I do find something darkly funny in DEs implication of picking up a Polish person by the ankles and bashing ice with his/her head!
I thought the line from Hamlet meant that the "Polacks" Hamlets father smote were riding sleds on the ice, but I am now somewhat partial to your interpretation that it is a pole-axe therein refered to rather than Polish warriors, but that being said the Danes, and the Norweigens, of Hamlet's day did fight battles against the Poles. The Norwiegen nobleman Fortinbras, whose character in the play serves to restore order in Castle Elsinore after the bloodbath, was in reality killed by the Poles in battle.
They are a precious part of the older Polish generation. Including other people's Babcia or Busha (take your pick of terminology.) I'm intrigued when I hear them speak about Polish culture, along with life in the old country. They are all very special people.
When I visited my Busha in her "Senior Retirement Facility" I was often allowed to go play outside while my parents and her chatted. Her room's window overlooked a swan filled pond and I being just a wee lad, without alot of sympathy for our fine feathered friends, used to throw rocks at the swans, and my father tells me that Busha found this hilarious. One anecdote he tells about her has always interested me. When my father was a boy he, and one of my uncles, would often stay with Busha, and there was at that time a weekly tevelvision program, hosted by a fellow made-up and attired like a vampire, that would feature a different horror movie every week. Busha would unaffectedly watch the horror movies, but when the host's segments came on she would cross herself, and avert her eyes, or even flee the room entirely. Of course this seemed rather funny to me, but when I thought about it I could understand that for a lady from the superstitious depths of Eastern Europe a ghoul on television addressing his viewers directly could indeed be scary.
