Dominikowa’s home is the principal domestic setting for Jagna and Boryna’s wedding, transformed from a family cottage into a public ceremonial space. Its spruce-decked entrance, carefully prepared rooms, and crowded dances make the household the point where family farewells and village celebration meet before Jagna’s new life as Boryna’s wife begins.

Setting and Preparation

The house is freshly whitewashed and decorated for the wedding, its pale walls visible from a distance despite the lime having faded in the damp. Boys have wedged spruce branches into the thatch and gaps in the walls, then strewn fir branches and pine needles from the yard to the hallway. The path brings the smell of a spring forest right to the threshold, making the approach itself part of the festivity. Inside, the household is arranged for both work and gathering. On the storage side, a large fire roars while Ewka from the miller’s cooks with Jagustynka and neighboring women. In the first chamber, spare furniture has been moved into storage and sturdy benches and long tables placed against the walls. The room is clean and whitewashed; a blue cloth curtains the stove, and Jagna’s paper cuttings cover the aged, darkened ceiling and beams. The decorations include flowers and circles as well as lively scenes—a dog chasing a sheep, a shepherd pursuing it, and a procession with a priest, banners, and holy pictures. Maciej has brought the colored paper from town, and Jagna has turned it into a detailed display for the wedding.

Blessing and Departure

Boryna is escorted from the house toward Dominikowa’s, where he is led into the chamber to meet Jagna. Before the couple leave, Boryna takes Jagna by the hand and they kneel together. Dominikowa takes down a holy picture, makes the sign of the cross over them, blesses them, and sprinkles them with holy water. The domestic room thus becomes the setting for a family blessing before the public church ceremony. Jagna then falls at her mother’s feet in tears and asks forgiveness of the others as she takes leave. The women embrace her in turn, and the farewells become a shared grief; Józia Borynianka is especially overcome as she remembers her own dead mother. The company spills out of the cottage, arranges itself in order, and walks the short distance—less than half a furlong—to the church, with the musicians leading.

Reception and Dancing

After the church ceremony, the wedding party returns in noisy, cheerful disorder. Dominikowa waits at the threshold with a holy picture, bread, and salt to welcome the couple, then greets and embraces the guests before inviting them inside. The threshold marks a change in the celebration: the wedding party moves from the church rite back into the household, where the festivities become a crowded communal dance. As soon as the music begins in the hallway, guests take partners and dance through the room. The couples move in a winding, circling line, with proud stamps and measured turns; the scene is likened to a field of ripe corn flecked with cornflowers and poppies. Jagna and Boryna lead the dance. The guests make repeated rounds, and the force of the gathering is so great that the lamps shake and the house seems to rock under the press of bodies.

The Bride’s Ritual Transition

Later, after an hour of laughter, shouting, and pursuit, the eldest groomsman signals for quiet. The women bring Jagna from the storeroom veiled in a white sheet and seat her on a kneading trough covered with a quilt. The bridesmaids rush forward as if to capture her, while the boys and older men defend her from the opposite side of the room. Their plaintive song marks the loss of the bride’s wreath and her departure from her former place in the household. In this scene, Dominikowa’s home is not merely a venue: its familiar rooms hold the wedding’s emotional passage from daughter and family member to bride, witnessed and enacted by the assembled community.