This contribution includes oral accounts of carolling elicited from the inhabitants of the Krasiczyn administrative district (the Polish gmina) in the years 1984-1994 by Lublin-based ethnolinguists under the supervision of Jerzy Bartmiński. The informants describe traditional local customs connected with Christmas Eve, the New Year, and the “Jordan” (a Greek-Catholic feast of Christ’s baptism on January 19); they provide the lyrics of stories, ritualised wishes, and songs from Polish and Ukrainian circles, both Roman- and Greek-Catholic. The records document the typical situation of a bilingual cultural borderland, where Polish-speaking informants can also sing Ukrainian songs. Polish and Ukrainian records of carolling practices are presented in two local variants: (1) the older one known as szczodrowanie (reciting wishes and the so-called Pol. szczodraki and wishing songs (called Pol. szcządraczki, Ukr. shchedrivki) addressed to the host, the landlady, unmarried boys and girls while visiting their homes; (2) the newer one, i.e. Christmas carolling that embraces three kinds of carols: (i) Catholic and Orthodox ones (deriving from official liturgies), (ii) jocular pastoral carols and those characterised by “home use”, and (iii) folk apocryphal carols that move beyond church catechesis.
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