Myth and folktales

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among them also of Prince Marko (Kraljevič Marko). The fairies were sometimes 
only foster mothers, who gave their heroes their great powers and the ability to sur-
mount the obstacles and the enemy. Among such heroes were for example the knight 
Lancelot, Tristan de Nanteuil, Ljutica Bogdan, Zmaj Ognjeni Vuk, Peter Klepec, etc.
FAIRIES – HEALERS
The fairies had the healing powers, which were typical for elementary supernatu-
ral beings of nature, such as were also wild man and wild woman. The Slovenian folk 
tradition also kept numerous tales in which the fairies have healing powers and not 
only know about the healing properties of herbs and other plants, and also objects, 
but are also able to heal with their supernatural powers. 
The tale about a soldier named Groga from Grobnik in Bistriška dolina tells how 
the fairies protected him from gunshots on the battlefield (Kelemina 1930: 5/I), by 
giving him holy books. With them, he was also able to heal people. Due to their magic 
healing power and their protection from misfortune, the fairies are very similar to 
witches and other supernatural healers. 
In contrast, the fairies who appear on the battlefield remind of the Germanic 
Valkyries, who have the power to protect the soldier from gunshots and also to take 
the dead heroes in the Odin’s hall, i.e. Valhalla. 
FAIRIES – PHANTOMS
The fairies could also be terrifying and fatal for the people, because the wealth 
and prosperity were connected with their antitheses: misfortune and death; thus, 
fairies had also a negative, destructive side. The ambivalent nature of the fairies is 
reflected by their punishing those who wander into their secret world or even try 
to do it harm. Woe betide a lumberjack who tried to cut down a tree in which they 
lived, for he would not return alive from the forest.
It took great effort for the people whom the fairies took away to come back. They 
were often left with physical and mental consequences. The negative image of the fairy 
is metaphorically expressed also with an image of the enchantresses and a phantom 
leading to ruin like Fata Morgana,
97
 which became the synonym for a phantom, which 
no one can resist and leads one to ruin and death. Fata Morgana was later the master of 
the kingdom of the death. She was believed to be very similar to Luxuria, the ancient 
goddess of dissipation, which is intertwined into the image of the fatal phantom.
97 
For more see: Zipes 2012: 195–196. 

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151
fates (rojeniCe, sojeniCe)
People believed that the first, third or seventh night after the baby was born, 
beautiful, tall and slim women came to predict the future of the baby. This predic-
tion was irrevocable. According to other tales, the first one, dressed in white, foretold 
good events; the second, in brown foretold unhappy events and the third one, in 
black, foretold death. Yet according to other tales, the first one foretold childhood, 
the second one maturity and the third one old age and death. The latter was dressed 
in white, the first two in red or blue.
Similarly to the rojenice of Slovenia, the ancient myths mention the Greek Moirai 
(Moirae) or Lathin Parcae who start to spin the thread of life (Clotho), measure and 
spin the thread (Lachesis) and cut it when death approaches (Atropos). From here 
derive their characteristic attributes: the distaff, the spinning wheel, and the thread. 
According to a Greek myth, Moirae were the daughters of Zeus and Themis, thus 
they were the children of the supreme god and his embodiment of Justice, thus 
they played an important role, which can be seen in Nordic epics and in Germanic 
mythology in which the Norn (the Germanic Fates) present an important part not 
only with the birth of a child but also in 
the battlefields. 
According to the research made 
by Rolf Brednich, the tradition which 
developed among the Greeks, Albanians, 
Macedonians, Bulgarians, Romanians, 
Serbs, Croatians, Slovenians, Czechs, 
Slovaks, Lusatian Serbs, Lithuanians and 
Latvians is different from the tradition 
of the Romanic, Germanic and Anglo-
Saxons nations, where the beliefs regard-
ing one’s destiny are transmitted to the 
fairies (Brednich 1964: 244). 
According to Slovenian folklore, 
a certain and destined death can be 
avoided by praying to God, which is 
repeated at that exact moment when 
one should hang himself or step on a 
rotten bridge; according to the rule: it 
was time, but the man did not come. 
People who did not have the knowledge 
The Fates, Gvidon Birolla (Möderndorfer 1957)

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about the secret laws of fate and tried to escape from it were brought even closer to 
the fulfilment of their prophecy, e.g. the prophecy made by Fates that a child will be 
killed by a lightening comes true (ATU 934). Similarly, a prophecy that a boy will 
be killed by a tree is fulfilled. It was said that the boy will be killed by an apple tree 
on the garden, thus the father cuts it down, but the boy trips over its stump and dies 
(Kelemina 1930: 109–114). 
In Slovenian folk tradition are preserved the stories about Oedipus, whom the 
fates prophesied that he will kill his father and marry his mother. The first protago-
nist of these legends was in Slovenian lore Judas the Apostle, later also St. Andrea, 
St. Matthias and St. Luke. Slovenian versions of this legend with St. Matthias as the 
protagonist, have no motif of incest, since the hero kills his father and mother by 
mistake, believing that his wife is in bed with her lover (ATU 931). In Dolenjska, the 
story about St. Matthias was recorded by Fran Sreboški Peterlin (Peterlin 1864: 178; 
Kelemina 1930: no. 205). The same motif appears also in a folk song “St. Luke kills 
his father and his mother” (Š: no. 608). 
The rojenice (the fates) are in Slovenia first mentioned in the Celjska kronika 
(Chronicle from Celje) in the 15
th
 or 16
th
 century in a sermon: “De Royenicis id est 
tribus Parcis.” 
In Gorenjska, Matevž Ravnikar-Poženčan described them like this:
rojenice (Parcae)
They say that they are three of them and they enter one’s house when a child is 
born to determine his fate. On this occasion, a loaf of bread must be prepared 
for them on the table. One among the Parcae creates the yarn, the second spins 
it and the third one cuts this thread of life when death comes. The names of 
these Parcae are not given 
98
.
In journal Slovenski glasnik in 1866, Matija Valjavec from Zamladinec in Croatia 
noted down the Kaj-Croatian material he gathered. He also mentions the Fates 
(Valjavec 1866: 24–25, no. 1). 
The prevailing opinion today is that the people believed in the existence of 
sojenice/rojenice (the Fates) in the Indo-European and Slavic mythology. Prokopios 
does mention the presence of monotheism among the Slavic people and the Antes 
in the 6
th
 century, and adds that they do not know anything about the Fate and 
that they do not believe that it had such power over a man (De bello gothico III, 14). 
Ivan Grafenauer believed that the Slovenian and Kaj-Croatian tradition about the 
Fates was not of Old Slavic origin and that it was taken from the Greeks or from the 
Southern Alpine natives only in the second half of the 6
th
 century. It seems that the 
98 
Manuscript of Matevž Ravnikar-Poženčan, Archive NUK: 483, XI.

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