The Roots and the Meaning of the Custom The Ride of the Kings in ...

Name: Ph.D. Jan RYCHLIKAffiliation: Faculty of Arts, Charles University, PragueE-mailaddress: rychlik@email.czThe Roots and the Meaning of the Custom The Ride of the Kings in MoraviaIn the Moravian Slovakia (the border region in the South-East part of the Czech republic, atthe border with Slovakia) exists the unique custom called The Ride of the Kings. (Jízda králu˚in Czech). In the past this tradition was frequent in the whole region, now it exists only in fewvillages. The best known is the ride in Vlcˇnov near Uherské Hradisˇteˇ.The ride takes place in June and historically is connected with the Whitsun week (Pentacost)customs. The ceremony takes place usually on Sunday. The group of young men in old folkcostumes dressed as women drive the horses through the village while others are going alongthem. Some jackets are fastened with gleaming buttons, others hang open, and there are menin shirtsleeves as well. The central personality in the procession is „the King“,a young boy not older then fifteen, driving the horse with his face veiled and eyes bond by ared kerchief. He does not see anything and the horse must be carefully trained for the ride andthe other riders must take care about both the King and the horse. The King keeps a red rose inhis mouth which means that he cannot speak. The horse riders and other participants aresinging and playing on different instruments collecting food, drinks and money for “ourpauper King, a righteous one”. The whole ceremony has a form of carnival or folk theatre inopen air. The songs are humorous, sometimes with erotic connotation and full of logicalcontradictions. The peregrination through the village takes sometimes several hours.Nobody knows exactly what the Ride of the Kings originally meant. There is an old legendconnecting the Ride of the Kings with the political events in the second half of the 15 thCentury: when Matthias Corvinus, King of Hungary, was defeated in the Iron Mountains bythe Bohemian King George of Podeˇbrady, he had to flee. On his way to Hungary both theking and his soldiers had to hide from their Bohemian pursuers in Eastern Moravia and beg forbread. The legend is certainly not true, because Matthias did not flee after the battle but was

surrounded and captured by George and then let to go home freely. Also, the event took placeon 26 February 1469, e.g. in the Winter, not during the Whitsun week. The tradition of theRide is certainly much older and probably goes back to the pagan times.There are number of hypotheses but none of them has been proved. In my paper I deal withsome of them, presenting both pro and contra. The most likely is the following explanation:the Ride of the Kings was probably connected with the midsummer feasts. It had either thefunction of the protection against the bad spirits or it was somehow connected with the rites bywhich boys were accepted as men by the village community. The custom is not known in anyother region of Bohemia, Moravia or Slovakia or elsewhere in the neighbouring countries.There is also a significant “political” role of the Ride of the Kings connected with a turbulenthistory of Czechoslovakia in the 20 th Century. The ceremony obtained the special significanceduring the years of World War II and the German occupation when it served as a manifestationof Czech national identity. At the end of the sixties the popularity of the Ride increased due tothe novel of famous Czech writer Milan Kundera (now living in France) who made the eventpart of his novel The Joke (in Czech Zˇert -1967). This book was translated into manylanguages (first English edition appeared in 1969) and it was also made a film (1969). In theperiod of the so-called normalisation(e.g. the period after the Soviet occupation ofCzechoslovakia on 21 stAugust 1968 and the subsequent pro-Soviet regime of PresidentGustáv Husák, 1969-1989) the Ride became popular because Kundera´s books (including TheJoke) were banned and the author exiled.