Hi folks,
There was a lot of discussion of Lemkos on the list, so - for the holiday, I would like to relate some interesting adventures I had in Lemkivshchyna. Yes, I lived in Lemkivshchyna, even though I was born in Lviv, mostly from Boiko ancestors. But during the War, in 1944, when things started to look bad, my father sent my mother and me into the mountains, to a real far-away Lemko village, beyond Sanok, almost on the Slovak border. I was 11 at the time, or so. We lived for almost half a year there - dressed like average Lemkos. I went to school with the village kids. And yes - I had absolutely no trouble with language. I had spent many summers at my granpas in Boikivshchyna and "ya'm tak mih vsio vohoryty, chysto, yek ti lemky - nikdy si'm ne zmylyv..." The dialects (for those that know them, very, very, very similar. The troubles I had had to do with the fact that I was a city boy. So I had to PROVE MYSELF in front of those village "parubky" i "pidparubichi"...First came the kladka - a little bridge (really a single log) over the raging mountain stream that separated us from the next village. Everybody just went barefoot over it, not giving it a second thought. But I promptly fell into the river and had to be fished out... So I became a butt of the jokes. That would never do!
So I practiced and practiced and finally could walk on that kladka, run on it, jump on it, even cross it on my hands!
That made my classmates respect me just a little bit...So they tried me on something else: catching crayfish (raky) - little lobsters. You went knee-deep into the river and touched the steep bank. There were little caves in the bank; you would reach in (blind) and feel for the rak. If there was one, you would grab him by the neck and throw him onto the bank. Boy, was that frightening!
I don't think I ever did anything as courageous in my life before!
But I had to do it: not only were all the boys watching me, but also a certain Yevka, with the long tresses....Well I did it!
After that I really started to get some respect at school!
But the real break came with the affair of the wolf. You see, I always had a way with animals - and it came to me naturally. Maybe it was my naivete - but I have never been bitten by a dog, or any animal and I sure had a lot often counters in my life!
It always was of good use to me - this ability.
Well, to make the long story short - we were once playing ball outside a village, when out of the woods came out this huge, silvery dog... gorgeous. I was so enchanted with it that I ran toward it (not noticing that all the kids scattered to the 4 winds...
Well in my best polite dog-manner I stretched my hand toward the wolf, palm down, saying "here doggy, doggy..." He made a rather sheepish face at me and started to back down... I kept moving toward him and he finally turned and ran. Well, you guessed it. It was a real gray wolf (of which there were plenty in Carpathians in those days). Not only that, but it was a notorious wolf, who recently carried off a couple of village sheep.
After that episode (caused not by courage, but by stupidity on my part), I became not just accepted, by looked upon admiringly by one and all. And not just the boys, by also my beautiful Yevka...
But I was noticed also by another Yevka - the old village witch, whom everybody called Baba Yaga."Baba Yaga" is a common Ukrainian term for a witch. Yes, kiddies, there were still real live witches in Lemkivshchyna in those days!
Stara Yevka, as she was called (half the women in the village were called Yevkas), lived in a little hut in the forest. If you were sick, or in love, or expected a child - you went to her. She did good magic, though, of course, everybody was just a little bit afraid of her. But - even the old priest used to send for her, when his rheumatism was bothering him... She brought most everybody in the village into this world, she cured diseases, she brought young lovers together, she told the village when to plant the cabbages and she told fortunes.
After my wolf adventure she accosted me one day outside the village and started asking me questions - especially about animals. She told me: "boy, you are a natural widmak!(warlock). You have a magic way with animals. You will become my apprentice - I will make you into the biggest Widmak in the mountains!
I was more than a little scared of her, I must confess. But, I guess, I really had no choice. I was in my "nothing can scare me in this world" mode of behavior, so I was not going to be scared by any old Baba Yaga!
Who does she think I am!
"Of course I can become a great warlock - if I choose to!"
So I said as nonchalantly as only an 11-year old boy can: "I will give it a try!"
And I followed her into the dark forest, and into her hut. The first thing I saw was the old black cat she had: old, ugly, with torn ears and half a tail... But I just loved cats (still do - my house is full of cats - all black, naturally). So I scratched him behind his ear and ... he purred. Test Number One - passed.
Next I came across the second familiar: the black raven. He just flew down from the rafters and settled on my shoulder.
Test Number Two.
The third test was more difficult: it was a big dog (again it turned out to be a domesticated wolf - but Baba Yaga said that it really was a Wowkulaka (werewolf), who forgot how to change back into a man...
The dog sniffed me, licked my outstretched hand, but for along while was wary of me. But, I guess, it was enough for the Old Yevka. I got accepted into the family...Then started my schooling in witchcraft...
But - I will leave it to you folks. Is all this of interest to anybody? Shall I continue with my reminiscences? Please let me know!
The instructions of my Baba Yaga (vid'ma, vorozhka, chaklunka) started with stories: wonderful stories about the Nature and the ghosts that inhabit every tree, every stone, every mountain... Mavky, rusalky, chuhajster, poliovyk, vodianyk etc. Every Ukrainian knows about them; they are as old as the land (Later on I understood that they come from the Paleolithic era, from the original animistic-shamanistic religion - and survived to this day).
But for us folks in the city, they were just fairy-tales. For Old Yevka they were the "reality". She talked with animals, with trees, with the land. They told her about the herbs, the bark, the root, the healing concoctions she made. They were the world.
"People think that they control Nature. But they don't. Nature controls them - she feeds them, she heals them, she brings babies to this world. When she is angry - she punishes us: bad harvest, sickness - it's her punishment. Or worst - she send madness to this earth and people kill each other. You know about the terrible war? That's her punishment..." Or, she would mock: "People think that they control Nature. But they can not control their own nature, even. They are ruled by passions!
