In the oral folklore of Podkarpacie in southern Poland, there are two types of images of the Blessed Virgin Mary. She appears in traditional legends either as an ordinary woman or as the Mother of God and Queen of Heaven and Earth. This representation of Mary has its roots in the Apocrypha, where the heavenly image of the majestic Mother of God is complemented by an earthly image as a distinctly human personality. The combination of both of these elements penetrated from the apocrypha into sermons and church songs, and from there, as the material of many legends, into popular songs commemorating church holidays and into folklore. In most folklore texts, Mary is presented as an ordinary woman whose life and all its details are well known to the narrator (he refers to the landscape, climate, construction, clothing, type of work, etc. as if he knew them firsthand). Such descriptions almost always refer to Her life on earth from the moment of birth until Ascension, that is, the time when She was primarily a mother and homemaker; the domestic image is less often used in connection with Her visits on earth, when She takes the form of an ordinary woman to put people to the test. As a visitor from Heaven, she comes to rebuke, give instructions, or warn of impending punishment. The heavenly image of Mary is partly modeled on the teachings of the Church, iconography and folk depictions of earthly rulers and their retinues. Both styles of description, earthly and majestic, often coexist in the same text. They are not mutually exclusive: as a rule, the transition from one to the other and the appropriate connection of both levels of reality occurs when the climax of the plot is reached.
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