"Pole and Hungarian brothers be" (the Polish version) and "Pole and Hungarian, two good friends" (Hungarian version) are respective forms of a popular bilingual saying about the traditional kinship, brotherhood, and camaraderie between the Polish and Hungarian peoples.
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Texts
The Polish text of the saying reads:
Polak, W?gier -- dwa bratanki,
i do szabli, i do szklanki,
oba zuchy, oba ?wawi,
niech im Pan Bóg b?ogos?awi.
The full, two-couplet Hungarian version reads:
Lengyel, magyar - két jó barát,
Együtt harcol s issza borát,
Vitéz s bátor mindkett?je,
Áldás szálljon mindkett?re.
The Polish text may be rendered:
Pole and Hungarian brothers be,
good for fight and good for party.
Both are valiant, both are lively,
Upon them may God's blessings be.
--or, more word-for-word:
Pole and Hungarian -- two brothers,
good for saber and for glass.
Both courageous, both lively,
May God bless them.
A shorter, two-couplet Hungarian version,
Lengyel, magyar - két jó barát,
együtt harcol s issza borát.
may be rendered:
Pole and Hungarian -- two good friends,
joint fight and drinking at the end.
--or, without rhyme, meter, or syllable-count, and rendered word-by-word:
Pole, Hungarian -- two good friends,
together they battle and drink their wine.
The saying's Polish version comprises two couplets, each of the four lines consisting of 8 syllables. The shorter Hungarian version comprises a single couplet, each of the two lines likewise consisting of 8 syllables.
The Polish version's bratanki today means "nephews (one's brother's sons)", but at one time bratanek (the singular) may have been a diminutive of brat, "brother". The Polish bratanek differs in meaning from the Hungarian "barát" ("friend"), though the two words look similar.
The Polish version given above is the one commonly quoted by Poles today. In the Hungarian language, there are 10 distinct versions, most of them comprising a couplet, and most again comprising 8 syllables.
Words For Good Friends Video
History
In its several variants in the Polish and Hungarian languages, the saying speaks to the special relations that have long obtained between Poland and Hungary.
The saying literally signifies that the Pole and the Hungarian are brothers, in regard both to saber and to wineglass. The saying was a 16th- or 18th-century invention of the Polish middle and minor nobility. The Poles recognized that the two countries had the same political structure, the "nobles' republic" (the Polish Rzeczpospolita, the Hungarian natio Hungarica)--a democratic parliamentary system wherein the state and king were controlled by a non-aristocratic noble class. The Polish term rokosz--for a semi-legal armed rebellion against Poland's king, in defense of the nobility's political rights--derives from the name of Hungary's Rákos, a field near the city of Pest, Hungary, that had been the medieval venue of mass parliamentary meetings of Hungarian middle and minor nobility.
The Poles also recognized that both countries' noble classes employed similar military tactics, weaponry, and lifestyles, again making them "two brothers". When the Poles had elected the Hungarian, Stephen Bathory, Prince of Transylvania, as King of Poland in 1576, the new king had introduced military reforms, creating Poland's "winged hussars", and had brought in from Transylvania Poland's first saber-makers, thereby promoting use of this superior sword. In Poland, the szabla became known as the szabla w?gierska ("Hugarian saber") or batorówka, after King Stephen Bathory (it was subsequently also called the zygmuntówka after Poland's King Sigismund III Vasa, and the augustówka after King Augustus III).
Members of the nobility in both countries also liked good wine (in the Middle Ages, imported to Poland mainly from Hungary), resulting in similar temperament and lifestyle, and in understanding between them. In Hungary, the saying became widely known outside nobility circles only at the end of the 19th century.
According to one source, the proverb's original Polish version was, W?gier, Polak dwa bratanki i do szabli i do szklanki. Oba zuchy, oba ?wawi, niech im Pan Bóg b?ogos?awi.
The saying probably arose after the 1772 collapse of the Bar Confederation (1768-72), which had been formed to defend the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth against aggression by the Russian Empire. According to Julian Krzy?anowski, the saying was inspired by the sojourn, in Szepesség, Kingdom of Hungary (today Spi?, Slovakia), of the Confederation's leaders, who found political asylum there. Another source states that it "comes from the period when the Generality of the Bar Confederation [the Confederation's supreme authority] took up residence in Eperjes [today in eastern Slovakia] (1769-1772)."
Good relations between Poland and Hungary date back to the Middle Ages. Louis the Great was King of Hungary from 1342 and King of Poland from 1370 until his death in 1382. He was his father's heir, Charles I of the House of Anjou-Sicily (King of Hungary and Croatia) and his uncle's heir, Casimir III the Great (King of Poland - the last ruler of Piast dynasty). King Casimir had no legitimate sons. Apparently, in order to provide a clear line of succession and avoid dynastic uncertainty, he arranged for his nephew, King Louis I of Hungary, to be his successor in Poland. In the 15th century, the two countries briefly shared the same king, Poland's W?adys?aw III of Varna, who perished, aged barely twenty, fighting the Turks at Varna, Bulgaria. In the 16th century, Poland elected as its king a Hungarian nobleman, Stefan Batory, who is regarded as one of Poland's greatest kings. In the Hungarian Revolution of 1848, a Polish general, Józef Bem, became a national hero of both Hungary and Poland.
