The House at the Dead Baker

According to an old Budějovice legend, one autumn morning a funeral procession left a house on Krajinská street. Its owner, a well-to-do Budějovice baker, was burying his only daughter. With his wife he accompanied her to the monastery cemetery.

The gravedigger lowered the coffin into the grave. The parents threw a handful of earth on the lid and stood long at the edge. At last they took leave and went. The gravedigger remained alone and began to fill the grave.

He did not finish the work. He laid aside the spade, climbed down to the coffin and swept the earth from its lid. Then he opened it. The girl lay inside with the jewels her parents had given her for the last journey.

He took what came easily. The engagement ring would not slide off. He drew a knife to cut the finger. At the first cut the girl woke — she had been buried in a deathlike faint, not dead. She seized his hand. The gravedigger fled.

She found her way home in her shroud. When she knocked, her parents at first thought they saw a ghost. Only when they recognised her voice did they open. The house later took the name At the Dead Baker — though the baker lived, and it was his daughter who returned from the grave.