A poet marries a peasant girl. A wedding reception follows at the bride's village house. In adjoining rooms, guests get into arguments, make love, or rest from their merriment, dancing, and feasting. s, by Stanisław Wyspiański Among the live guests are ghosts of personae from Polish history and culture, representing the guilty consciences of the living. The two groups engage in dialogues. The wedding guests are hypnotized by a rosebush
straw-wrap (
Chochoł) from the garden which comes to life and joins the party. (Offending a
chochoł, according to folk beliefs, could provoke the thing to play tricks). The "Poet" is visited successively by the "Black Knight" (a symbol of the nation's past military glory); the "Journalist"; the
court jester Stańczyk, a conservative political sage; and the "Ghost of
Wernyhora" (a paradigm of leadership for
Poland). Wernyhora presents the Host with a golden horn symbolizing the national mission, and calls on the Polish people to revolt. A farm hand is dispatched to sound the horn at each corner of Poland, but he soon loses the horn. Thus the wedding guests, symbolizing the nation, waste their chance at national freedom. They keep on dancing a "
chocholi taniec" (a "straw-wrap's dance") "the way it's played for them" (a Polish folk saying), failing in their mission. ==Legacy==