiśle on a winter's morning

This time ten years ago:
Sunny, snowy Jeziorki

This time 11 years ago:
Eddie's giant soap bubble