The Land Beyond the Forest: Facts, Figures, and Fancies from TransylvaniaGerard, E. (Emily)
History
The Land Beyond the Forest: Facts, Figures, and Fancies from Transylvania
Gerard, E. (Emily)
Transylvania (Romania) -- Description and travel
In deep forests and wild mountain-gorges there wanders about a wild
huntsman of superhuman size and mysterious personality, but rarely
seen by living eyes. Oftenest he is met by huntsmen, to whom he has
frequently given good advice. He once appeared to a peasant who had
already shot ninety-nine bears, and warned him now to desist, for no
man can shoot the hundredth bear. But the passion for sport was too
strong within the peasant; so, disregarding the advice, he shot at
the next bear he met, and missing his aim, was torn to pieces by the
infuriated animal. Another hunter to whom he appeared learned from him
the secret that if he loaded his gun on New-year’s night with a live
adder, the whole of that year he would never miss a shot.
Another and more malevolent forest-spectre is the wild man—or, as
the Roumanian calls him, the _om ren_—usually seen in winter, when
he is the terror of all hunters and shepherds. Whoever may be found
dead in the forest is supposed to have fallen a prey to his vengeance,
which pursues all such as venture to chase his deer and wild-boar,
or approach too near the cavern where he resides. His rage sometimes
takes the form of uprooting pine-trees, with which to strike dead the
intruder; or else he throws his victims down a precipice, or rolls down
massive rocks on the top of them.
_Oameni micuti_ (small men), as the Roumanian calls them, are
gray-bearded dwarfs, who, attired like miners, with axe and lantern,
haunt the Transylvanian gold and silver mines. They seldom do harm
to a miner, but give warning to his wife when he has perished by
three knocks on her door. They are, however, very quarrelsome among
themselves, and may often be heard hitting at one another with their
sharp axes, or blowing their horns as signal of battle.
Also the mountain monk plays a great part in mining districts, but is
to be classed among the malevolent spirits. He delights in kicking over
water-pails, putting out lamps, and breaking tools, and will sometimes
even strangle or suffocate workmen to whom he has taken aversion.
Occasionally, but rarely, he has been known to help distressed miners
in replenishing the oil in their lamps, or guiding those who have lost
their way; but woe to the man who relates these circumstances, for he
will be sure to suffer for it.
The _gana_ is the name of a beautiful but malicious witch who presides
over the evil spirits holding their meetings on the eve of the first
of May. Gana is said to have been the mistress of Transylvania before
the Christian era. Her beauty bewitched many; but whoever succumbed to
her charms, and let himself be lured into quaffing mead from her ure-ox
drinking-horn, was doomed. Once the handsome Maldovan, the Roumanian
national hero, when riding home from visiting his bride, waylaid by the
siren, and beguiled into drinking from the horn, reached his mountain
fortress a sick and dying man, and was a corpse before next morning.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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