“A mug is not a mug, but a mug, beer is an ointment, we are not in a hall, but a foxhole, we are not sitting at a table or a blackboard, but at a blackboard and applicants for admission to the guild are fuchsia or fuchsia. “Apart from that, there are seven members of the presidium, each of whom has a name, adlati, contrari and a number of other different names or functions,” said Perkmeister Chairman Roman Sikora who is also CEO of the OKD mining company.

It was Chief Perkmaster Sikora who had the honor of completing the acceptance of the adepts into the mining guild by mounting the sword. But before that, five men and one woman must undergo the traditional acceptance ritual.

“Each of them has to introduce himself, say a few sentences that best characterize him, answer questions, be stronger with the ex, turn the cell phone over his head, and jump over his skin,” he explained, adding that if someone made a mistake in the traditional name, he punished by being strengthened with ointment. “Either diagonally, which is half, or ex,” he laughs.

Jumping skins is based on mining history. “Miners used to tie their pelts around their waists when they worked in the lower layers, and they would shift their entire shift down to avoid getting scratched. And now we are jumping over it,” explained Sikora, what is the use of the skin of the destroyers. He gave an example, the OKD skin jump is always held on the occasion of the St. Patrick’s Day party. Barbara, patron saint of miners.

“The same thing happens in Poland, even the miners don’t work there that day – and there are exactly the same ceremonies as here. “It may be slightly different in some ways, but the main idea and main content are exactly the same,” assured the head teacher.

According to Jan Kafka, chairman of the Costumed Miners’ Circle, Barbor of Stonava, it is a good thing that mining traditions are maintained even in modern times. He himself remembered jumping over the skin half a century ago.

“The ceremony is still the same; there are no rules about how it should be done and how it should proceed. It was practically a pleasure for the miners, after the hard work they put in all year, to relax, sing, let off steam and relieve the stress of the hard work,” he explains, noting that previously only men did skin jumping.

“Now it has changed – and women can walk too. But that didn’t exist twenty or thirty years ago,” Kafka said. But in one breath he immediately added that the miners had no problem with women’s participation. “However, they also work on shafts, albeit on the surface. “So the mining community is included in it,” he concluded.