‘Hody, hody, doprovody!’
If you hear those words in the Czech Republic, the chances are that it’s Easter Monday and somewhere nearby there’s a girl getting her bottom whacked.
Since ancient times, Europeans have celebrated the spring with folk customs involving flagellation, from the Roman festival of Lupercal in February to the English beating of the bounds in May. It happens the entire length of Europe, from the fictional Scottish island of The Wicker Man (1973), whose May Day sequence includes a moment when the women proffer their bottoms to be whacked with a bladder on a stick (you can watch it here), through this German bound-beating ceremony…
… all the way to the far shores of the Baltic in Latvia:
The use of young, blossomy twigs is to the point, for it’s a tradition associated with fertility. The logic is partly the same as with birthday spankings, which customarily end with ‘one to grow on’: young women are whacked to make them strong and fertile. And they are not only hit with part of a tree, but treated in effect as if they are trees: ‘the more you beat them, the better they’ll be’. And no doubt that starts to explain why, in the Czech Republic and Slovakia where the tradition has its greatest cultural prominence, it also involves watering them:
The instrument of chastisement, a beribboned willow rod proudly and painstakingly woven by young men during Lent, is called by many names, but is most commonly known in Czech as a pomlazka, which roughly translates as rejuvenator.
And come Easter Monday, it’s time for the pomlazka to go into action, which usually means a bit of preliminary pursuit.
When she’s caught, she gets whacked, which can happen in public…
or in private:
Groups of young men, sometimes in traditional costume, go from door to door in search of female residents to wet and whack. And sometimes the girls anticipate them by dressing prudently… for the drenching part of the exercise, at least.
As the girls are whacked, the boys chant the aforementioned traditional verses beginning, ‘Hody, hody, doprovody, dejte vejce malovaný.’ Or very roughly: ‘Festival, festival, the gang’s here, give us painted eggs.’ The girls are supposed to respond by doing just that, though in recent times some have taken to offering a different gift, hung cheekily on the end of the pomlazka:
Some girls put up a show of resistance, and have to be carried out of the house to meet their fate.
The important thing is to make sure she can’t wriggle free.
And of course there’s one method of securing a girl for a spanking that’s both reliable and economical of effort:
Admittedly that’s not always feasible in an outdoor context, but you have to give the guys credit for trying:
Sometimes other kinds of improvisation are necessary. This lady’s husband evidently spent Lent playing hockey when he should have been making his pomlazka:
Pomlazka spankings don’t have to be given door to door, or else in a purely domestic context. Bikers do it on their bikes:
Swimmers do it in the pool:
This has the advantage of ensuring that the girls are thoroughly pre-watered:
Actors do it backstage:
That’s the singer Dasha being whacked in costume at the Broadway Theater, Prague, during the 2007 run of the romantic musical Angelika.
So being a star doesn’t make you exempt from an Easter whacking. Here’s the actress Eva Aichmajerova bending over in 2006:
And in 2015, singer Heidi Janku got it:
So did radio presenter Zorka Hejdova:
Nobody’s immune:
And nobody’s excluded:
There’s no escape, even if you leave Europe. This young lady fled as far as Cape Town, but the pomlazka still caught up with her:
Not even dolls are safe!
And now we’re moving away from actual social behavior into creative imagery. Easter whipping has inspired the kind of imaginative work by photographers that reflects its fundamental position as an acknowledged part of mainstream Bohemian culture. Sometimes it’s witty:
Sometimes erotic:
Sometimes both:
(In case you’re missing the wit, that’s not a bare bottom – it’s a seasonal pair of eggs.)
Naturally the pomlazka ritual also features in more commercial art forms, such as cookbook covers…
and, inevitably, Easter greetings cards.
One of the more risque examples of the genre is in fact adapted from a rather well-done piece of specialist artwork from America – notice how the pomlazka is inexpertly grafted onto the man’s open palm.
But even without overt imagery, a lot can be done with words:
This chap’s asking for vodka instead of decorated eggs – and if she doesn’t have any vodka to give, warns the verse, she’ll be getting the pomlazka on the seat of her kalhotky! Or putting it another way:
And this does have a basis in actuality. Skirts are sometimes raised:
And pomlazkas make contact with panties:
This makes it absolutely vital for a girl to choose her underwear wisely:
In fact, a Czech manufacturer of bottom-enhancing padded panties once recommended them as ideal wear for Easter. And that brings us to another key question about the custom: does it hurt?
The editor of the Czech paper Aha! mounted an empirical investigation of the issue, with the assistance of 21-year-old student Zaneta. She got whacked three times, first through her clothes,
then on her panties,
and finally on her bare bottom:
Does it hurt? Zaneta testified that, yes, it does!
Most of all on the bare bottom… though I suspect it didn’t really need an experiment to tell us that!
So why do Czech girls put up with it? The answer’s simple: whether a girl’s bottom is clothed, pantied, or bare, getting the pomlazka across it is a compliment. Because it’s ultimately a pagan fertility rite, albeit much varnished over by centuries of civilization, it expresses the boys’ sense of how attractive the girls are. It’s part of a culture where spanking remains a recognized element of youthful courtship. So even if it entails a little temporary discomfort, nobody wants to be left out:
For more pomlazka, go here.
Vanilla Spanking 