SheWalksSoftly

Have you noticed that humans are strange creatures? Perhaps nowhere is this more evident than in our rituals and traditions. Take Dyngus Day, for example; an Easter Monday Polish holiday on which boys throw water on girls they like and hit them with pussy willows.

According to tradition, they sneak into girls’ homes at dawn and drench them while they’re still in bed. The screaming girl is sometimes dragged to the river for a dunking afterward. The water might be accompanied by a rhyme, such as Dyngus, dyngus, po dwa jaja; nie chce chleba tylko jaja (“Dyngus, dyngus, for two eggs; I don’t want bread, only eggs”). Apparently, painted eggs can be given as ransom to avoid a serious dousing.

The Wiki page is filled with fabulously unironic sentences that are a treat to read. “This [the dousing] is accompanied by a number of other rituals, such as making verse declarations and holding door-to-door processions, in some regions involving boys dressed as bears.”

On Easter Tuesday, girls take their revenge by throwing plates and crockery at the boys (well, that’s what’s supposed to happen, but in reality both sexes tend to just drench each other on Monday…which might be for the best because flying plates can do some damage).

HAPPY DYNGUS DAY!

Read more here.

Thanks, B, for introducing me to this!

This entry was posted on March 28, 2016 at 3:58 pm and is filed under absurd, humor with tags absurd, humor. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.