But only the cowhide left for thee.”
Then the cow will die, the carcass be buried, and the skin sold. To prevent all this the owner goes early on St. John’s Day to the meadow and gathers the morning dew in a cloak. This he carries home, and after binding the cow to a beam washes her with it. She is then milked, and it is believed that if all has gone right she will yield four bucketsful.
In the chapter on “Conjurations and Exorcisms among the Hungarian Gypsies,” I have mentioned the importance which they attach to the being born a seventh or twelfth child. This is the same throughout South Slavonia, where the belief that such persons in a series of births are exceptionally gifted is “shared by both gypsies, with whom it probably originated, and the peasants. What renders this almost certain is that Dr. Krauss mentions that the oldest information as to the subject among the Slavs dates only from 1854, while the faith is ancient among the gypsies. He refers here to the so-called Kerstniki, who on the eve of St. John do battle with the witches. Krstnik is a Greek word, meaning, literally, one who has been baptized. But the Krstnik proper is the youngest of twelve brothers, all sons of the same father. There appears to be some confusion and uncertainty among the Slavs as to whether all the twelve brothers or only the twelfth are “Krstnik”—according to the gypsy faith it would be the latter. These “twelvers” are the great protectors of the world from witchcraft.[1] But they are in great danger on Saint John’s Eve, for then the witches, having most power, assail them with sticks and stakes, or stumps of saplings, for which reason it is usual in the autumn to carefully remove everything of the kind from the ground.
A krstnik is described by Miklošič as “Človek kterega vile obljubiju”—“A man who has won the love of a Vila.” The Vila ladies, or a certain class of them, are extremely desirous of contracting the closest intimacy—in short, of becoming the mistresses, of superior men. The reader may find numerous anecdotes of such amours in the “Curiosa” of Heinrich Kornmann, 1666, and in my “Egyptian Sketch Book” (Trübner & Co., London, 1874). In the heathen days, as at present among all gypsies and Orientals, it was believed to be a wonderfully lucky thing for a man to get the love of one of these beautiful beings. What the difficulties were which kept them from finding lovers is not very clear, unless it were that the latter must be twelfth sons, or, what is far more difficult to find, young men who would not gossip about their supernatural sweethearts to other mortals, who would remain true to them, and who finally would implicitly obey all their commands and follow their advice. There is a vast array of tales—Gypsy, Arab, Provençal, Norman, German, and Scandinavian, which show that on these points the Vila, or forest-maiden, or spirit of earth or air, or fairy, was absolutely exacting and implacable, being herself probably allowed by occult laws to contract an intimacy only with men of a high order, or such as are—
“Few in a heap and very hard to find.”
On the other hand, the Vila yearns intensely for men and their near company, because there is about those who have been baptized a certain perfume or odour of sanctity, and as the unfortunate nymph is not immortal herself, she likes to get even an association or sniff of it from those who are. According to the Rosicrucian Mythology, as set forth in the “Undine” of La Motte Fouqué, she may acquire a soul by marrying a man who will be faithful to her—which accounts for the fact that so few Undines live for ever. However this may be, it appears that the Krstniki are specially favoured, and frequently invited by the Vilas to step in—generally to a hollow tree—and make a call. The hollow tree proves to be a door to Fairyland, and the call a residence of seven days, which on returning home the caller finds were seven years, for—
“When we are pleasantly employed, time flies.”
These spirits have one point in common with their gypsy friends—they steal children—with this difference, that the Vila only takes those which have been baptized, while the gypsy—at present, at least—is probably not particular in this respect. But I have very little doubt that originally one motive, and perhaps the only one which induced these thefts, was the desire of the gypsies, as heathens and sorcerers, to have among them, “for luck,” a child which had received the initiation into that mysterious religion from which they were excluded, and which, as many of their charms and spells prove, they really regarded as a higher magic. It is on this ground only, or for this sole reason, that we can comprehend many of the child-stealings effected by gypsies; for it is absolutely true that, very often when they have large families of their own, they will, for no apparent cause whatever, neither for the sake of plunder, profit, or revenge, adopt or steal some poor child and bring it up, kindly enough after their rough fashion; and in doing this they are influenced, as I firmly believe, far more by a superstitious feeling of bāk, or luck, and the desire to have a Mascot in the tent, than any other. That children have been robbed or stolen for revenge does not in the least disprove what I believe—that in most cases the motive for the deed is simply superstition.