EN
The authoress makes an anthropological analysis of the ethnographic material based on the interviews on the 'small motherland' of the Lemkos. The ideas about their private motherland are interpreted using the topos of the Paradise Lost. In this text this concept is understood more broadly than literary scholars understand it. The definition of the topos of the Paradise Lost is connected with the search for cultural references related to the idea of the Eden to the ethnographic material collected during field study.The ideas of the private motherland arise when one is far away from one's homeland. In the case of the Lemkos the genesis of these ideas must be looked for in the Regained Territories, to which the Lemkos were resettled during the 'Vistula' action in 1947. The ethnographic material including stories about the homeland was collected during field studies in the Beskid Niski, during talks to the Lemkos who returned to their family lands. In this narration she confronts the picture of the Lemko land as remembered by the Lemkos with that they saw when they returned to it. The authoress starts with the presentation and explanation of the categories used during field studies and interpretation and continues to explain the genesis of the ideas of the small land, i.e. the reality of the Western Lands of Poland, where her interlocutors were resettled. The last part contains an analysis of the stories told by the Lemkos via the topos of the Paradise Lost, which indicates an affiliation with the references to the Eden existing in culture.