Myth and folktales

147
A FAIRY TEACHES PEOPLE TO SING AND DANCE
People believed that fairies live in the trees, in inaccessible forests, cracks, in 
hollow sheer rocks, on the top of the mountains, where they were said to have a 
hidden paradise; they were also said to live near springs and wells, lakes and in the 
rush on the river banks. They gathered at dusk and late hours at night and danced 
and sang. Wherever they choose to stay, they brought fertility and prosperity with 
them. According to some stories, they also taught people how to sing and dance 
(Kropej 2002: 137–138). 
Fairies are also among those mythological beings who can lead a person to the 
places and time that are connected to the world beyond. The saying “dancing through 
time”, has a wholly literal meaning. Fairies dancing their round dances in remote 
places can take a coincidental observer with them. Literature of the 16
th
 century 
abounds with mentions of dancing fairies; one of the most famous is Shakespeare’s 
“Midsummer Night’s Dream”.
 Numerous tales describe a fairy circle that is potentially very dangerous for an 
observer. If a young man enters the circle he may disappear. Sometimes he may be 
rescued, but this is possible only after a full year has passed, and at exactly the same 
place. Pulling him out by throwing his coat over him, his rescuer must be careful to 
remain with one leg outside the fairy circle (Briggs 1979: 88–89). 
Slavic fairy lore often mentions how fairies punish those who interrupt their 
dancing by inflicting wounds on their body and spirit. It may be something as 
seemingly minor as an intruder trampling the grass on which they are dancing 
and the fairies take their revenge by paralyzing their arms or legs, or piercing their 
hearts with their arrows, leaving them to die. Their victims may also lose their 
minds (Krauss 1890: 80–91). If a person returns from a mountain sick, people say 
that that person had chanced upon a fairy circle along a lonely mountain path. All 
of these events occur during a time that is liminal, sacred, and therefore highly 
perilous.
FAIRIES MAKE NATURE FERTILE
An important part of Slovenian folklore presents the fairies as distributers of 
wealth and prosperity. This derives from the connection between folk tradition 
about fairies and fertility cults. Such fertility cults were connected with the god-
dess Nerthus (Berta, Percht, Pehtra, Pehta), and the Celtic maternal and water deity 
Modron. Thus, the folk tradition about them is interwoven with the tradition about 
Pehtra Baba or Mokoš.

---

148
According to tales, people would 
leave for them offerings such as milk, 
dumplings, and other foods in the fields 
and pastures. In return, fairies took 
over their chores on the field, they took 
care of their cattle, rode and groomed 
their horses and also presented them 
with yarn that had no end until some-
one actually mentioned the end (of the 
yarn), etc. 
Fairies also kept cattle. The stories 
from Bela Krajina mention them coming 
at night to the banks of the River Kolpa 
together with their red cattle. Sometimes 
they would abduct a young boy who had 
to work for them.
95
 He would be able to 
escape if he climbed through a forked 
branch of a bramble or some other bush 
with thorns, or if he waded across a river, 
or crossed the boundary line between 
the abode of the fairies and the abode of 
the people just in time.
FAIRY WIFE
Those who did a good deed for a fairy, such as untangle her hair, provide 
shade for her child, or weave a wicker roof to protect the sleeping fairy from 
the sun, were rewarded either by being given a flock of sheep, which started to 
follow them from afar, or by granting them extreme power, or by giving them 
a whistle or some other instrument, which made people dance.
In some tales, a fairy grants a young man’s wish and takes him for her husband. 
As a fairy, a mother and as a seer, she allows to live only those of her children 
whom she perceives to be honest in the future. Conjugal happiness with a fairy 
also lasts only until her husband breaks the taboo, for example if he calls the 
fairy by her real name of if he hits her, curses her, shares with children her secret 
etc. The fairy disappears at the exact moment the taboo is broken. 
95 
Samotar, Žalik-žene na Volinjaku pri Prevaljah. Mir XII (20. 1. 1893), 5.
The White Lady, Felician von Myrbach 
(ÖUMWB 1891)

---

149
Thus, according to a tale, the farmers Polharji had a fairy for their mother. 
The story recounts that once, a handsome young man from this family saw a 
girl dressed in white sleeping next to the path of the meadow under the Učka 
Mountain. To protect her from the sun, he cut a big branch and put it next to 
the girl. For such kindness, a fairy granted his wish and married him. Although 
the fairy left this man, who had once in amazement named her: “Fairy, she 
is a fairy!”; she still raised the daughter they had together, who became the 
mother of the Polhar family we know today (Novice XI, 1853: 303, no. 76).
The tales about the žalik žena who came and lied in bed with a farmer, were 
frequent mainly in Koroška. This would bring great prosperity to the farmer’s house. 
She sometimes also gave to the housewife a yarn that had no end. The fairy disap-
peared if the housewife or some other member of the family chased it away or cursed 
it, became angry because of the yarn and said “will there be no end of this yarn”. It 
was also not permitted that a housewife cut off the fairy’s braid, which fell from the 
bed on the floor. In any case, the fairy or the žalik žena never returned if any of this 
happened and they took with them also the future prosperity of that house. 
Urban Jarnik (Jarnik 1813) and Matija Majar Ziljski were among the first ones 
to write about the žalik žene in Koroškan folk tradition. The latter published the fol-
lowing paragraph in Vraz’s journal Kolo in 1847.
fairy Bestows a yarn’s end
The white women also came to the farmers in their houses. One early morning, 
as soon as the wife of the farmer got up from the bed in which she slept with 
her beloved one and went about her errands, a white woman came and took 
her still warm place next to her beloved. According to the tale, this occurred in 
a house in Rožje. Her long blonde hair fell from the pillow on the floor. When 
the wife returned, she noticed this and lifted them from the floor on the bed so 
they would not get dirty. The white woman repaid her by handing her an end 
of a piece of yarn: “This is in return for the kindness which you have shown”, 
she says, “Although it is not much”. The wife takes it and winds it in a ball. She 
winds and she winds but she does not run out of it. A neighbour finds her like 
this, and she hits her knee in amazement, saying: “God bless you! Does the yarn 
end at all?” and it was at that moment that she ran out of it (Majar 1847: 14–15).
 
The motif of a fairy as a wife or a lover like the famous French Mélusine (Mot. 
F.301.6)
96
 is often the main motif in the tales about fairies. Heroes are born out of such 
relationships. The fairies were mothers of heroes mainly in the epics of South Slavs, 
96 
For more see: Zipes 2012: 28–32.

---