STORIES OF BOHEMIA

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 58, Issue 4190, 29 May 1939, Page 7

STORIES OF BOHEMIA

A LAND OF LEGEND. THE HOME OF “GOOD KING WENCESLAS.” In all Europe no country is so rich in legend as the land which was once Bohemia, yesterday was Czecho-Slo-vakia, and to-day is part of Nazi Germany. Prague’s first appearance in history occurs somewhere about the beginning of the eighth century, when Krok or Crocus, King of Bohemia, built a rude stronghold near the site of the present city. (This king had three daughters, K-zi, Teta, and Libussa. Libussa, the youngest, was a maiden wondrous in body and mind, but she had one grievous fault—ishe was a soothsayer; and that was a very grave disadvantage for a woman in that age of masculine domination.

When, on the death of her father, Libussa succeeded him as ruler of the Slavic tribes, she showed great wisdom and mercy in her judgments, and was acclaimed by all. But one of those judgments was in favour of a nobleman against his younger brother, who had laid claim to their father’s estate, and the disappointed litigant made it his business to stir up trouble by crying shame on a nation of warriors which was content to be ruled by a mere woman.

To which Libussa replied by declaring that she refused to reign alone over “so ferocious a people,” and asked the nobles to choose a consort to help her. But the nobles, secure in her wisdom, left the choice to their queen. Then Libussa, calling her supernatural powers to her aid, looked from the castle over the wooded hills, and spoke as one entranced: “ Over yonder, in a field beyond those hills, your future king at this moment ploughs with spotted oxen. His name is Premysl, and his descendants will yule over you for ever. Take my horse and follow him; he will lead you to the spot.” And the freed horse galloped straight to a field where a fine, upstanding young man ploughed with spotted oxen, just as Libussa had said.

They were married, and Bohemia was ruled by their direct descendants for six hundred years. But Libussa was not so far wrong in her forecast, for the last Emperor of Austria, Francis Jioseph, had in his veins her blood and that of her strangelychosen consort. FOUNDER OF PRAGUE. It was Libussa who founded Prague and foretold its future greatness; but even her prophetic powers could not foresee its present downfall. Another and better-known ruler of Prague was “ Good King Wenceslas/’ of Christmas card fame, who reigned jn the tenth century, and was so good a Christian that his page, walking in his footsteps through the snow, felt no chill!

One rf the .prettiest legends of Bohemia’s past is told of the city of Bratislava. Here, in 892, the King of Hungary fled with his family when Ghenghis Khan swept down on Eastern Europe with his marauding

Huns. The king’s saintly daughter. Princess Elizabeth, used to come daily from the castle when famine stalked in the city, and always she brought an apronful of bread for the starving people. One day, when the bread was gone, she opened her apron, and, lo ! a miracle had happened —there lay an armful of fragrant rosebuds 1

A CASTLE AND ITS LEGENDS. Around Castle Schreckenstein, above Aussig, cluster many legends. Built in the year 820 to protect the Slavic Bohemians from German raiders, this fortress was occupied, about a hundred years later, by Kuba, a robber baron, a doughty warrior “ who loved feuds and the chase, and only when there were no men to hunt hunted bears and wolves.” One day Kuba’s men captured a beautiful maiden, by name Mathilde, and her lover. The maiden Kuba kept for his delight; the man he cast into the Hunger Tower to starve to death. But Mathilde’s holiness and helplessness enlisted the sympathy of the gnomes of the neighbouring mountains, and by tunnelling under the foundations of the Hunger Tower they freed her lover, who escaped with his life.

Not so the devoted girl, whom the enraged baron hurled to death from the castle battlements. It is, however, satisfying to know that the rescued lover returned some time later, with an armed force, and that the cruel baron paid for his violence with his life. THE STEPMOTHERS’ AVALANCHE. Equally gruesome is the tale of the Machocha or Stepmother’s Ava-

lanche. Once upon a time, in the village of Willimowitz, near Bruna, there lived a little boy whose stepmother neglected him*in favour of her own son, a sickly, ailing child. While walking with the children one day she met a charcoal-burner (blit of course he was the Devil in disguise, though she did not know it) who told her that the stronger her stepson grew the weaker would her own boy home. Calling her stepson to her, she asked him to pluck a rare flower that grew on the edge of a mighty precipice. Then the child bent for the flower the woman pushed him over the precipice and fled from the spot- By some miracle the boy’s fall was broken by a tree, and his cries attracted a passing woodman, who rescued him. Meanwhile the demented stepmother, reaching home, had found her own boy lying dead. Mad with grief and horror, she rushed back to the abyss and hurled herself over the edge. Now, when winter winds rage and the Machocha crashes downward, the Moravian peasans cross themselves and flee from the sound, for woe betide those who hear the shrieks of her who is doomed for ever to be the demon of the avalanche !