Boryna Proposes to Jagna and Promises Her Six Morgs of Land

Maciej Boryna’s proposal to Jagna Paczesiówna is not presented as a private declaration of love but as a public negotiation arranged through brokers and secured by land. Its decisive consequence is the promise that Jagna will receive six morgen from Boryna: a commitment that helps move the match from rumor to formal settlement, while making visible the tension between his desire, her future position, and his children’s expectations.

Rumor and the Marriage Brokers

The news breaks across Lipce the day after the betrothal is arranged. The Voyt’s wife has been told not to speak until her husband returns, but she finds a pretext to visit a neighbor and passes on the secret: Boryna has sent vodka to Jagna’s household. Her warning not to repeat it only gives the news its first push. The neighbor disclaims any taste for gossip, then immediately wonders aloud what Boryna’s grown children will make of his pursuit of another woman. Soon the story is carried onward under the cover of another errand, as people borrow household tools and discover a reason to mention the vodka.

That circulation matters because the match is public before its terms have been settled. The villagers hear that a wealthy, older farmer is seeking Jagna, and their first responses frame the union in terms of age, money, and inheritance. Boryna’s status makes him an attractive prospect to some; his age and adult children make the marriage a subject of alarm and speculation to others. The news does not travel as a simple account of two people choosing one another. It travels as a question about who will gain, who may lose, and what the household will become.

At Dominikowa’s home, the Voyt arrives with a companion and presents the visit as business. He praises the household’s welcome before steering the conversation toward another bargain. As the official broker, he emphasizes the weight of his word and the standing of the men who have come to negotiate. He also invokes marriage as the proper future for Jagna: she must eventually leave her mother’s home for one of her own. The appeal to custom and religious order gives the negotiation a moral frame, but the brokers’ practical purpose is unmistakable: to secure agreement between households.

The Proposal and Jagna’s Response

When Dominikowa asks who the intended bridegroom is, the Voyt names Boryna. She objects that he is a widower and an old man, and worries that his children may later drive out their stepmother. The broker counters by presenting Boryna as vigorous and prosperous; the dispute over age is thus inseparable from the question of whether Jagna would have authority and security in his house. A marriage settlement enters the conversation as the practical answer to that danger. The companion notes that Boryna has agreed there must be one, and Dominikowa insists that it should be arranged before the wedding.

The brokers then turn directly to Jagna. They hold out the prospect of becoming mistress of a household and a prominent woman in the village, and urge her not to be shy. Jagna hesitates, blushes, turns toward the wall, and covers her face with her apron before drinking a little of the offered vodka; she dashes the rest to the floor. The gesture does not amount to a clearly spoken declaration of consent. It registers her presence in a ritual conducted largely by adults around her, while preserving the scene’s uncertainty about what she herself wants. After the drink is passed around and the customary food is offered, Jagna withdraws to the storeroom, where her crying can be heard from beyond the wall.

The private negotiation is followed by a more public celebration at the inn. Boryna greets the arriving party warmly, already treating Jagna as nearly his own. The men drink to the betrothal, and Boryna embraces Dominikowa in gratitude when she confirms that Jagna is his. Yet the celebration does not erase the unsettled question of property. Dominikowa reminds him that he promised a settlement, insisting that Jagna needs protection if she is to face her future stepchildren. Boryna initially resists the idea that what is his must be separately secured for her, then asks what land she wants.

Six Morgen and the Formal Settlement

Boryna first raises the possibility of transferring three morgen near a neighboring holding. The brokers redirect the proposal: Jagna is to receive five morgen and a piece of woodland through her father’s arrangement, and they urge Boryna to settle six morgen on her as well. The land they identify is not an abstract portion of his estate but the six morgen by the road, where potatoes had been grown in summer. Boryna recognizes that these are among his best fields. He pauses over the size and quality of the gift, thinking of what his children will say.

The Voyt frames the transfer as security rather than an immediate loss of control. The land, he argues, will remain Boryna’s while he is alive; what Jagna receives from her father is also presented as something fairly due to her. In spring, a surveyor can mark the six morgen, after which Boryna can sow there. This reasoning links the settlement to both Jagna’s future independence and the continuing use of the farmland. Boryna accepts the proposal and agrees to sign over the six morgen. The decision is not an incidental flourish at the celebration: it supplies the material terms that make the match consequential for the household and the next generation.

Dominikowa calls Jagna back and tells her that Boryna is giving her the six morgen by the road. Jagna reaches out to him and thanks him quietly. Her response is more direct than the earlier ritual sip, but it takes place after the brokers have shaped the terms and Boryna has already agreed to the transfer. The scene leaves the difference between a valuable promise and an unpressured choice in view without resolving it.

From Betrothal to Family Crisis

The agreement moves quickly into formal procedure. On Saturday, Boryna and the others travel to town, where he signs the six-morgen settlement for Jagna before a notary. The first banns are posted the following day. By then, Boryna’s children know what has happened. The betrothal has crossed from neighborhood talk and convivial toasts into a documented transfer of land and an announced marriage, so its effects can no longer be confined to the negotiations between Boryna and Dominikowa.

The family’s response is charged by more than the prospect of a stepmother. The six morgen are among Boryna’s best fields, and his children understand that a portion of the estate has been promised to Jagna. The narrative places the children’s knowledge beside the banns and the notarized agreement, underscoring how marriage, property, and inheritance have become one dispute. The union may offer Jagna the position of mistress of a household, but that status is being established through a bargain that alters the future claims of Boryna’s family.

The betrothal also precedes a breach in intimacy. After the trip to town, Boryna returns late, scratched, and somewhat drunk; he had tried to take Jagna in the cart, but she resisted him with her fists and fingernails. The episode sharply contrasts the public warmth with which he greets her and the private physical claim he attempts to make. His promise of land and the village’s marriage rituals do not guarantee affection or consent. In the sequence of events, the settlement makes the marriage official in material terms just as the failed advance exposes the limits of Boryna’s assumption that Jagna is already his.

Significance

The proposal turns courtship into a transaction without reducing it to money alone. The brokers use the language of custom, household standing, and protection; the six morgen give those claims a concrete form. For Boryna, the land is valuable and its transfer raises the question of what remains for his children. For Dominikowa, the settlement is a safeguard for her daughter’s position among stepchildren. For Jagna, the promised fields are a material provision attached to a future household whose rules and emotional terms are not hers alone to set.

The event’s structure moves from whispered news to negotiation, ritual drinking, a land promise, and notarization. Each step widens the circle of consequence: neighbors discuss the match, brokers bargain over it, Boryna’s household learns of it, and the public banns announce it. Yet the same progression that makes the marriage socially legible also exposes its fault lines. Jagna’s tears, Boryna’s reluctance over his best fields, Dominikowa’s insistence on security, and the children’s knowledge all complicate the celebratory account. The six morgen are both a gift and a source of conflict, joining the promise of Jagna’s new status to the inheritance tensions that will shape the household.