Myth and folktales

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People said that he should throw his gun down so that they could see whether 
they could help him off the edge of the precipice. 
They said: “If the gun breaks in pieces so shall you.”
He threw down his gun that split in two. So there was nothing left for him but 
to throw himself into the precipice.
But people say that he was not damned. Christ came to help him. First, he 
misled him but then forgave him after his death.
“It was then,” people said, “that a rock wall cracked to reveal a fissure in the 
shape of a cross.” You can still see it today (Ivančič Kutin 1998: 32–4; Dapit, 
Kropej 2004: 19, No. 4).
The chamois with golden hooves were mentioned by Karel Dežman in his com-
ment on the folktale about Zlatorog (1868). More material on this animal has been 
collected by Albina Hintner in the area of the Kamnik Alps. In 1901, she wrote about 
the chamois with golden hooves in the Laibacher Schulzeitung. Should a person 
inadvertently or intentionally come too near their dwellings a downpour of rain and 
thunderstorms awaited them, or else thick avalanches of rocks from the top of the 
mountain forced them to turn around and leave.
The Chamois with the Golden hooves at Zijalka Cave
Zijalka, a cave on the northern slope of Mount Mokrica in the Kamnik 
Alps, was used by shepherds as a sheepfold when the weather was bad. It 
contained the bones of a cave bear. If they went astray at night, shepherds 
sometimes beheld a chamois with golden hooves by the cave. It would go 
in and out of the cave. If they came too close, torrents of rain erupted, or 
they were showered by densely falling rocks from the mountain range and 
had to back away quickly in order to escape the avalanches. The chamois 
refreshed itself in a mysterious gold-bearing spring. Many went looking for 
this spring, but nobody has found it yet (Hintner 1901: 93; Dapit, Kropej 
2004: 18, No. 3).
At the end of the 19
th
 and the beginning of the 20
th
 centuries, other collectors of 
folk heritage also wrote about the goat with golden hooves appearing in the Kamnik 
and in the Savinja Alps. A folktale named Zlati vir v kamniških planinah (A Golden 
Spring in the Kamnik Alps), which was published by Fran Kocbek in a book on 
the lore of the Savinja Alps, tells of a goat with golden hooves that soaks them in a 
golden spring:

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74
A goat with golden hooves is frequently seen in the mountains around Kamnik. 
The hooves are golden because the animal goes to drink from a golden spring 
that has been searched for many times.
Each year at the same time, an Italian came for this gold. After his death, 
nobody else found the golden stream (Kocbek 1926: 263–4, no. 73; Kelemina 
1930: 321, no. 234).
In the Kamnik Alps, Tone Cevc managed to collect an abundant lore about the 
chamois with golden hooves (Cevc 1973). In 1973, the eighty-five-year old Katarina 
Jerin, nicknamed “Bernardova mama,” told him the following legend:
The Chamois with Golden hooves at the Cave above Bistrica, and the 
hunter from luče
There was a fellow from Luče who told this story. “The chamois and deer ran 
by here. And they had golden hooves.”
He said: “What have we got here?”
It was a cave. So he went in. There were large nuggets [of gold], that’s right! 
They were heavy, those nuggets!”
So he said: “Should I take them?” It was really pouring. “Okay, I will not take 
them today but will return tomorrow!”
So he came the following day, and nothing was there any more. Naturally, 
since the cave had closed again.
That fellow from Luče was a poacher, and he was poaching then. So, he told this 
story to hunters and to my father, and to Dr. Šmidinger from Vienna. There 
was a hunting lodge here in Bistrica, and tourists hunted deer, the chamois, 
and everything. At home he recounted this many times over.
My father asked: “Why did you leave them?” 
“Well,” he said, “I didn’t know it was going to be closed the following day.” So 
there was nothing. “And later,” he said, “there was nothing.” So he left empty-
handed. People have already been searching there; they have, yeah, but could 
not find that cave. “Oh, if only I would’ve taken the gold right then, for the 
cave was later closed.” It was here above Bistrica, some eight meters high, that 
the cave was (Cevc 1973: 82–3).
A common characteristic of these narratives is human greed. The lore about 
the chamois and the deer with golden hooves has been preserved largely in the area 
around Kamnik. According to the local lore, these animals appear near caves with 
hidden gold. Similarly, the narrative about the gold in Farjev Plaz and under Mount 
Mokrica (Cevc 1973: 83–6) also refers to gold and to a golden stream in the Kamnik 

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75
Alps. Interestingly enough, almost no similar traditions have been preserved in other 
parts of Europe. This lore was thoroughly researched by Tone Cevc, who found oral 
tradition about the Venetians and Italians searching for the gold, and about white 
animals, all over Europe (Cevc 1973: 87–90). In contrast to this, he discovered a 
reference to a white goat with golden hooves only in the description of traditional 
Christmas carol-singing in Galicia; this tradition was practised until recent years. 
A boy was traditionally disguised as a goat with golden hooves, and another one as 
an old man with a white beard. Cavorting around the village, the boisterous boys 
performed various pranks. Then they sang a carol at each village house, with the goat 
promising a bountiful harvest anywhere its golden hooves might tread; where it will 
not walk, the crops shall be poor (Cevc 1973: 90).
Demonstrating the deep connection between humans and nature, and their 
fateful co-dependence, the tale of Zlatorog, which speaks about the hunter and the 
miraculous animal, has been preserved through centuries. The magic animal per-
sonifies a celestial, chthonic deity that brings life and possesses the key to earthly 
treasures. 
There were many theories about the meaning and the origin of the Zlatorog 
legend. Comparing Zlatorog with the unicorn, Joža Glonar (1910) discovered a con-
nection between the motif of the Wild and the Eternal Hunter and the shared cultural 
heritage of European peoples. 
Josip Abram deemed that this legend was brought to Alpine territory by Slovenes 
from their old Indo-European homeland, and has origins of more than 1500 years 
ago (Abram 1927).
Jakob Kelemina believed that in the form of a stag with golden horns living in 
the miraculous garden, Zlatorog represented the elder brother of the poacher Jarnik. 
Zlatorog’s original adversary was the Green Hunter (Jarnik) who was later supplanted 
by the Hunter of Trenta (Kelemina 1930: 72–74, No. 22). Kelemina also compares the 
hunter with the constellation of Orion and with Sirius (1930: 14).
According to Milko Matičetov, the legend recorded by Karel Dežman is con-
structed “mystification” from the period of late Romanticism and has hardly any roots 
in oral tradition, even though Dežman, born in the hills surrounding Idrija, wrote 
that he had heard the story from old shepherds from the Bovško region (Matičetov 
1986). Tone Cevc, in turn, considered the categorically negative position of Matičetov 
on the authenticity of the lore of Zlatorog somewhat questionable, particularly since 
he found a great deal of similar narrative tradition in the Kamnik Alps (Cevc 1973).
Leopold Kretzenbacher and Leander Petzoldt connected the beliefs that can be 
traced in the legend of Zlatorog with the old religions where the white animals have 
been worshipped as sacred and in a way as personifications of God (Kretzenbacher 
1968; Petzoldt 1995: 197). 

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