And behold! before her eyes the people, as they stood in a circle, were turned to stone. But she sighed so deeply that the sighs burst her bosom, and went forth in wails of sorrow to tell the world of a mother’s woe, and to shake the foundations of the world, that had wrought such evil!
And the winged stags rose up into the air and disappeared for ever.
[VII]
THE WITCH’S STRONGHOLD
Going up the Prahova valley one cannot see “Cetatea Babei,” the Witch’s Castle, because it is hidden by the Bucegi Mountain. It is a jagged peak, and looks as though it were covered with ruins. A field of eternal snow lies between it and the Jipi. In far-off times, when wolves guarded the flocks, and eagles and doves made their nests together, a proud castle stood there, and within the castle busy doings went on. From morning till night it rang with pattering, clanging, bustling sounds, and hundreds of hasty footsteps scurried to and fro therein. But at night-time a light shone forth from the tower, and the humming of a mighty wheel was heard, and above the hum of the wheel a wondrous, soft song seemed to hover, keeping time with it. Then people would glance fearfully up toward the castle and whisper: “She is spinning again!” And she who sat spinning there was the mistress of the castle, a very evil witch, to whom the mountain-dwarfs brought all the gold that they found in the depths of the earth, that she might spin threads of gold for all the brides to wear upon their heads on their wedding-day.[6] The gold was unloaded in heaps in her castle, and she weighed it and chose it out—and woe to the dwarf who did not bring the required weight; he was thrust between the stem and bark of a huge tree, and squeezed until he gave up the very uttermost grain of gold; or he would be caught by the beard only in the tree, and there he might struggle and writhe as he pleased, and cry for mercy—the old witch turned a deaf ear to it all. The name of Baba Coaja (“Mother Bark”) had been given her, perhaps because of this cruel custom of hers, perhaps because she was as hard as a stale crust of bread, and as wrinkled as the stem of an old oak. She alone understood the spinning of the golden threads, and she went on preparing them for hundreds of years in advance.
Baba Coaja had a wondrously beautiful daughter, named Alba (“The White One”), for she was as white as the snow that covered the mountain-tops. Her skin was like velvet, and like velvet, too, were her brown eyes, and her hair was like the gold-threads that her mother spun.