Innocent Pleasures - Another Polish Vignette

As I have mentioned before, once a month on the Saturday closest to the full moon, a group of us meets in the forest around a huge bonfire. We sing, play music, eat, and drink. Usually at about 10.30 p.m. we go to someone's house for a few more drinks until maybe midnight or later.

Most Poles love singing.

Last time, in my flat, there were about ten people aged forty to eighty plus, and one friend, who could be Brezhnev's double, sang an old Christmas carol which he had learned from his grandmother some seventy years ago. It was ancient, modal, and very beautiful, Our Lady singing a lullaby to Jesus.. No one else had ever heard it before. The women were dabbing their eyes with handkerchiefs and the men looked close to tears. I too. That's how beautiful it was.

Determined that this jewel should not be lost, I recorded him singing it. He then sang more and more, which I recorded. There was not a dry eye in the room.

Another innocent Polish pleasure is winding up foreigners.

He finished, with a sly grin, by singing a song, in Polish, which I had definitely heard before. I asked him, "Is that a carol"

"Maybe not," he replied, giggling.

"Is it Polish?"

"I 'm not sure." His wife was looking enigmatically at the ceiling.

He carried on singing it, and I joined in, in English. It was "Ghost Riders in the Sky" sung by Anne Shelton around 1949.

I told him. He howled with laughter, more drink appeared, and my reputation for naivety suffered a severe blow.

I love it here.