Legend · České Budějovice
The headless rider
Through Budějovice streets at night a horse with a rider without a head was said to ride. Once someone followed it. It led him along Kanovnická street, today’s Hroznová and Krajinská třída as far as the gateway of a coaching inn, where it became clear what it really was. This legend refutes its own ghost.
When Budějovice was still fortified, people in the town believed that after eleven at night a headless rider wandered the streets. That legend was so firmly rooted among the burghers that few of them would have dared leave the house at that hour.
Once a certain burgher lingered at an inn. When he was returning home to Kanovnická street, the tower was just striking twelve. He remembered the headless rider and quickened his pace to get under his own roof as soon as possible.
Just then the clatter of horse’s hooves sounded behind him.
He seized the handle sharply and in one leap vanished behind the wings of the gate. Yet he could not leave it. He looked through the keyhole to see what was actually happening in the street.
After a moment a horse came to the gate with no one sitting on it. It stopped before the house, struck the paving with a hoof, looked round and walked calmly on. The burgher sighed with relief and out of curiosity went after it.
The horse headed out of town toward the rampart, lowered its head, whinnied and again struck with a hoof. On the tower one o’clock after midnight was just striking when it snorted, flicked its tail and set off back.
It returned along Kanovnická street, past the tower, and by today’s Hroznová turned into Krajinská třída. The burgher walked a few steps behind it. Before the coaching inn At the Golden Lion the horse stopped, looked round a while and entered the gateway.
The next day the burgher went to the innkeeper and learned from him that it was an ordinary carter’s horse that often went out at night to graze on the town green.
From that time, they say, no one in the town believed in the headless rider any more.
How it really was
The legend of the headless rider in České Budějovice unfolds between Kanovnická street and Krajinská třída and itself explains the story as an ordinary horse returning to an inn.
That route can still be walked today. Kanovnická street was laid out at the town’s founding and originally ended at the fortifications, by the Břidličná (also called Powder) Tower. That was demolished in 1829. Krajinská třída is one of the original main thoroughfares and coaching inns really stood there; U Zlatého lva (At the Golden Lion) used to be in house number 33.
One detail is younger than the plot. Hroznová street as a single street arose only in 1875 by merging several older stretches. Before that the part between Krajinská and U Černé věže street was called Viehmarkt, the Cattle Market, and the part further east Deanery or St Nicholas street. That is why the text says “today’s Hroznová”: it is orientation for you, not a period name.
The walls began to disappear from 1825 and most gates and walls were gone by the end of the 1860s. The town in which the legend unfolds was thus still enclosed.
And then there is that ending. Most ghost legends end with the ghost. This one ends with the headless rider being an ordinary horse returning to its inn. The Encyclopaedia of České Budějovice notes this especially: beside tellings meant to frighten people and deter night wandering, there are also legends that refute those warnings. This is one of them.
Where to follow the legend
Kanovnická street, Hroznová, Krajinská třída, České Budějovice. The whole route takes ten minutes and leads through the finest part of the old town.
Where we know it from
- Encyklopedie Českých Budějovic, hesla Kanovnická ulice, Hroznová ulice, Krajinská třída, opevnění města, Černá věž, hostince
- NIKRMAJER, Leoš; PETRÁŠ, Jiří. Průvodce po budějovických hostincích a kapitoly z jihočeské pivní historie. České Budějovice: Jihočeské muzeum, 1999
- SCHINKO, Jan. Putování městem: Krajinská třída. Českobudějovický deník, 25. 4. 2008