Lech, Czech, and Rus

Lore & Background

In the Polish version of the legend, three brothers go hunting together but each follows different prey and travels in a different direction: Rus went east, Čech headed west to settle on Říp mountain, and Lech travelled north. While hunting, Lech saw a white eagle against the red setting sun, took it as a good omen, and settled there, naming his fortified settlement Gniezno (meaning 'nest') and adopting the White Eagle as his coat-of-arms. The white eagle remains a symbol of Poland to this day. According to the early 14th-century Wielkopolska Chronicle, Slavs are descendants of Prince Pan of Pannonia, who had three sons: Lech (the oldest), Rus (the middle), and Čech (the youngest), who settled north, east, and west respectively. A Czech variant involves only two brothers (and three sisters), with Čech as founder of the Czech nation and Lech as founder of the Polish nation. His brother Lech continued north to found Poland. A Croatian version with partly changed names (Čeh, Leh, Meh and sister Vilina) was recorded in folk tales in the Kajkavian dialect of Krapina. Some believe it was introduced among commoners by literary people starting in the 16th century. This legend was one of the reasons the Croatian language was chosen in the 17th century as the common Slavic language for Catholic books for all Slavic nations.

Reader's Guide

The legend of Lech, Czech, and Rus is significant as it illustrates that by the 13th century, at least three different Slavic peoples were aware of being ethnically and linguistically interrelated. The stories agree on the location of the homeland of Early Slavic peoples in Eastern Europe, overlapping the region presumed by mainstream scholarship to be the Proto-Indo-European homeland in the Pontic–Caspian steppe. The most well-known version is seen as somewhat Polonocentric, as it mentions a national symbol (the white eagle) only for Lech and the Polish nation, while relegating Czech and Rus to secondary characters. The legend also attempts to explain the etymology of the ethnonyms Lechia, the Czech lands, and Rus. Jan Kochanowski, a prominent Renaissance Polish writer, dismissed the legend entirely, stating that no historian mentions Lech and Czech as leaders. The legacy of the brothers is preserved in three large oaks in Rogalin, Greater Poland, named Lech, Czech, and Rus, which are several hundred years old and protected as nature monuments.

Did You Know?

• The Wielkopolska Chronicle, compiled in the early 14th century, is the earliest Polish mention of Lech, Czech, and Rus.
• In the Polish version, Lech named his settlement Gniezno, which means 'nest' in Polish.
• A Croatian version of the legend features brothers Čeh, Leh, Meh and a sister named Vilina.
• Three large oaks in Rogalin, Greater Poland, are named after the brothers and are several hundred years old.