We want to describe the folklore of our region, because we are interested in this subject. Since 2001 r. we have been making, co-operating with Centre of Public Education, the programme  "Traces of the past -  pupils adopt monuments"  (www.ceo.org.pl/slady). 

 

Within the confines of our activities we established the ethnographical museum "U Cioci Mazurkowej" in Brzeźno, gathering  home farm equipment and other things connected with our village.

The Brzeźno neighbourhood is interesting and charming. The people's culture of Chełm’s region grew out of customs and traditions of ethnic mixture of borderland; it is different from the culture of other Polish regions. Already in the 20s of 20^th century most of inhabitants were people called Rusini. In our village we can find the traces of former inhabitants of Brzeźno, who were the Orthodox Church confessors, Catholic peasant families from somewhere around Rzeszów, displaced people from Wołyń.

 

Fragment of the map of Chełm’s area 

(Andrzej Wawryniuk, Lexicon of towns in Chełm region, Chelm 2002)

In 1862  L. Kunicki wrote: "Although, one cannot say that the Bug areas were breathed with cheerfulness, or that they contain extensive fertile plains and splendid views, they surely possess the charm, which is extremely nice and inviting . A tiny shade of longing seems to be flooding in these simple and small sights, in these grey cottages made carelessly , in many crosses and old small Orthodox churches, which are covered with moss; similarly this charm is present in songs  sung by local girls on fields, in songs of melancholic, drawn-out and mournful melody, or in sounds of pastoral pipe, which is heard over dew in the morning or in groves  in the evening. Here and there …sat villages, over which reign pear gardens and tall lime trees, that shade Orthodox church; and many wooden crosses spread their arms over cottages and crossroads."

 

"Lands, which people are the subject of this description, spread along the river Bug, on its left bank, and are called Ruś Chełmska …" – as Oskar Kolberg wrote one hundred years ago about our region. We are going to use his works (without changing its original spelling), because they are, so far, the only folklore studies of this region.

 

Currently the name of Chełm’s region embraces the lands of former Chełm Voivodship – i.e. Chełm, Krasnystaw and Włodawa regions. "in the east the Bug River clips this area with its blue ribbon" – as Zdzisław  Kazimierczuk writes in his guide.

 

In Chełm district, in the area of Dorohusk there is a little village called Brzeźno, where our school is situated.

Brzeźno lies in the distance of 13 kilometers from Chelm, on the route from Chełm to Dorohusk. Not much has remained of the past – as in the 1^st half of the last century the fire destroyed the village. Buildings are mainly postwar, however some houses from the 30s of  the 20^th century remained. The village is surrounded by fields and meadows, in the north-west it adjoins the peat bog reserve "Brzeźno". The village owes its name to birches that overgrow the local forests.