Stary Ulas (Sivy-Sivitski Uladzislau Pyatrovich) was a poet, prosaist, collector of Belarusian folklore.
Background
Stary Ulas’s parents were peasants. His mother was occupied with household, his father worked as a cook of count Tyshkevich. His parents died early. Yzefa Amyalyanskaya was his guardian after parents’ death. When the boy grown up a little, he worked as a cook of count Tyshkevish like his father.
Stary Ulas is immortalized in Valozhyn. A memorial plaque is placed on the house where he was living till 1914.
Education
Stary Ulas couldn’t get a systematic education, because he had to be concerned about means of livelihood. Stary Ulas was a self-educated person.
Career
For about 20 years Stary Ulas was working as a mounted patrol, then as a forest warden of count Tyshkevich. Stary Ulas had 12 children. He opened a school in his house in Valozhyn where he taught different children in the native language. Later his family and he moved to Vilnius. Then they moved to Suzhany village where Stary Ulas worked as a forest warden again. In 1934 the family moved to Shashaelgishki village and lived there till senility.
Stary Ulas began to write when he was 42 under the influence of the Belarusian newspaper “Nasha Dolya” (“Our Fate”), which accidentally fell into his hands. His first work was published in newspaper “Nasha Niva” (“Our Niva”) in 1909. The author’s wife, Antanina Vajtsyakhouskaya, considered herself as a gentlewomen and was dissatisfied that her husband wrote in Belarusian. Some of his relatives thought the same. Stary Ulas was interested in folk traditions, rituals, songs, limericks, proverbs, and used them in his works. He wrote about life in a village, he created many images of Belarusian life. M. Bagdanovich appreciated his works. Stary Ulas made a verse edition of folk legends
and traditions (“Svataustvo” (“Matchmaking”), “Kumouskiya mogilki” (“Kumousk graves”), “Palyanka” (“Clearing”) and others). In the poem “God belarusa” (The year of Byelorussian”), which was written in 1911, Stary Ulas wrote about work and mode of life of a Belarusian peasant. His verse “Sud” (“Court”) is a satire on the bureaucratic judicial machinery, where the corruption, the mendacity and the self-interest prevail. Stary Ulas was summoned for that verse. Hard life of Belarusian people is shown in such verses as “Kurgan” (“Burial Mound”), “Nash Valozhyn” (“Our Valozhyn”) and others. Many of his works are dedicated to different events (for example, about the fire in Valozhyn).
Stary Ulas is not just a poet, a collector of folk traditions, but he is a publicist. A part of his works (manuscripts,
publications, correspondence and editorial staff) is saved in national archives in Belarus and Lithuania, another part is saved in Gnezna city in Poland, where his wife moved to.