During the Polish-Soviet War (1919-21), Hungary offered to send 30,000 cavalry to Poland's aid, but the Czechoslovak government refused to allow them passage through the demilitarized zone that had existed between Czechoslovakia and Hungary since the end of the Czechoslovak-Hungarian war a few months earlier. The government of Romania took a similar stance, and refused passage as well. When the Hungarians attempted to send ammunition trains, Czechoslovakia once again refused, but Romania agreed, under the condition that the Hungarians used their own trains.
From the Middle Ages well into the 18th century, Poland and Hungary had shared a historic common border between Poland and Carpathian Ruthenia (also known as "Carpathian Rus"), governed by Hungary. In the aftermath of World War I the allies had, at Versailles, transferred Carpathian Ruthenia from Hungary to Czechoslovakia. Poland has never ratified the Treaty of Trianon. Treaty with Hungary was not signed till 4 June 1920, it did not come into force at all till 26 July 1921, and it was never published in the Journal of Laws by Poland. Following the Munich Agreement (30 September 1938) -- which doomed Czechoslovakia to takeover by Germany -- Poland and Hungary, from common as well as their own special interests, worked together, by diplomatic as well as paramilitary means, to restore their historic common border by engineering the return of Carpathian Rus to Hungary. A step toward their goal was realized with the First Vienna Award (November 2, 1938).
Until mid-March 1939, Germany considered that, for military reasons, a common Hungarian-Polish frontier was undesirable. Indeed, when in March 1939 Hitler made an about-face and authorized Hungary to take over the rest of Carpatho-Rus (which was by then styling itself "Carpatho-Ukraine"), he warned Hungary not to touch the remainder of Slovakia, to whose territory Hungary also laid claim. Hitler meant to use the puppet state Slovakia as a staging ground for his planned invasion of Poland. In March 1939, however, Hitler changed his mind about the common Hungarian-Polish frontier and decided to betray Germany's ally, the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, who had already in 1938 begun organizing Ukrainian military units in a sich outside Uzhhorod, in Carpathian Ukraine, under German tutelage -- a sich that Polish political and military authorities saw as an imminent danger to nearby southeastern Poland, with its largely Ukrainian population. Hitler, however, was concerned that, if a Ukrainian army organized in Carpathian Rus were to accompany German forces invading the Soviet Union, Ukrainian nationalists would insist on the establishment of an independent Ukraine; Hitler, who had designs on Ukraine's natural and agricultural resources, did not want to deal with an independent Ukrainian government.
Hitler would soon have cause to rue his decision regarding the fate of Carpatho-Ukraine. In six months, during his 1939 invasion of Poland, the common Polish-Hungarian border would become of major importance when Admiral Horthy's government, on the ground of long-standing Polish-Hungarian friendship and as a matter of "Hungarian honor", declined Hitler's request to transit German forces across Carpathian Rus into southeastern Poland. The Hungarian refusal allowed the Polish government and tens of thousands of military personnel to escape into neighboring Hungary and Romania, and from there to France and French-mandated Syria to carry on operations as the third-strongest Allied belligerent after Britain and France. Also, for a time Polish and British intelligence agents and couriers, including Krystyna Skarbek, used Hungary's Carpathorus as a route across the Carpathian Mountains to and from Poland.
After World War II, during the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, Poles demonstrated their support for the Hungarians by donating blood for them; by 12 November 1956, 11,196 Poles had donated. The Polish Red Cross sent 44 tons of medical supplies to Hungary by air; and still larger amounts were sent by road and rail.
The links between Poland and Hungary remain strong, and Hungarian politicians and political analysts often speak of "the Warsaw express," in reference to the fact that, in the modern history of Hungary and Poland, developments in Hungarian politics, such as shifts to the right or left, or political unrest, often follow similar developments in Poland. Both nations joined NATO on the same day (March 12, 1999), with only Slovakia separating them geographically - Slovakia itself joined NATO just over five years later, on March 29, 2004.
During the 2009 world economic crisis, Poland's President Lech Kaczynski stated that Poland's diplomats should have shared Hungary's view when requesting 18 billion euros from the European Commission.
Friendship Day
On 12 March 2007, Hungary's parliament declared 23 March "Hungarian-Polish Friendship Day", with 324 votes in favor, none opposed, no abstentions. Four days later, the Polish parliament declared 23 March "Polish-Hungarian Friendship Day" by acclamation.
Friendship Day is celebrated alternately in the two countries, first in Przemy?l, Poland. This day is commemorated throughout Poland and Hungary, with concerts, festivals, and exhibitions. The 2011 anniversary of the Polish-Hungarian Day of Friendship in Pozna? was celebrated by Polish President Bronis?aw Komorowski and Hungarian President Pál Schmitt and was attended by over five hundred people. Komorowski remarked that, "there are few cases in history where there exists such a long and peaceful co-existence between two nations," while Schmitt, in turn, declared that "the Polish-Hungarian friendship is eternal."
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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