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Whoever has seen a Pole of the old school dance the polonaise in the national costume will confess without hesitation that this dance is the triumph of a well- made man, with a noble and proud tournure, and with an air at once manly and gay. After this Brodzinski goes on to describe the way in which the polonaise used to be danced.
Absolutely Slavonic, though a local dance of the province of Mazovia, the Mazurek or Mazurka, is written in three-four time, with the usual displaced accent in music of Eastern origin. Brodzinski is quoted as saying that in its primitive form the Mazurek is only a kind of Krakowiak, "less lively, less sautillant."
“And the young folk envied the fame of the bards, which in their own land still echoes through the woods and the fields; of bards to whom dearer than the laurel of the Capitol is a wreath plaited by the hands of a village girl, of blue cornflowers and green rue.” 3 Vilna on our maps; Wilno is the Polish spelling. 7 By Franciszek Karpinski, 1741-1825. 8 By Kazimierz Brodzinski, 1791-1835.
The Cracovians dance it in a very agitated and expressive manner, singing at the same time words made for the occasion of which they multiply the stanzas and which they often improvise. Casimir Brodzinski describes the dance as follows: The krakowiak resembles in its figures a simplified polonaise; it represents, compared with the latter, a less advanced social state.
First, according to the district from which they derive mazurkas of Kujavia, of Podlachia, of Lublin, &c.; or, secondly, according to their character, or to the purpose or occasion for which they were composed: wedding, village, historical, martial, and political mazurkas. And now let us hear what the poet Brodzinski has to say about the nature of this dance:
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