Buried Treasures

Many buried treasures are spoken of around Polička. In Till’s field, at a place called Pod kopcem, a golden drum is supposedly hidden underground, concealed by French troops in the early nineteenth century. After the war, however, the soldiers searched for it in vain. On Good Friday, a little fire can be seen above its resting place. A flame also used to appear above a treasure in a barn beside the road to Starohrad. One noon, threshers reportedly dug there and managed to lift a large iron cauldron out of the ground using crowbars. But the mistress of the house arrived and exclaimed: “So much money!” At that, the cauldron sank into the earth with a rumble. A similar story is told of the Barvířka field, where a flame could be seen during Holy Week. One maid silently threw breadcrumbs over it so it would not go out. Another, impatient, spoke, and the treasure sank away. Only a “sheet-metal cover” supposedly remained, long treasured by the family as a keepsake. There was also buried treasure at the magistrate’s house in Korouhev: “They put the money for a black bull on top, but forgot to add a picture of the Virgin Mary. Later, people tried to dig up the treasure. They were interrupted by a shout: ‘Come and look, goats are pulling a load of hay!’ The diggers went outside, and meanwhile the treasure disappeared. The goat cart was merely a deception by the Devil,” writes Jaroslav Vorlíček of Polička, a regional collector of legends.