Lajkonik
The Lajkonik is the hobby-horse rider of Kraków, a bearded figure in pointed Tatar dress and Mongol robes who parades the Old Town each year on the first Thursday after Corpus Christi, playfully striking onlookers with his gilded wooden mace to bring them good luck. Legend traces the custom to 1287, when Vistula raftsmen of the Zwierzyniec district, called włóczkowie, are said to have surprised and overwhelmed a sleeping Tatar raiding party camped by the river, then ridden into the city dressed in the captives' robes to celebrate their victory. The earliest written notices of the procession da