Page:The Mythology of All Races Vol 3 (Celtic and Slavic).djvu/405

 CHAPTER VIII FIELD-SPIRITS N the fields there appears, usually at the time of harvest, the Poludnica, or Polednica ("Midday Spirit"). According to Bohemian tradition she has the appearance of an airy, white lady, or of an old woman who wanders about the fields at noon and haunts the dwellings of men. She also floats, amid violent gusts of wind, high up in the air; and whomsoever she touches will die a sudden death. Sometimes she is slight and slim like a girl twelve years old and has a whip in her hand with which she strikes any one who crosses her path, such a man being doomed to meet an early death.

She is peculiarly fond of ambushing women who have recently borne children and who go out into the street at midday. If a mother leaves her child alone in the fields at harvest-time, it may be stolen by a Poludnica, whence crying children are hushed by the threat that this spirit will come and carry them away.

In Moravia the Poludnica is represented as an old woman clad in a white gown and said to have horses' hoofs, an ugly face, slanting eyes, and dishevelled hair.

In Polish belief the Południca (Poludnioówka, Przypołudnica) manifests herself in the shape of a tall woman, dressed in a white robe reaching to her feet, and carrying a sharp sickle in her hand. During the summer she stays either in the fields or in the woods, giving chase to the people who work there. Frequently she propounds hard questions to them, and if they are unable to answer, she sends grievous maladies upon them. Sometimes she appears, during a storm, in cottages;