The Wild Women

At Litocha Spring, celebrations were held at the summer solstice. A legend also tells of wild women who came to bathe there. A local farmer married one of these ljutochy, or wild women. She sprinkled the fields with water from the miraculous spring, and they always had a good harvest. Once, while the farmer was at market, his wife had the unripe grain cut because a storm threatened. In anger he reproached the fairy for her origins and drove her away. Meanwhile the cut grain ripened, but the farmer called in vain at the spring for her return. As recently as the previous century, a celebration was still held here: girls wove flower wreaths, boys cleaned the spring and then danced around it with the girls until dusk.