King Stakh’s Wild Hunt

People, beware of the quagmire, beware of the swamps at night, when the blue lights gather and begin dancing in the worst places. There you will see twenty horsemen, their chief racing ahead of all of them, the brim of his hat pulled down over his eyes. No clanging of swords, no neighing of horses.

From somewhere, and only rarely, can be heard the song of a huntsman’s bugle. Manes are flying, marsh lights are twinkling under the horses’ hoofs.

Across the heather, across the fatal quagmire rides the Wild Hunt, it will ride as long as the world lasts. It is our land, a land we do not love, a terrible land. May God forgive us.

You probably know that all legends can be divided into two groups. The first are those that are alive everywhere amidst the greater part of the people. In the Belarusian folklore they are legends about a snake queen, about an amber palace, and also a great number of religious legends.

The second type are those which are rooted, as if chained, in a certain locality, district, or even in a village. They are connected to an unusual rock or cliff at the bank of a lake, with the name of a tree or a grove or with a particular cave nearby. It goes without saying that such legends, being linked to a minority, die out more quickly, although they are sometimes more poetic than the well known ones, and when published they are very popular.

Here it is demanded of me that my story brings to an end my reminiscences of the Yanovskys and their decline, and the extinction of the Belarusian gentry.