Owoż ja, Hymen, (…) przychodzę na biesiadę. Swat weselny w folklorze południowo-wschodniej Polski i Roksolankach Szymona Zimorowica
There I, Hymen, (...) Come to the Party. The Wedding World in the Folklore of Southern and Eastern Poland and in Szymon Zimorowic’s Roksolanki

Summary/Abstract: The paper focuses on the co-existence between literature and folklore by way of transporting the folk formulas (in the broad sense of the word) to poetic texts. It is from this point of view that one of the obligatory component of the wedding rite – the former master of ceremonies – has been analysed. The sources are the nineteenth- and twentieth-century ethnographic studies from the territories of southern and eastern Poland and Szymon Zimorowic’s Roksolanki. On the basis of the sources and folkloristic studies, additionally confronated with lexicographic data, a vocabulary of names of the figure in interest has been constructed. The names have been classified according to two criteria: 1) obligations and tasks that he has to take, 2) traits he should have. We have also discussed the psychophysical predisposition and obligations of the master of ceremonies dependent on the stage of the rite: matching couples, preparing for the wedding, and the wedding itself. Zimorowic’s wedding corresponds to the construction of the vivid wedding performance. It is instanced in his tract “Dziewosłąb” with its literary picture of the functional figure. It turns out that the Roksolanki are realised according to some elements of the pattern, others are modified in line with the poetics of the epoch, yet others – redundant or inessential from the point of view of the content – have been omitted.

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