Myth and folktales

130
The solčava mountains are the stramorji and the orjaši turned into stone
The Stramorji and Orjaši had always been raging against this world, but God 
turned them into stone. Almost every sharp hill that points in the sky represented, 
according to folk belief, a giant turned into stone. Thus, Solčavske planine are 
giants turned into stone (Trstenjak 1857: 114–5; Kelemina 1930: 236, no. 166).
Other mountain walls and tops, mainly in the Alpine region, were also interpreted 
as the giants and ajdi turned into stone, similarly to the pagan girl from Prisank.
The Pagan Girl (ajdovska deklica) from Prisank
Above Vršič, in the mountainside of the rocky Prisank, there is a pagan girl 
turned into stone, who gazes with amazement above the Trenta Valley. […] 
The old shepherd, who shepherd a flock of sheep under Vršič, told me (in the 
green valley under Prisank) that the pagan girl was a kind and warm-hearted 
girl and she helped the mountaineers and people who transported goods to find 
their way through snow blizzards into the Trenta Valley. She was believed to 
live under overhanging rocks and rocky ledges. […] on one winter day, the dark 
grey clouds gathered above Prisank and while the bora wind was guffawing 
with its cold laugh, the snow fell and covered all the tracks. The old bachelor 
whistled and a herd of chamois went running into the valley right next to the 
pagan girl sitting under the cliff and caused an avalanche. 
The mountaineers and people who transported goods were headed towards 
Trenta and further on towards the sunny Primorska escaped the white thun-
dering death by a whisker. The snowdrifts were so big that the people would get 
lost, if it were not for the pagan girl who left her hiding place, gazed through 
high snow in front of them, and showed them the way. After long days, the 
people who transported goods came back on the same road and there, under 
the overhanging rock, at the foot of the Prisank, they left some wine, bread 
and meat for the pagan girl. Every time she helped them, they rewarded her 
in the same manner and thus she was never thirsty and hungry. 
The pagan girl was not only a leader, but also a Fate. In the dark nights, she 
visited young mothers and foretold the destiny of their new-borns. One day 
she came to a young shepherd in the Trenta Valley. The mother who has just 
given birth to a son was sleeping in the warm cottage, when the pagan girl 
quietly came near the cradle, leaned next to the baby and predicted: “Once 
you grow into a young man, you will be brave as a hunter like the people at 
the foot of Prisank have never seen. You will follow the white chamois with 
golden horns on the cliffs and overhanging rocks. You will shoot it, sell the 
golden horns and become immensely rich.”

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131
When the pagan girl’s sisters found out about this prophecy they cursed her and 
she turned to stone as soon as she returned to the wall of the Prisank. She has 
remained there up to this present day and gazes with her big stone eyes in amaze-
ment above the Trenta Valley (Zupanc 1971: 77; Cerar Drašler 2004: 161, no. 42). 
Clairvoyance or the power of foreseeing one’s fate, such as the pagan girls had, 
was fatal for the pagan girl in this tale, the Fate from Prisank. Her foresight was too 
“blasphemous” because she foretold the death of Zlatorog (Goldenhorn), which was 
seen as an untouchable animal. The other pagan girls resented this, they cursed her 
and she turned into a stone.
In Resia Valley, people tell that on Mt. Kanin the tops of the mountains rise in the 
shape of a lying girl – a giantess. The imagination of the people painted the images of the 
giants or the wild women (divje babe) all across the extensive Slovenian mountain world. 
PEOPLE AS THE TOYS OF THE PAGAN GIRL
Slovenian folklore is also familiar with a well-known international tale type 
ATU 701 “The Giant’sToy” about the giants or pagan girls which think that people 
are interesting toys and thus they raise them up from the ground and carry them 
into their homes. One of such narratives is a tale about the pagan girl who carries 
away in her apron several people and the cattle, but is ordered by her father to take 
them back to that exact place where she had found them (Möderndorfer 1946: 97–98).
This tale includes also a very widespread motif of a man who tricks a blind giant 
or a sorcerer with an iron stick, which he uses instead of his finger in order to make 
the giant believe how powerful the new generation of humanity truly is. 
The tale, about the giant’s children who take away the people because they think 
they are toys, has been kept up to this very day and it was recorded by Ljoba Jenče 
in Šempeter in Dolenjska:
The Pagan Girl and the Cursed Mowers
It has been 500 years since the giants built the “Šentrupert Beauty” and the 
“Okrog Flower”. The one in Šentrupert was dedicated to St. Rupert, the one 
in Okrog to St. Barbara. People still say today: “Oh, my dear Barbara, are 
you going to protect my home!”
These two churches were built at the same time. People had only one hammer 
to break the stones and thus they had to pass it from one church to another. 
The pagan girl was also with them and she brought lunch to the builders. She 
was very, very tall. 

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132
One day, when she was coming home from the field, people were just cutting 
grass in the meadow in the middle of it. Six people scythed, she stopped and 
observed what kind of animal was eating the grass. These might be grasshop-
pers, and so she bends down, picks the mowers in her apron and takes them 
and their scythes to the chicken. The mowers had lunch behind the bush; some 
wine and bread. The chicken ate the mowers, but they left the lunch. 
Since then, six tall men with big black hats come every Saturday from eleven 
until midnight to eat lunch. They sit in a circle and light up the fire.
87
 
According to some tales, the giants were destroyed by the pasjeglavci (the dog-
heads or cynochephalus). These also destroyed the castle of the giant under the Cerklje 
Mountains, in the valley “Pri Ajdovskih dekilicah” (By the Pagan Girls). They killed 
the giant while his two daughters sought shelter in Krvavec (Slovenian kri, krv- means 
blood) which got its name “Bloody Mountains” because a stream of their bloody 
tears ran all over it. This folktale was recorded by Andrej Mejač and published in the 
journal Ljubljanski zvon in 1890 (Mejač 1890: 354–356). 
THE GREEKS (GRKI)
The giants in Slovenia were named also Grki (Greeks), Grkinje (Greek women), 
because the Greek people were, according to South Slavs’ oral tradition (while in 
Slovenia mainly in Bela Krajina, thought as being an ancient population that was 
exceedingly tall, such as the Ajd or Oger (Ober or Avar), Lah (Italian) or Rimska 
deklica (Roman maiden). Janko Barle collected many folk legends about the Grk 
(Greek) mainly in Bela Krajina.
The Greek Woman doing her Washing in the river kolpa
The Greeks were tall and powerful people. The old Fabečka from Griblje told 
me that her grandmother’s grandmother was a Greek woman. Kolpa was 
then a stream, but it was as wide as that ditch in the middle of it. The Greek 
woman stood there with one leg on the one side and the other on the other 
side of the River Kolpa and did the washing in it. 
The Greek woman stands with one leg on kučer and the other in lipnik
Other people tell that the Greek woman was even taller: she stood with one leg on 
Kučer (a hill above Podzemelj) and the other one on Lipnik in Croatia, which are 
almost two hours apart and washed the laundry in the Kolpa (Barle 1893: 10). 
87 
Manuscript by Ljoba Jenče, 2005, Archive ISN ZRC SAZU; published: Kropej 2008: 206.

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