Myth and folktales

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origin. The Celtic, German and Slavic people knew only about the soft cheese made 
from sour milk. The German people are said to have learned how to make cheese in 
the 5
th
 and 6
th
 century from the Rhaeto-Romans, similarly as the Greeks learned cheese 
diary practices from the ancient native Balkan peoples (Grafenauer 1958: 50). 
In Slovenia, many tales with such themes have been preserved. Ivan Grafenauer 
published a great deal of work from Slovenia and from abroad. Milko Matičetov also 
found such tales in Trenta and Soča Valley (Grafenauer 1952.1953: 142–143), as late as 
in 1952, which shows how this tradition was deeply anchored mainly in the Slovenian 
Alpine region and not only in the west, but also in Koroška, where the mountain 
man plays the role of the wild man. Most often, he knows the whereabouts of ore 
and shares this information with people (Šašel, Ramovš 1936: 5. Dapit, Kropej 1999: 
16–18, no.8). According to Ivan Grafenauer, the tales about a captured wild man, who 
shows people where ore is, refer to the discoveries of iron and lead resources or to a 
newly revived mining industry in the High Middle Ages (Grafenauer 1952–1953: 138). 
Similar to the Wild Man, it was dujačesa (wild woman) who taught people how 
to make cheese in Alta Val Tore/Terska Dolina. The local people made her do it, 
since they took away her child and promised her to return it after she taught them 
how to make cheese. 
THE WILD MAN WRESTLES WITH A BEAR
In addition to the motif of a “Captured Wild Man”, there are also a widespread 
tales in Slovenia about a wild man, who wrestles a “wild kitten” (ATU 1161), such as 
in the tale of the Mountain Man from Rosental in Koroška:
The Mountain Man came to some man to lie on the boards above the bread 
oven. One day, a traveller with a bear on a chain came as well and tied the 
bear next to the corner pillars. At once, the bear and the mountain man 
started to wrestle. They jumped on each other and fought that the hair flew 
through the air. But the bear was stronger. The Mountain Man had to run 
away. The next day, the Mountain Man yelled from the forest to the farmer: 
“Do you still have that wild kitten?”
The farmer answered: “Yes, I still do!”
From then on, the Mountain Man was afraid to come back and lie on the 
boards above the bread oven (Šašel, Ramovš 1936: 5–6; Dapit, Kropej 1999: 19).
Ivan Grafenauer assumed that this motif originally referred to the supernatu-
ral beings, such as a dwarf or a kanih, since the forest beasts allegedly obeyed the 

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Wild Man. Moreover, the Mountain Men were strong, though dwarf-like creatures, 
and they knew where the treasures and ore, especially silver and gold, were hidden 
(Grafenauer 1940: 54).
WILD MAN AMONG LUMBERJACKS AND HUNTERS
The wild man loved home-made bread and milk. He sometimes also stole food, 
but he mainly came to get food from the farmers on their farms, the shepherds on 
their pastures, and the hunters in their hunting cabins. When people gave him food 
as offering, he made it up for it and thus they had big flock and lived in prosperity. 
He chased the game in their direction and even brought them a gold or silver coin 
(Tonejc 1884: 606–606; compare: Kelemina 1930: 151).The hunter who was afraid of 
the wild man tried to chase him away by offering him a rifle and gunpowder while 
he lit a tobacco pipe for himself. 
The wild man also presented danger for the lumberjacks in the solitary cabin 
in the middle of the forest:
lumberjacks and the Wild Man
Lumberjacks had a mountain hunting cabin where they went to cook during the 
day and to sleep during the night. Every Sunday they attended mass and left a 
guardian in the cabin. But when they came home, he is nowhere to be found. 
The same happens the second, the third and the fourth Sunday. One of them 
offers to stay at home that day because he wants to see where his people had 
disappeared to and who took them so far away that they never returned again.
The one who was appointed to be the guardian usually lied in bed and pulled 
the blanket over his head. But this one found a log, put it in bed and covered 
it with blankets. He hides himself behind the door and takes a hatchet in his 
hands. He waits to see who will come. When the lumberjacks are long gone, the 
wild man comes, opens the door, steps next to the bed, takes the blanket and 
the log, believing it to be the lumberjack and carries it through the door. The 
lumberjack jumps behind him, and right at the threshold buries the hatchet 
between his shoulders. The wild man roared out from all the pain.
A few days later, the lumberjacks see the wild woman holding the wild man 
in her arms and he still had the hatchet in his back. From then on, the lum-
berjacks lived in peace.
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92 
Manuscript of Gašper Križnik, Archive ISN ZRC SAZU: ŠZ 3/49. Published: Dapit, Kropej 1999: 
12–14, no. 6.

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This time, the lumberjacks get rid of the wild man because they set up an ambush 
for him. In the narrative from Borovnica near Vrhnika, a beggar similarly tricked 
the wild man, who came to eat the food they grew on fields and also killed people. 
The beggar did not lie on the bed, because there were sharp knives set on it instead 
of the sheet, but hid underneath it. When the wild man came to kill it with a log, 
the beggar screamed from underneath: “I am not here!” The wild man became so 
scared that he ran away, but was entangled in a pea shrub and fell so hard that he 
died.
93
 In 1970, a similar tale was told to Tone Cevc by Jerištov Oče (Father Jerišt), 
in Velika Planina (Cevc 1993: 64) where they kept many tales about the douji mož 
(wild man) and douja žena (wild woman), who help the shepherds, but at the same 
time also scare them. 
WILD MAN KIDNAPS A GIRL
The wild man can, like the water sprite, kidnap a girl in order to take care of him 
and to be his wife. But if she left him, he mercilessly tore apart the children they had 
together, similar to the tale from 
Windisch Bleiberg
 in Rosental in Koroška: 
Mountain Man kidnaps a Girl
The mountain man caught a beautiful girl raking leaves, and dragged her 
into his den, and never left her leave his sight. The girl grieved and begged 
her husband to let her at least pick flowers and blackberries, but she was 
refused and threatened with being torn into pieces if she did not obey. They 
lived together for a year and had two children when she started to long for her 
home. She escaped in secret, picked up some flowers and crawled in between 
the bramble, waded across a river and felt free. The wild man soon stormed 
in after her, but he could not reach her. He held one of the children in one 
hand and in his anger tore him into little pieces (Šašel, Ramovš, 1936: 5; 
Dapit, Kropej 1999: 18). 
The girl was able to escape the Mountain Man (in Rosental: hornә mozh), 
because she crawled in between the bramble and waded across a stream, which are 
the boundary lines separating the world of a man and the world of the supernatural 
beings of nature. 
The tales about the Wild Men were also present in Resia, where he was given 
the name dujak. He stole a girl and made her his wife, and also vice versa; the Wild 
93 
Manuscript of Franc Kramar, Archive ISN ZRC SAZU: ŠZ 5/2, 4. Published: Dapit, Kropej 1999: 
14–16, no. 7.

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