Legend · České Budějovice
The treasure
Tomek’s wood by Roudné near České Budějovice has a treasure legend. A rich owner had it hidden and killed those who helped him. On Palm Sunday a gun barrel appears above the spot. Whoever goes for the treasure must walk there and back in silence.
To Tomek’s wood by Roudné, near Budějovice, an old treasure legend is attached. According to it the treasure belonged to the owner of nearby Ramschissl’s farmstead, a rich and eccentric man.
The owner once decided to pave the road from his seat all the way to Budějovice with gold coins. The people of Budějovice forbade it. He grew angry and buried the coins. He shot the servants who helped him hide the treasure. He himself then went to war and perished in it.
On Palm Sunday, they say, a gun barrel appears at the place where the treasure is buried. Whoever sees it and touches it may gain immense wealth. But he must walk to the treasure and back in silence, without a single word.
Many have already tried their luck. Always, though, some word slipped out and they returned empty-handed.
How it really was
The treasure legend of Tomek’s wood by Roudné was recorded by Willibald Böhm; it is linked to the owner of Ramschissl’s farmstead in Roudné, attested in 1487.
Tomek’s wood exists. The South Bohemian Research Library, in a note on older archaeological reports, identifies it with the wood sources call Domek-Wald by Roudné; the same identification is ascribed to historians Karel Pletzer and Daniel Kovář.
The legend is old. Willibald Böhm recorded it under the title Der Schatz im Tomkowalde in Sagen aus Budweis und Umgebung. It also entered the Roudné chronicle.
And the Ramschissls are real. They were an important Budějovice burgher family of the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries. In Roudné in 1487 Ramschissl’s farmstead is attested. After Matěj Ramschissl’s death there was a dispute over it; in 1539 the town acquired it and the farmstead soon afterward disappeared.
What is not attested: that a ruin of that name stood in Tomek’s wood. The real farmstead was an older estate on the bank of the Malše, not a forest stronghold. The legend linked its owner with treasure hidden in the wood; that link is narrative, not archival.
The motif of a gun barrel appearing on Palm Sunday, a killed man who carried the treasure, and the need to make the journey in silence belong to the attested form of the local legend.
Where to follow the legend
Roudné by České Budějovice and the woods south of the village, on the left bank of the Malše. From the centre of Budějovice it is under five kilometres.
Where we know it from
- Encyklopedie Českých Budějovic, heslo Roudné: Ramschisslův dvůr, jeho majitelé a zánik po roce 1539
- STERNECK, Tomáš. Ramschisslové ve středověkých Budějovicích. Staré Budějovice 3, 2008, s. 7–28
- BÖHM, Willibald. Sagen aus Budweis und Umgebung. Budweis, 1924: pověst Der Schatz im Tomkowalde
- Jihočeská vědecká knihovna, Kohoutí kříž, heslo Adolf Lindner: ztotožnění Domek-Waldu s Tomkovým lesem