POLAND. 247 



Ethnical Elements. — Polish Charactek. 



According to Kopernicki, Polaud was inhabited in the bronze and iron ages 

 by a dolichocephalous race quite distinct from the modern brachycephalous 

 inhabitants. Nevertheless, since the dawn of written history in the Vistula 

 regions, the country has been occupied by Slav tribes, the progenitors of the 

 present Poles, and the same stock was spread over the neighbouring western lands 

 now held by Germans or Teutonised Slavs. These Lech or Polish tribes were 

 clearly distinguished from the eastern Slavs. They recognised a common kinship, 

 but according to the old legend the three brothers Lech, Czech, and Pus lived 

 apart, each working out his own destiny. In Polaud the name of Lech is now 

 merely a literary expression vmknown to the people. 



The purest Poles are said to be the inhabitants of " Great Poland ; " that is, of 

 the present Poland on both banks of the Vistula, and of Poznania on the Warta. 

 The fair Mazurs, found chiefly in the eastern and northern districts, are the 

 proudest of all the Poles, and have best preserved the old national customs. The 

 brown Cracovians, Sandomirians, and Lublinians of the south are more sensitive 

 and quick-tempered than the Mazurs, and also perhaps more vain, to judge at 

 least from their graceful and somewhat gaudy national dress. 



Amongst the inhabitants of different origin from the Poles, a large portion 

 have adopted the national speech and customs. Thus the Kuprikes, or " Men of 

 the Spade,'' scattered over various northern and north-eastern districts, have 

 become sufficiently assimilated to the Mazurs to be often confounded with them, 

 though really descendants of the Yatvaghes, or Yadzvinghes, supposed to have 

 been a Lithuanian race partly exterminated by the Poles. The Little Russians 

 forming separate communities in the south-east, west of the Bug, are scarcely to 

 be distinguished from their Russian neighbours of Volhynia. Some 250,000 or 

 300,000 Lithuanians occupy the greater part of the government of Suvalki in the 

 north-east, and several thousand Gipsies and Tatars are scattered over the country. 



After the Mongolian irruption the princes, and especially the bishops and 



convents, invited German settlers to repeoj)le the devastated lands, granting them 



great privileges, such as the right of naming their own Schnltze, and self-government 



according to the "Teutonic right." Several towns were also founded by German 



colonists, most of which were governed according to the " Magdeburg right ; " 



that is, of one of the oldest German municipalities, whose archbishops had formerly 



been the primates of the Polish Church. But these privileges did not prevent the 



Germans of the towns from gradually becoming assimilated to the Poles, like those 



of the rural districts. In the fourteenth century several hundred thousand 



" Swabians " were settled in Poland, but all have been absorbed, and of 2,000 



Protestant parishes existing in the sixteenth century, two only survived till 1775. 



All the Protestants, usually supposed to represent these immigrants, and now 



reckoned as Germans, have arrived within the last hundred years.* 



* Nationalities in Poland, 1873 (according to Rittich) : — Poles, 4,575,836, or 68'41 per cent. ; Jews, 

 860,327, or 13-45 per cent. ; Russians, 544,980, or 852 per cent. ; Germans, 370,356, or 5-79 per cent. ; 

 Lithuanians, 241,147, or 3-77 per cent. 



