Goat - ceremonial item

In the merry processions which went around the villages during the Christmas and carnival period with their holiday wishes and performance of ritual scenes, the key role was played by animal monstrosities, including a goat associated in folk belief with fertility and vitality. The boy playing the part was usually dressed in a cloth sheet or sheepskin turned inside out, and in his hands, he held a stick topped with a realistically sculpted animal head. The core idea of the ritual, based on the magical thinking according to which “like produces like”, was ensuring the rebirth of nature after the winter stagnation. The goat that was “put to death” during the performed scene was then “resurrected”, just as the dormant nature would return to life and produce the crops necessary for human survival. There are three ceremonial goat masks in the ethnographic collections of the National Museum in Szczecin. The effigy on display from the 1st half of the 20th century is an amateur, one-off product. The animal's head is made of wood, using a carpentry processing technique. It has leather ears and a goatee made of bristles. According to the museum inventory, it comes from the Pyrzyce area, but the Atlase der Deutschen Volkskunde locates the goat ritual in the Central Pomerania. The goat was originally in the collection of the Pommersches Landesmuseum Stettin.

Agnieszka Słowińska