Turoń
A black, horned, shaggy beast with a flopping jaw.
Turoń is a festive monstrosity in Polish and Slovak folklore, depicted as a black, horned, and shaggy animal with a flopping jaw. Its appearance is most common at folk events during the period after Christmas, particularly during Carnival and before Lent. The name derives from the word tur, meaning aurochs.
Quick Facts
- Name
- Turoń (Polish), Turoň (Slovak)
- Derivation
- From tur, meaning aurochs
- Appearance period
- After Christmas, especially during Carnival and before Lent
- Associated holiday
- Epiphany (6th of January) in Cracow
- Regions documented
- Cracow, Kielce County, Tarnów, Mielec, Stary Sącz
Facts from the source article.
Customs
The person playing Turoń dresses in a cloth sheet or sheepskin and carries a wooden pole with a bull’s head on top. The head has a jaw that flops open and closed, horns that are either real cow horns or carved from wood, and is covered with rabbit skin or another animal hide. Turoń moves hunched over or is guided by a rope. When a group of carolers enters a home, Turoń leaps around, dances, and makes a sound like a donkey’s neigh. It enjoys bothering women—chasing them, teasing them, and sometimes smacking them with its jaw. While the carolers sing, Turoń snaps its jaw in time with the music and shakes a bell tied around its neck. Its muzzle, made of thin wood and rabbit skin, is big enough to gulp down a whole apple or down a glass of vodka in one go. People believe the alcohol Turoń drinks in nearly every house makes it act rude. It carries two sticks, hitting the floor with each step, and jumps over them as well as over stools in the room. At a key point in the song, Turoń collapses, and everyone tries to revive it by massaging it, burning hay like incense, blowing air under its tail, pouring vodka into its muzzle, and breaking any curses. Turoń then gets up and starts playing again, which usually signals the visit is over. The look of Turoń changes across Poland. In Kraków, Turoń goes with carolers who carry a star on Epiphany, January 6th, and it attacks anyone who stares too long at the star or the people holding it. In Kielce County, townspeople walk with an aurochs, also called turuń, during Carnival’s last week. A similar tradition in Tarnów includes a Tatar and a Jew alongside Turoń. In Mielec, people take Turoń out on Christmas Eve. If Turoń gets too annoying, the household sings a song to send it away: “Idź, turoniu, do domu, nie zawadzaj nikomu, nie tuś się wychował, nie tu będziesz nocował,” which means “Go now, Turoń, go home, don’t you bother any more souls, here’s not the place you live, this not the place you shall sleep.”
Etymology
Oskar Kolberg connected the name to research about aurochs by a German named Harius. He noted that aurochs as an animal is a foreign name to eastern languages and refers to a bull, belonging to the terminology and customs of pagan Slavic culture, where the aurochs was an emblem of the Sun and gave its name to a holiday called Turzyce. Kolberg considered Turoń as such, since from Christmas a new Sun is born, brighter and longer with the coming of a new summer.
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