Slavic deities from Poland (part 2): Goddess Lela
Lela / Łada / Lelja / Ljelje is a Slavic goddess known across the Slavonic nations. She was mentioned in old chronicles as one of the major goddesses worshipped in Poland. She is a goddess of love and of nature’s rebirth in the spring, patron of weddings and matriarchy, protector of families and of ancestors who passed away. In the Polish mythology she’s the wife of the god Łado and mother of the divine twins Lel and Polel.
Trees dedicated to this goddess are linden and birch. Her flower is a martagon lily (in Polish dialects often called leliwa or leluja). She’s connected to the planet Venus and in some regions of Poland an ancient Slavic name of this planet was preserved in the dialects: Leliwa or Gwiazda Lelowa - Lela’s Star. Her symbols are for example a leluja - motif of the Tree of Life that is still present in the art of Polish wycinanki (papercut artworks), and a gwiazda / rozeta - protective rosettes carved in wood inside traditional cottages.
She was specified as a major Polish goddess in numerous Polish resources, of which the oldest surviving up to the modern day come from 15th century. Her name alone was first mentioned in the Czech monumental encyclopedical dictionary "Mater Verborum", written in Latin around 1240.
Lela’s title known from the Polish chronicles is Didilela / Dzidzileyla / Zizilia (written differently in Latin), meaning most likely Heiress (Dziedziczka) Lela or in other words: Queen Lela. According to other interpretations, that title is also dedicated to Lela as the patron of fertility, birth and young mothers (dzidzi’ in a modern Polish dialect is a word meaning an infant). Her name is also connected to the old-Polish verbs lelejać (modern: lulać) = to cradle a child in the arms, and lelać = to coddle or caress, indicating the mother-like aspects of this goddess.
She’s sometimes referred to as Łada, most likely her title as the the fearless protector of family, in connection to her consort Łado - the god of order, law and war represented by the Sun [side note: this is an information analyzed from Polish resources but in some other Slavic countries Lela and Łada / Lada are interpreted as two different goddesses on the basis of their own folk songs and poems]. Many Polish ritual songs include lines of evoking the goddess, for example: "Lelu, Lelu, Łado moja, Lelu, Łado!" (the oldest known one, written down in 16th century by Maciej Stryjkowski). Similar lines can be also found for example in Ukrainian or Serbian folk songs.
To honor this goddess (as well as the god Łado), both women and men performed a sword dance in the spring - that custom was still alive in Poland at the beginning of 15th century, mentioned by the theologian Łukasz from Wielki Koźmin (1370-1412) in his sermons criticizing the “pagan” rituals.
We can suppose that the sword dance tradition was similar to the custom that survived in the folklore of Croatia, to be exact in the village of Gorjani, as a spring procession of Ljelje / Kraljice when the women dressed as “queens” and “kings” sing and dance with the swords [see a video here]. Although we don’t know how the original old-Slavic sword dance might have looked like, this connection to Croatia seems very interesting, particularly in the context of the supposed region of White Croatia. That ancient region could have covered large areas of southern Poland (where a major shrine of Lela was also located), and could have been the mythical area from where the early Croats migrated to the south around the 7th century, in the times when all the early Slavic tribes were still closely connected and spoke one language.
The background on the artwork shows the outline of the Łysogóry massif in the distance, part of the Świętokrzyskie Mountains in south-central Poland, where one of the major shrines dedicated to Lela was located.
More about Lela in Polish.
Image © BogowiePolscy.net
Check also my general tag Slavic mythology.
