Mushrooms, Folklore and the Polish Diaspora in Britain: Differing Views on the Mushroom
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| My local Polish Shop © Folking Funghi 2020 |
Whilst wandering the aisles I have often been drawn to the
colourful displays of pickled and dried mushrooms on offer. Aside from the
occasional wild mushroom soup or dried Shitiake mushroom, it is rare to find
anything more exotic than a chestnut or button mushroom on British supermarket shelves. My
local Polski Sklep, however, offers Chanterelles, Penny Caps and Bay Boletes
straight from the woodlands and grasslands of Poland. A delight to an amateur
mycologist such as myself and intriguing to anyone studying the folklore of
food.
The Polish community began to become more prominent in
England when the European Union enlarged to include 8 more European countries
in 2004. With Poland now a member of the EU, Polish people were able to move to
the UK to live and work more freely than those who had previously settled in
post-war Britain in the 1940s. Polish migrants began to arrive in large numbers, quickly
securing their place as one of the largest immigrant groups in Britain and, as a result, Polish grocery shops like the one near my own home began to become more common on British streets.
The UK media (especially tabloid newspapers such as The Sun and The Daily Mail) tend to present an image of contemporary Polish migrants as being young Polish men looking for short term work in low skilled manual labour before returning home with their wages. This image often comes loaded with negativity and political bias towards Polish immigrants and with it comes implications of ‘job-stealing’ that have fuelled racial tensions between Polish people and their adopted communities1. The reality is more complex than the stereotype presented 2, with many families and younger people also choosing to make a life here for a multitude of complex reasons but universally bringing with them their customs and traditions. Of course, these communities often find themselves adopting some traditions from Britain as they forge their own way of life as a member of the diaspora.
Sadly, there are few archives that contain the histories and stories of this immigrant group in the English language, possibly due to the relatively small time there has been a considerable Polish population in the UK. However, there is a wealth of information to be found on Polish customs and traditions. This includes Polish migrant blogs telling their own experiences, academic studies, websites such as the Polish Cultural Institute and Culture.pl, YouTube vloggers, social media groups such as Polish Food, Traditions and Fun and pages such as I Love Poland.
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| Wild Mushrooms at a Street Market, Kraków, 1931 Photo: www.audiovis.nac.gov.pl (NAC) |
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| Wooden Baba Yaga Figurine with Fly Agaric. Photo: Polish Art Centre 2020 |
Mushrooms can also be found in Polish folk song as seen in the White Ruthenian wedding song ‘Nas Malady Jak Suraweska (Our Bridegroom is Like a Mushroom)’ where the bridegroom is complimented for being as sturdy and fresh as a young mushroom according to Folklorists H. Iwanowska and H. Onslow7. As mushrooms are also often linked with fertility and phallic symbolism with the Latin name of the Stinkhorn mushroom being Phallus Impudicus and many mushrooms famed for their phallic nature8 this may have also been a nod to the bridegroom’s virility, although this is just my own personal theory. Whatever the meaning behind the description, it is clear the importance placed on the humble funghi when featured in a celebratory song for an important time in a couple's lives.
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| White Ruthenian Folk Song - Our bridegroom is like a mushroom. Collected by H. Iwanowska and H. Onslow. Photo: Folklore Vol 35 No 2 1924 |
Whilst Britain also has a rich history of traditions and folk tales based around mushrooms, Britain has a very different attitude to mushrooms than the Polish communities who have migrated here. Where Poland and other Eastern European countries are said to be mycophilic, with a passion for mushrooms and a rich folk knowledge of mushroom identifying (and eating) accrued over centuries, many Western Europeans countries, including Britain, are more mycophobic in nature, where mushrooms are viewed with suspicion and even feared. Very few hunt mushrooms in the woodlands for dinner, and those that do are often seen as somewhat eccentric (myself included). This cautious and sometimes fearful attitude to Britain’s funghi is often reflected in our folklore with British common names for mushrooms including the Devil’s Horns, Witch’s Butter and Dead Man’s Fingers and stories of fairy rings (rings of mushrooms that often appear overnight) frequently involving terrible consequences for those who cross into them8.
From the Renaissance period up until the Victorian era when the Fly Agaric (Amanita Muscaria) became synonymous with fairy tales (thanks to folklorists of the time illustrating folk tales with the little red and white spotted mushroom and authors such as Lewis Carroll featuring them heavily in their work) most references to mushrooms in British lore were associated with rot, poison, decay and animal dung and were frequently accompanied by warnings and cautions9.
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| Edmund Gayton, The art of longevity, or, A diæteticall instition (1659), Folger Shakespeare Library |
When hoping to understand the experiences of migrants in Britain it is important to understand these cultural differences that shape the way we understand the world around us and form our beliefs and traditions. Over my next two blog posts I will further examine the impact that these mycophilic vs mycophobic cultures have on the Polish migrants who come to Britain. I will also be looking at how their traditions and folk beliefs surrounding mushrooms are adapted for a different countryside and how mushrooms (whether picking them, cooking them or eating them) have acted as a source of nostalgia, community cohesion and, on occasion, tensions amongst the Polish migrant communities and the communities they have been adopted into.
References
3 Tasting Poland (2017) Mushrooms in Polish Cuisine and Tradition of
Mushroom Hunting. Tasting Poland. https://www.tastingpoland.com/food/mushrooms_in_polish_cuisine.html
8 Money, N. (2017) Mushrooms: A Natural and Cultural History. Reaktion Books: London
9 Jay, M. (2020) Funghi, Folklore and Fairyland. The Public Domain Review. https://publicdomainreview.org/essay/fungi-folklore-and-fairyland/
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