Women's Portraits

Marie Bočková

Born in 1923 in a picturesque place of South Bohemia. Loves nature and national culture, collects and records songs, rhymes, fairy tales, short stories, myths, customs and dances. Protects popular traditions.

Márinka

Borovany and the adjacent region constitute a picturesque place of South Bohemia. They are part of the region of Doudleby, rich in secrets and myths. Marie was born in that place, at Dvorce u Borovan as the youngest child in 1923. She was called Márinka at home. The children of the farm family were led to everyday work; yet their childhood was extremely rich, filled with experiences and strong father’s example and influence. After his grandsons were born, they called him “grandpa” and shared his love to nature, native tongue and observance of traditions and customs. She wanted to be a farmwife, but political reasons did not let her do that.

Grandpa

„Grandpa“ embellished our everyday work with gripping narration, with his fairy tales, songs and stories. As the youngest child I accompanied my father from the spring to the winter in all farm works. When walking around the pond, he told me the fairy tale “Of the water lily”; when I got up in the morning when the fields were usually under dew, he told me the fairy tale “Of the dew”. I remember how he loved the spring when nature was waking up from long white winter and how the approaching spring smelled from the fairy tale “Of the bundle full of smells”.

He accompanied the sowing and harvest of corn by the fairy tale “Of the straw and the ear”. And when the work was well done and everything was as it should be, he added the narration “Of joy, beauty and happiness”.

Enchantment with native land

The exceptional gifts of nature and human spirit had to be preserved also for their future admirers. I started recording everything that could be registered; rhymes, songs, “grandpa’s” and other fairy tales, stories of people and of the time in which they took place. I became a popular storyteller. I stored a lot of songs, rhymes, stories and popular dances, even the “most valuable” into the memory of the region of Doudleby, I passed them on as a relay baton to ethnographers, collectors, folklore groups, singers and popular dancers.

Native land in national songs and dances

I was a living example of how to preserve traditions. When the Trocnov Bagpipe Band was founded by professor Koreš, I was its artistic head. I founded an artistic group in which girls sang national songs, recited poems in literary shows and demonstrated spinning of wool and yarn on spinning wheels inherited from their grandmothers while stories of living contemporaries were told. They were beautiful and unforgettable in folk costumes of the region of Doudleby, with necklaces made of sweet smelling cloves.

I made folk costumes for the whole girl group. I myself put on a folk costume inherited from my grandmother when I was fifteen. I know which parts it has, how the original and the later adapted Doudleby folk costume looked like. I remember how the mother of one of the young men embroidered the white blouse of the folk costume with the land she saw on the horizon when walking to the neighbouring village. She improved the original costume with undulating hills, mounds and humps, flowers and leaves. And as it is usual in the country, the whole village soon had an improved embroidered blouse. And there were more celebrations and more glory.

When I was fifty-nine, I founded the children folklore group and became its artistic leader. I taught children folk songs, dances and plays, designed folk costumes for them and enjoyed folklore festivals with them. The respect for tradition accompanied all my creative life.

Concluding testimonies

Inactivity and passivity are not characteristic of me. My age, loss of voice and relocation to the Old Age Home because of suddenly worsened health condition did not deprive me of desire for life and of the longing to confess my love to my native country and to give my final life testimony on it, be it only in collections of works of the members of ethnographic group.

I set out to Slavín, the memorable place of Czech giants, to bow down before the memory of Božena Němcová, the great Czech author. I remembered her life’s pilgrimage and got inspired by her acts. I described the pilgrimage through my own life and my native land in my short story “Of the deep journey”.

I accompanied my father, “grandpa” who meant so much to me in my life on his last journey through this world. Contemporaries and people from his environment joined me; they paid respectful and dignified tribute to the simple man who had loved people and nature. On my question whether he had killed somebody in the war he once told me: “How could I, if I am Slav. I only shot high.”

I brought up two sons; four grandsons have their families already and I also have seven great-grandchildren too. I wrote poems, sang songs and prepared dances also for them. I only sometimes don’t understand the current media picture of the time, people and country where I live. I defend myself difficultly against disrespect to native tongue.

Remember, a nation that has no memory and respect to its native tongue does not live.

Jaroslava Šulcová