A Tatar on a wooden horse
Once a year a bearded rider in Tatar costume dances through Kraków and taps passers-by with a mace. Meet the city's strangest tradition.
On the first Thursday after Corpus Christi, around noon, a procession sets off from the Norbertine convent in Zwierzyniec. At its head is the Lajkonik: a man in a colourful costume and a tall cap, bearded, with a wooden hobby horse strapped to his waist, who dances, leaps and taps people with a mace. Being touched brings luck for a whole year. A band and a retinue in Tatar costumes accompany him. After several hours of collecting tribute from shops and cafés, he reaches the Market Square, where the mayor hands him a ransom and a goblet of wine.
Where it came from nobody knows for certain. Legend has it that in the thirteenth century raftsmen from Zwierzyniec surprised a Tatar raiding party, beat them, dressed in the dead men's clothes and rode into the city as a joke, frightening the inhabitants. Others see in the Lajkonik a trace of pagan rites marking the turn of spring into summer. The tradition is documented since 1738.
The costume you see today was designed in 1904 by Stanisław Wyspiański: red and gold robes, a cap with a crescent, a richly decorated horse. It weighs about 40 kilograms, and the rider dances in it for six hours. For recent decades the Lajkonik has been one man, Zbigniew Glonek, who took over the role from his father; in Kraków it is almost a hereditary office.
If you are in town in June, check the date. The best spots are Zwierzyniecka Street and the Market Square in the afternoon; go up and get tapped. And all year round you will meet the Lajkonik on souvenirs, shop signs and in the Zwierzyniec House museum, which keeps the old costumes.