Legend · České Budějovice
The Water Spirit
To children playing near Doubravice by České Budějovice came an unknown man with a carved flute and began to play. They followed him as if enchanted. One boy stayed behind and saw the water at the pond part and close again. It is the same material as the Pied Piper of Hamelin, only with a different ending.
In the waters around Budějovice, they say, lives a water spirit. He keeps to deep places in ponds and pools, and people prefer to avoid such waters. It is said that anyone who carelessly approaches such water may not return.
All that is told of him. In the Budějovice country this too is told.
Near Doubravice a group of children was once playing. Suddenly an unknown man joined them. He said nothing; he only drew out a strangely carved flute and began to play them something very fine. The children grew merry, began to skip and shout with joy. The man did not stop playing and slowly walked away. They followed him as if enchanted.
Only one of the boys stayed standing.
No one knows why.
He watched the procession and saw that it was heading for a pond. There the man struck the flute on the water’s surface. The water parted. The children followed him down, and the surface closed again behind them.
The boy ran home shouting and told his astonished parents what he had seen. Everyone at once knew that the unknown flautist had been the water spirit. The parents of the missing children resolved to lure him out of the pond, because on dry land he loses his strength and power.
They waited a long time, day after day, until at last they got their chance. The water spirit left his realm and they seized him.
They threatened to throw him into the fire unless he returned their children and left the country forever. The water spirit promised everything, and the parents released him.
That same day the lost children appeared in their homes. They told their parents they had been well treated by the water spirit — they had only played and slept.
Eight days after that event a cart rose from the pond. It was drawn by four black creatures like cats, and on the little wagon was loaded the strangest clutter. On the driver’s seat sat the water spirit, puffing a short pipe and cracking a whip. The team moved at extraordinary speed and soon vanished completely.
From that time the water spirit never showed himself in those parts again.
How it really was
The legend of the flute-playing water spirit of Doubravice by České Budějovice was recorded by Josef Virgil Grohmann in 1863; it is a local variant of the same motif as the Pied Piper of Hamelin.
Doubravice in that legend is no accident. As early as 1863 Josef Virgil Grohmann included in his collection Sagen-Buch von Böhmen und Mähren a legend titled Wassermann als Flötenspieler, set in Doubravice by Budějovice. It is not a generic water-spirit tale stuck onto Budějovice later. It has been told here for at least a hundred and sixty years.
Even the cart is old. The image of the water spirit driving off on a cart drawn by four black creatures like cats belongs to an attested older form of the telling.
And now the most interesting part. The motif of a flautist who leads children from a village with music is not South Bohemian. It is the same material as the famous Pied Piper of Hamelin. The difference is in the ending, and that difference is worth noticing: in Hamelin the children vanish and do not return. In the Budějovice country the parents pull themselves together, catch the fellow on dry land where he loses his power, and negotiate the children back.
The same fear, a different answer. This region did not lose its children.
One more detail. The water spirit of this legend neither vanishes nor dies in the end. He loads his clutter onto a cart and drives off like a tenant moving house. For a being people feared, it is a surprisingly ordinary ending.
Where to follow the legend
Doubravice by České Budějovice, today a city district on the north-eastern edge of town. The ponds around are still in their place.
Where we know it from
- GROHMANN, Josef Virgil. Sagen-Buch von Böhmen und Mähren. Prag, 1863: pověst Wassermann als Flötenspieler, dějiště Doubravice u Budějovic
- VOLLGRUBER, Franz Engelbert. Historický přehled budějovických pověstí; přepis a komentář Jihočeské vědecké knihovny, Kohoutí kříž
- WEHRHAN, Karl. Die Sage. Leipzig, 1908: budějovický motiv vodníka, kterého lidé přiměli opustit kraj