Myth and folktales

Čatež ..........................................................................................................................173
Orko ...........................................................................................................................175
Škopnik ..................................................................................................................... 176
Wind and Thunderstorm ........................................................................................177
DEMONS AND BEWITCHED SOULS ..................................................................179
Wandering Souls ...................................................................................................... 181
Souls of Children .....................................................................................................183
Cursed Souls .............................................................................................................186
The Bewitched ..........................................................................................................190
Duhovin – the Snake Child ....................................................................................191
Vampir – the Vampire ............................................................................................193
Volkodlak ..................................................................................................................196
Werewolf ...................................................................................................................197
Vedomec ....................................................................................................................198
Pasjeglavec – Cynocephalus ...................................................................................201
Personified Troubles ................................................................................................203
Death (Smrt) ........................................................................................................203
Vrok, Rok or Spomin (Memory) .......................................................................204
Plague ....................................................................................................................205
Dusk (Mrak) .........................................................................................................205
Incubus (Mora) ....................................................................................................206
Preglavica – the Bother ......................................................................................208
Krivda – the Guilt ...............................................................................................208
Netek .....................................................................................................................208
Witches and Wizards ..............................................................................................210
DICTIONARY OF SLOVENIAN SUPERNATURAL BEINGS ..........................215
Abbreviations ................................................................................................................251
Bibliography of Cited Works ......................................................................................252
Index ..............................................................................................................................279
Glossary of Geographic Names ..................................................................................284

---

9
PrefaCe
As old as humankind, myths are rooted in the human subconscious and in the 
depths of the sensual perception of people in all societies and civilizations. Subject 
to constant change and adaptations, myths are born through word of mouth and live 
their second lives through the words of narrators. They also remain alive by means 
of artistic creations and cultural events organized by individuals and communities. 
Although myths are thus transformed and acquire new images and forms, the same 
cultural dynamics simultaneously preserve them from oblivion. Living in our midst, 
and with our past, the old myths have acquired a new life in art, culture, social 
institutions, and in other forms of social communication. Since myths are based 
on archetypal concepts, they have survived to the present day and live alongside 
newly-created ones. 
The word myth – from the Greek mythos meaning word, speech, or story – has 
various meanings today. “Myth” originally denoted a tale about gods and ideology in 
narrative form. It had an allegorical effect and could convey messages that a simple 
narrative could not. William Bascom stated that “myths are prose narratives which, 
in the society in which they are told, are considered to be truthful accounts of what 
happened in the remote past. They are accepted on faith; they are taught to be believed, 
and they can be cited as authority in answer to ignorance, doubt, disbelief. Myths 
are the embodiment of dogma; they are usually sacred, and they are often associated 
with theology and ritual. Their main characters are not usually human beings, but 
they often have human attributes; they are animals, deities, or culture heroes, whose 
actions are set in an earlier world, when the earth was different from what it is today, 
or in another world such as the sky or underworld.” (Bascom 1965, 4).
In ancient times, when myths still had an central place in the spiritual life of 
society, they represented primordial truth, a set of exceptionally old symbols, and 
the scope of human perception of the world. It was not until later that they began to 
be associated with fabrications, falsehoods, outdated views of the world, fairy tales, 
belief tales, and divination. The word bajka, which is the Slovenian version of the word 
myth, has gradually acquired the meaning of the belief tale. The preserved Slovenian 
belief tales tell of the origin of the world, humankind, the nation, creation and the 
end of the world, what happens in the afterworld, and of numerous mythical beings 
that accompany the human conceptual world. 
Bajeslovje, or mythology, denotes the scholarly study of mythological material, 
particularly historical sources and literature, as well as iconographically or verbally 
conveyed stories about the religious and conceptual world of humanity from the 
earliest times. Moreover, it represents a set of myths in a particular society or culture. 

---