Myth and folktales

144
Woman (dujačesa) also married a man from Resia (Matičetov 1968: 223; Kropej, 
Šmitek, Dapit 2010: 59–60). Marriages between people and fairy creatures were not 
rare in folk tradition, which will be seen in stories about water sprites, and the fairies. 
KRIVOPETA (WILD WOMAN WITH FEET TURNED BACKWARDS)
In their imagination, people often associated the wild women, especially krivo-
pete, with the notion of cannibalism. They were dangerous not only to the children, 
but to adults as well. Ivan Trinko published one of such discussions about the wild 
women in the journal Ljubljanski zvon (Trinko 1884).
The krivopete had the same ambivalent character as did the wild men: they did 
help people but they did them much harm as well. Krivopéta, krivopétnica, dúga žéna, 
dujačesa and other women living near Idrija, Tolminsko, in Trenta and Slavia Veneta 
(Venetian Slovenia) were mainly evil female supernatural beings, who could control 
nature. In the Soča/Isonzo Valley, they even told stories that it was the wild women 
who dug a new river bed for the Soča River (Kelemina 1930: 216).
They allegedly appeared most frequently just before stormy weather. People 
thought that they brought hail, just like witches did. But they also advised people 
when to plant and when to reap, and since they were able to foretell the future they 
could also create natural phenomenon which helped or harmed the farmers. They 
worked in favour of those who gave them food (an offering); they were said to protect 
homes and children; they harvested wheat for them and helped them in other ways 
as well. However, people had to treat them with great care. They predicted weather 
from the top of high mountains, occasionally taught people how to take advantage 
of natural phenomena and gave farmers advice for farming chores, but they choose 
their own payment for such advice. While the people were working on the field, they 
took away their children (Trinko 1884). Sometimes they lured a man to help them 
with different chores, they shared with him different secrets and knowledge, but woe 
betide him if he spread them to other people once he arrived home. 
They were believed to live in caves, to have long, rumpled green hair and feet and 
hands bent backwards. Some said that they had the hooves of a horse, the same as the 
farce from Bovec and the vesle from Gorica. The žalke (holy women) from Rosental were 
said to have their feet bent backwards (Graber 1914: no.3). The Willewies, Bilwis (the white 
fairies) from Koroška were also disfigured, the same as the Anguane in Slavia Veneta. 
In San Pietro al Natisone/Špeter in Italy, but also in Resia and Slavia Veneta 
people said that the krivopete could be chased away by the sound of the bells, which 
they believed was the barking of the dogs of St. Lenart. 

---

145
KODKODEKA fROM VAL RESIA
In Resia, people told stories about Kodkodela or Korkodeka, a wild woman who 
did everything contrary to what other people did. When the drought was severe and 
people wished for the rain to fall, she went to the river to wash her clothes and prayed 
for the sun to shine so that the feathers in her pillows would dry. She was in bad terms 
with everyone and when she had enough of it all she set the village Stolvizza on fire 
and went somewhere across Kila (Matičetov 1968: 222). 
Changeling (POdmEnEK) 
Slovenian folk tradition about the wild women and fairies also mentions 
changelings,
94
 i.e. a wild woman replaces the child of a woman for her own. Such 
child – a changeling – was in Slovenia named podmének, preménk, obranov otrok 
(Obran’s Child) or odmenik. The Podmenek was a creature of unusual appearance 
and behaviour, for instance, it had a big head; it was black, had hearty appetite and 
was constantly hungry and screaming. The wild women took away the human child 
to feed and raise him. In Slovenian narrative tradition, the child is often taken away 
also by the devil, the škopnik or the water sprite (Kelemina 1930: 162, no. 108). The 
exchange can be caused by a curse, by the incorrect behaviour of the godparents who 
were taking the baby to baptism, particularly if they neglected to make the sign over 
cross over the child at a crossroads, or if the mother and the child were not protected 
in the most dangerous period, which is forty days after the birth. 
This motif appears in the folk song Hudoba odnese svetega Lovrenca (The Devil 
Takes Away St. Lawrence) or V zibki zamenjani otrok (The Changeling in the Crib) 
(SLP I: 184–188, no. 35). This song originates from the apocryphal legend in which 
the infant St. Lawrence (sometimes also St. Benedict or St. Stephen) was replaced by 
the devil for one of its children. According to lore, the child is returned to his or her 
parents if the changeling (podmenek) is exposed and was given a cup of porridge and 
a spoon too large for the cup or was beaten with hazel switches until the human child 
was thrown back in the crib. Pleas and prayers did not help much. 
The lore about the podmenek is spread not only throughout Europe but is known 
also outside of it and has its origin in the belief in an evil spirit which settles among 
humans, in exorcism and in folk explanations of the birth of handicapped children 
who were believed to be the children of supernatural beings (Matičetov 1974). 
94 
More about this see: Röhrich 1967.

---

146
the fairies (VILE)
In Slovenian folklore, the fairy was named vila, white lady or the white woman 
(bela žena), the holy women (sveta žena), the venerable woman (častitljiva žena) and 
the God’s girl (božja delkica). They were considered to be supernatural beings, but 
people sometimes imagined them also as being priestess, clergywoman and proph-
etess such as were Pythias in ancient Greece, who lived in remote and inaccessible 
areas. Sometimes people also believed that they were indigenous women, who kept 
their distance away from settlement of men, but they were able to foretell future and 
to help people because they were learned priestess. They are described as such in the 
paragraph published in the journal Novice in 1844 by an unknown author.
sibile Prerokile (sybils) and the White Women as the pre-Christian 
Prophetess
Sybils, the white women, the venerable women, žalikžene, the holy women, 
rojenice (Fates) were pre-Christian seers and priestess. […] They knew every-
thing. They stood on hills and shouted out loud when it is time to plough and 
to sow and when to celebrate certain holidays. They liked to come in the village 
to visit people whom they treated with kindness. The white woman sometimes 
also took care of all the cattle in the barn, even before the housewife woke up. 
They were there when a child was given birth to, thus they were also often 
called rojenice (Fates). They went to work on the field all by themselves and 
they especially liked to weed millet. Every farmer was happy to see a white 
woman on his field since this meant that the plants will grow very well, like 
hops does. A house in which the white woman stepped was a fortunate house. 
[…] That was in the old days in Slovenia. They were honoured and renowned 
and although it is more than a thousand years since they have disappeared, 
people still remember a lot of the things they learned from these learned 
women. (Novice II, no. 2: 169). 
The folklore about the fairies intertwines with the tradition about Sybils, which 
are in Slovenia known as šembilje. Because they were seers and were able to predict 
one’s fate and future, their features which are in Slovenia used with rojenice or sojenice 
(Fates) and šembilje, blended with the tradition about fairies. Sometimes, their abil-
ity to predict and influence one’s fate prevailed. In some countries, the name used 
for fairies is even derived from the word “fate”, such as with the Romanic Fatae. The 
Germanic Feen and the French Dames Blanches or Bonnes Dames used to be depicted 
with the symbols of the solar motion or with the wheel of luck or Fate. 

---