Posted by • 12:00 pm• Poetry • One Comment

Mary Thery (Mar?a Ter?a)

By Martina Juri?ková
A poem on the life of Maria Theresa, also known as Mary Thery

crown and earrings placed on wooden table

There was a king, once upon a time,

Charles IV was his royal name.

He had three daughters and but one son

who died in childhood, so there was none

male heir left, just three princesses.

Such ordeal real unfortunate is.

 

The oldest daughter was Maria,

her second name was Theresia.

But some nobles who yearned for the throne

didn’t want her to receive the crown.

Therefore, her father took an action

and issued the Pragmatic Sanction.

 

The greedy aristocrats were tricked

since according to this new edict

after Charles’s death would Mary

become the queen of all Hungary

and other Habsburg dominions

and the nobles’d be her minions.

 

But some years before she came to reign

she fell in love with Francis Lorraine.

When they married, Mary was nineteen.

Later she bore him children sixteen.

Eleven girls and five princely boys

brought the parents many fears and joys.

 

Two of them grew up to become kings.

Half of the others suffered bad things

which caused Mary many days gruesome.

But all that was only yet to come

when, twenty-three, she was crowned a queen

the kingdom had never before seen.

 

The striking coronation took place

in the town of Pressburg, that’s today’s

Bratislava in Slovakia.

At that time freshly queened Maria

couldn’t have known what life had in store.

The first test of her rule was a war

 

with Frederick of Prussia over

Silesia, who wished to make her

give the land up. She was unwilling,

opting for seven years of battling.

Sadly, she lost it. But still she won

her subjects’ allegiance from thence on.

 

She fostered enlightenment by all means.

Codex Theresianus, the queen’s

set of laws revised land ownership

and unified court rules and judgeship.

She reformed health care and army, too.

In agriculture she proposed to

 

plant new crops like corn and potatoes.

She was the first to use money notes

in Europe to pay for goods in trade

and little children she by law bade

to attend school, get educated.

She made it a right of every kid

 

that they could learn some instead of, say, 

working hard in the fields the whole day.

Mary outlived six of her children

and husband, too. That’s why till the end

of her own life she wore mourning black.

She missed terribly her beloved Franck.

 

Probably a smallpox aftermath

led to Mary’s eventual death

at the age of sixty-three, ending

thus her forty-year rule as a queen.

She was succeeded by her son Joe,

Joseph II who became known

 

for the Patent of Tolerance and

celebrated as the peasants’ friend

for the abolition of serfdom

in the whole Hungarian kingdom.

Be sure this is no fairy-story,

there once really lived this queen Mary!

 

(Slovak Version)

 

Kde bolo, tam bolo,

tam bol raz jeden krá?,

?o sa volal Karol

a štyri deti mal.

 

Ke? mu jediný syn umrel,

s krá?ovnou ho oplakali,

lebo stratil následníka,

len princezné mu zostali.

 

Najstaršia bola Mária,

Terézia ju volali,

avšak krá?ovskú korunu

jej š?achtici da? nechceli.

 

Tak jej krá?ovský otecko

vymyslel hne? taký zákon,

by Mária po ?om v Uhorsku

mohla raz zasadnú? na trón.

 

Tento zákon sa menoval

že Pragmatická sankcia.

Pod?a nej celé krá?ovstvo

tak zdedila Terézia.

 

Vo veku devätnás? rokov

sa za Františka vydala

a z ve?kej lásky mu potom

šestnás? detí porodila.

 

Jedenás? diev, pä? princiatok,

bolo potomkov krá?ovských.

Vladármi sa neskôr stali,

na rados? matky, dvaja z nich.

 

Dvadsa?triro?nú ju v Blave

slávnostne korunovali.

Vtedy ešte netušila,

aké veci ju ?akali.

 

S Fridrichom z Pruska o Sliezsko

mnoho vojen bojovala,

?ím si u svojich poddaných

ve?kú dôveru získala.

 

Terézia osvietenectvo

všemožne podporovala.

Armádu a zdravotníctvo

aj súdy zreformovala.

 

Práva a tiež povinnosti

zemepánov upravila

Tereziánskym urbárom.

Školský zákon stanovila:

 

Vraj každé die?a v krá?ovstve

má právo chodi? do školy,

namiesto aby celé dni

len pracovalo na poli.

 

Ako prvá v Európe

zaviedla v platbe bankovky

a ?udu kázala sadi?

kukuricu a zemiaky.

 

Že jej láska bola silná,

po náhlej smrti manžela

po zvyšok svojho života

len ?ierny odev nosila.

 

Za štyridsa? rokov vlády

šes? svojich detí prežila.

Napokon na rozdutie p?úc

v šes?desiatich troch zomrela.

 

Známy koncom nevo?níctva

a toleran?ným patentom,

najstarší syn Jožko sa stal

mami?kiným nástupníkom.

 

Kde bolo, tam bolo,

nie je to rozprávka!

Kedysi fakt žila

tá slávna Marika.

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