HA!
Nature is the ruler of mankind. "To her the main manifestation of Nature was the Mother Earth - she had many faces: she was Lada, the spring, the love, the order; She was Mokosha - the fertility, the harvest, the reaches of the earth; She was Pokrova (Berehynia) - the one who protects all her creatures; she was Morena - the Mother-death, winter, quietude. Together they formed the everlasting circle of life, the cycle of death and rebirth, that rules us all.
That was a wonderful, well-integrated philosophy of life that integrated not just the primeval animism, but also the Neolithic mother-Earth cult, and even Christianity. There was also the father - but she considered me too young yet to know about sex, so she just mentioned in passing the role of Father-Sun "who fertilizes the Mother-Earth". All that came in the form of wonderful fairy-tales, which I later used so much with kids in my scoutmaster days... But it was more than fairy-tales. Whenever she picked an herb for her medicines, there was a story behind it: why this particular herb, who gave it the magic, why. The world was alive and vibrant. Everything had meaning for her and she and we all had meaning within this world and its many secrets...
She told me why I had the "way" with animals: "You love them, you are not afraid. Very few people can do this, that is why you have this Power with them. Other people try to suppress their fear - by you cannot fool a wolf: he SMELLS your fear. And he bites you. But You - you really like him, you send him good thoughts, you try to be friends with him, you admire his beauty - and he likes you..." She told me as I rolled on the grass with her wolf-dog-werewolf... Oh, how many times later in my life I remembered her words!
On more than one occasion it saved my life... But I am getting ahead of myself.
My studies with the witch continued and I felt more and more drawn to my kindly teacher. She was gruff and grumpy and frightening at times, but she was oh so kind...
But the world would not let us be. Tales of the horrible war were coming more and more often to our village. Boys started to "disappear" - to go into the woods to join the "powstantsi" (insurgents). But there were also the "other" partisans - the communists, under Kolpak. They were coming (going to Slovakia) and the nazis were after them. There were ominous rumblings in the distance. Madness was upon the earth.
The Shangri-La, the magic I was living in finally shattered one night. I awoke among terrible screams, shooting, noise. There was smoke in the air, houses were burning. The two boys who lived in the house we were staying (Big Yos'ko and small Yos'ko) woke me up shouting : "get up! the partisans are killing us!"
Indeed it was a detachment of the Kolpak forces. The villagers were not taking it kindly, they were fighting back - with pitchforks, with hoes, with sticks. We three also came out "to fight"; we later claimed that we tripped one of the partisans into a pool of "hnoivka" (if you don't know what that is, you don't want to know [manure juice -wm]). But maybe it was just my youthful imagination... I really have no clear recollection of that horrible night.
In the morning, we saw the clear results of the raid: burned houses, dead people everywhere...
With a sinking feeling I ran to the hut of my dear Baba Yaga: she was laying dead, with a horrible wound on the threshold of the hut. Next to her - her "werewolf" - also shot. Did he try to protect her? Of the raven and the cat there was no sign... I never saw my friends again.
My mother was, of course, in a panic. We hired horses, left everything behind and went down to Sanok - my mother trying desperately to find my father again.
Well - we didn't find him at that time. From friends we found the horrible truth: he was arrested in Lviv by the Gestapo and sent to a concentration camp somewhere in Germany. So my mother and me went after him... Now a new story, a new chapter in my life begins: on the border of Germany we were arrested, my mother sent to a labor camp and I assigned to a "children brigade", also for hard labor...
To finish the story (it really has nothing to do with Lemkos anymore):
In the children's' brigade we were assigned to clear up after the Allied air-raids in Munich, Germany. It was hard, backbreaking work, the food was scarce, the sights and smell of death horrible, our keepers cruel, only half-human... As Baba Yaga would have said: "Madness took over the peoples natures"...Once, during an air-raid I fled. For a couple of weeks I was hiding in ruins, foraging for food, cold and miserable...Until by some miracle I chanced upon the Munich Zoo...
Here it was different. The training from my witch came in handy: I stole eggs from flamingoes and ate them raw, I stole food from the animals - mostly cold potatoes, but also some meat from the carnivores...I survived. Mostly it was due to that big, smelly she-bear in one of the cages. I called her "medio" - like my childhood teddybear, whom I remembered so vividly. She was good to me: she let me eat her food, she protected me. I found a loose bar in her cage and sneaked into her cage at night and slept on her hide. Oh, what luxury after nights of sleeping on cold bricks!
Once a nazi patrol came to the Zoo, looking for fugitives, like me. But I hid tightly behind my misio-bear and they passed me by...Finally, the bombing raids, the cannons, the war quieted down, somehow. Some new looking soldiers appeared. Some were even black on the face: I never saw people like that before. But I did not trust them - no soldier in uniform was really safe...But once there was a tank standing nearby the Zoo gate. The soldiers came - and they were throwing a ball to each other.
They were human!
I never saw soldiers playing ball before!
Slowly I came out of my hiding place. I must have looked awful in my torn rags, and smelling even worse...The soldiers were kind. They gave me chocolate - Oh wonder of wonders!
I almost forgot what chocolate looked like!
A new chapter in my life started. But I will always remember my Baba Yaga. Probably I would have not been able to survive among the animals in that Zoo, if not for her training. Many times in my life later this knowledge came in handy: with the foxes at Hudson Bay, with the grizzly when I was panning for gold in the Rockies, with the jaguar in Gran Sabana on the way to the Angel Falls...
Contributed to genealogy@infoukes.com mailing list in September 1998 by Mr. LUBOMYR S. ONYSHKEVYCH
Return to Lemko Home Page
Return to InfoUkes Home Page