Borowy, laskowiec, boruta, borowiec, gamekeeper, forest, forester, forest grandfather, forest grandfather, and wolf shepherd known to the wider public as Leszy, ruled over wild animals and many of the Slavic forests. The most important forest spirit was rather neutral towards people. His attitude depended on their intentions in coming to the forest.
According to Lesza's "guests", he could lead intruders deep into the forest or lead them out safely, he could turn them over to wild animals or protect them from attack by robbers. Most often, it took the form of a wolf, eagle owl, or wind. He was also pictured as a man with an unnaturally white face.
In the mythology of the Slavs, it was often explained that Lesh's height depended on the height of the stand through which he was going. At night, he wandered among the trees and frightened people with his shouts, screams, and howls. Leszy was often capricious, so he was sacrificed in the form of domestic animals and crops. These rules were followed mainly by hunters and woodcutters, towards whom the foresters were most suspicious. In this way, they asked the demon to enter and obtain wood from the forest.
Leszy survived in Polish folk beliefs until the end of the 19th century, as evidenced by, for example, the short stories by Bohdan Baranowski. In one of them, he quotes an application according to which Borowy helped a deserter from the tsarist army to escape. A native demon made its way into the mainstream thanks to Andrzej Sapkowski's books and their adaptations created by CD Projekt RED studio (in the form of the Wiedźmin game series) and the series The Witcher, which is a loose adaptation of Sapkowski's work.
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