Fantazja Ułańska II

I have mentioned fantazja ułanska before, but without a proper explanation. It translates as "cavalryman's, or hussar's, fantasy". The Poles are a modest people, and not given to fantasize. It is no fantasy, but fact, and not just for cavalrymen.

A friend explained it like this :

The young man, armed with a sabre, gets on his horse and says, "I am a son. I love my mother, my father, Poland, and the Mother of God. I am off to kill Gemans, or Turks, or Swedes, or Communists, or whatever, enemies of Poland. I do not know what will happen, but God knows."

And off he goes.

This is the spirit of Polish Squadron 303, without which the Battle of Britain might have been lost, and Britain occupied by Germany. It lives on. The Pole drives like an ułań, overtakes like one, and eats and drinks like one. The women are not much different.

Remarkable people.

A friend in his thirties, the mayor of the smallest town in Poland, and a husband and father, was two years ago diagnosed with cancer of one kidney. His father and, I think, his grandfather had both died of the same illness. The whole town got together and paid for thirty masses to be said for him at Jasna Góra, the Polish shrine.

I met his wife while he was recovering and asked how he was. One might have expected her to be frantic, but her reply was characteristic.

"We haven't had the results of the tests yet, so no prognosis, but it will be as God gives (będzie jak Pan Bóg da)."

He is now, thank God, fully recovered and still mayor.

God is forever on the lips of the average Pole, not in the unfunny would-be satiric stage-Irish style of "O Begorrah, Bejasus, Bedad! Holy Mother of God!", but born out of the real piety which such idiocies were written to mock.

As I said, remarkable people.