Gorals
[5] There is also a significant Goral diaspora in the area of Bukovina in western Ukraine and in northern Romania, as well as in Chicago, the seat of the Polish Highlanders Alliance of North America.
The Gorals as a separate ethnographic subgroup began to form in the 14th century[6] with the arrival of the first Polish settlers from Lesser Poland,[7] who would settle and farm the lands around what is today Nowy Targ and along the Dunajec valley beginning in the early twelve hundreds.
Prior to that, Podhale was an uninhabited region sparsely populated by bandits who chose the inaccessible mountainous terrain to hide from justice.
[8] Then between the late 13th and 15th centuries, Vlach shepherds migrated to the region, gradually moving northwest from the Balkan peninsula over the Carpathian Mountains and settling on Polish lands there.
[10] However, the newcomers brought with them a distinct method of raising livestock in the mountains, which was different from the one practiced by the settlers from the lowlands of Lesser Poland and thus with the merging of the two cultures, a new local way of life began to emerge,[11] and the subsequent assimilation of the Vlachs.
[15][16][17][18] Due to various rights and privileges, including the Vlach law,[19] Gorals enjoyed freedom from serfdom and held a substantial amount of autonomy.
[20] In folk tradition, they were recognized as heroes who helped the exploited Gorals by stealing from the rich and giving back to the poor.
The first Polish national opera, titled Krakowiacy i Górale (Cracovians and Gorals) composed by Wojciech Bogusławski premiered in 1794.
[34][35][36] After 1945, some Gorals from Bukovina and the Podhale regions found new homes in Lower Silesia in villages such as Krajanów, Czarny Bór, and Borówna in the Central Sudete Mountains, as well as Złotnik, Brzeźnica and Lubomyśl in Lubusz Voivodeship.
[39] Kazimierz Dobroslowski asserted that the Podhale dialect had loan-words from Romanian and Albanian, as well as similar belief system elements, music and material culture.
[47] Although nationalist propaganda was generated by both Poles and Slovaks, this process of the Gorals' identification with a nationality was still not complete when the border was finalized in 1924.
[1] Anthropologist Carleton Coon grouped Gorals with the Hutsuls, who dwelled in what was then the southeastern corner of Poland and is now southwestern Ukraine.
Today the clasps are a popular element of highlanders from the Podhale region, but the way they are worn differs from the original one: instead of fastening shirts they are usually attached to them or sewed on.
Using woollen yarn allowed the parzenica to become more colourful and eventually it became a stand-alone trouser ornamentation, developed by talented tailors and embroiderers.
When "Kraków style" came into fashion, highlanders of the Podhale region began ornamenting the corsets with shiny sequins and glass beads.
[52] In Cieszyn Silesia and northern Slovakia, the shepherd's axe and elements of the folk costume are termed Vlach (Polish: wałaska, wałaszczaki, Slovak: valaška).
