Here’s a piece of trivia I love. The oldest known sentence written in Polish isn’t a royal decree or a prayer. It’s a husband offering to help his wife with the housework.
The Book of Henryków
Around 1270, Cistercian monks at Henryków Abbey in Silesia kept a chronicle of their lands, written in Latin. In one entry, a settler named Boguchwał sees his wife grinding grain at a hand mill and says to her, in Polish:
Daj, ać ja pobruszę, a ty poczywaj.
“Let me grind, and you rest.”
A monk wrote it down, and it became the first recorded sentence in the Polish language. Today the Book of Henryków is part of UNESCO’s Memory of the World register.
I like that a Polish story begins with a kindness: someone taking over the hard work so that someone else can rest. I also like that it was Cistercians who preserved it, the same order whose abbey at Wąchock stands at the start of one of our favourite walks.
Our offer
So let me borrow Boguchwał’s words. When you come to Poland, let us do the work, and you rest.
- We’ll do the driving on country roads where the buses run twice a day.
- We’ll do the talking,with the sisters, the guesthouse owners and the woman who makes the pierogi.
- We’ll do the legwork: timetables, routes, permits and where to find a coffee at the bottom of the mountain.
You walk, pray, look and listen. That is the whole point of coming.
Interested in a guided walk in the Holy Cross Mountains? Get in touch.
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