Episode 49 – Dead and Buried – Myths Your Teacher Hated

Episode 49 Show Notes

Source: Serbian Folklore

This week on MYTH, we’ll descend into a surprisingly grisly Serbian love story. You’ll see that the dead are restless, that rivers can be murder, and that kings can’t be trusted with magical swords. Then, in Gods and Monsters, you’ll find out why you should be very, very afraid of hearing ‘boo’ from the shadows. This is the Myths Your Teacher Hated podcast, where I tell the stories of cultures from around the world in all of their original, bloody, uncensored glory. Modern tellings of these stories have become dry and dusty, but I’ll be trying to breathe new life into them. This is Episode 49, “Dead and Buried”. As always, this episode is not safe for work.
The votes are in and this year’s Halloween special is an incredibly creepy Slavic folk tale. All of the sources for this story that I could find linked back to a collection of tales compiled by A. H. Wratislaw in 1890, so that’s the version we’ll be using here. So sit back, turn down the lights, and let’s get a little spooky. And you might not want to think too hard about what might lie beneath you, deep in the cold, dark earth…
Once, long ago, a man was walking down the empty highway into town one night. He was a scholar, which paid about as much then as it does now, so the scholar was a poor man (which is why he trodding the highway on his aching feet instead of on the back of a horse or in a carriage). As he approached the town, he saw something lying abandoned in the road in the deep shadows of the thick stone wall separating civilization from the dangerous wilderness beyond. He first thought it a collection of old rags, but as he drew near, he saw that the thing in the road was a corpse.
It was a wretched, pitiful thing, gaunt and battered, though the scholar could not begin to guess what was the result of the hard life the poor bastard must have lived, what was the work of rot and decay, and what was the abuse of careless feet and malicious sticks. The poor scholar could almost imagine his own face in the yellow bone that had torn through the thin, rotten skin, and he felt pity for this lost, unloved soul. He’d only had enough left in his purse to buy him a few hot meals and a few nights out of the biting cold of the night air, but he couldn’t bring himself to ignore the dead the way everyone else had done, so he went into town and spent what little money he had to arrange for a proper burial.
Unsurprisingly, no one showed up to pay their respects as the cheap pine box was lowered into the cold, hungry earth, so the poor scholar stayed to mourn the forgotten man. He prayed over the heaped earth of the fresh grave and, having no money left for a room, headed back out into the night. There was a small wood nearby, comprised mostly of oak trees, and the scholar thought that this might be his best bet for making some crude shelter and a fire to survive the night’s chill.
He shivered from the cold but, eventually, sleep found him. He had vague nightmares, but nothing he could recall upon waking, and he chalked it up to sleeping rough. Stretching, the scholar sat up and heard something clink as he moved. Rubbing the sleep from his eyes, he saw that it was a large purse and, upon opening it, he was shocked and amazed to find it full of gold! He murmured a grateful prayer to whatever good fortune had blessed him, tied the purse to his belt, and set out on the road once more.
Before long, he came to the banks of a swift river, far too large for him to cross on foot. Fortunately, not far upstream, he found a ferry that agreed to take him across for a fee. It was a pretty expensive ride but, flush with his recent windfall, the scholar happily agreed to the price without bargaining. He climbed onto the boat with the two ferrymen and settled into his seat. As the neared they halfway point, the boat hit rough waters, throwing the scholar roughly into the bottom of the boat. He felt strong hands grip his arms tightly, and he began to thank the men for their help, but firm became painful became agony. He was forced roughly against the gunwale, wood digging into his ribs until he feared they might break, and he felt a heavy blow on the back of his skull, dazing him. Suddenly, the world fell away and he was flying. No, he was falling. He splashed into the icy river and came up spluttering, desperately trying to keep his head above the roaring water. He could just see the two men laughing in their boat and holding up the purse of gold he thought had been his salvation and realized that it had been his doom. The two ferrymen, greedy and merciless, had robbed him and thrown him in the river to drown.
The poor scholar fought against the raging, churning water, but he wasn’t a very strong swimmer and the icy water leached the strength from his limbs. He flailed desperately, hopelessly, and his hand struck something. It felt like a wooden branch, and the scholar clutched it, knuckles white with the ferocity of his grip. Buoyed on this unexpected wooden savior, the scholar was able to make his way to the riverbank, coughing and puking, but alive.
He felt something dragging behind him as he crawled out of the water, and he realized he was still clinging to the branch. Only, it wasn’t a branch, it was a human limb. The skin was mottled a pale rotten yellow and a moldy green, and the scholar knew that the arm that had saved him was very, very dead. His eyes followed up the arm of the corpse to the dead body proper, who was grinning at him in a way that the scholar didn’t like at all (but maybe that was just because having a rotting corpse grin at you was never pleasant). He quickly pulled his hand away, expecting the body to collapse to the earth, being, you know, fucking dead, but it didn’t. Instead, it blinked at him, opened its mouth, and spoke.
“You gave me peace when no one else would. I watched as asshole after asshole stepped on my flesh, grinding my corpse into the mud, and not one bothered to try and help. Except you. I am grateful for your kindness, stranger, and I will repay your kindness by teaching you a forbidden knowledge.” Despite himself, the scholar leaned forward at the promise of learning. “I will teach you a spell to transform yourself into a crow, a hare, or a deer.” It was a deceptively simple thing to do, once he knew the trick of it, and the scholar had soon mastered the spell, freeing the spirit of the man he had buried to pass on.
As is often the case with folk tales, the scholar set out and did jack shit with his new gift. Instead, he found employment as an archer in the court of a nearby king, who was widely regarded as mighty. Now, this king had a beautiful daughter, because of course he did, and he didn’t trust her to make decisions about her own life and body, because of course he didn’t. To “protect” her, the king had her kept on an inaccessible island off the coast of the kingdom all alone. The story doesn’t say how she managed to get food and water on this lonely spit of land, but let’s just assume they had some magic thingamabob and not worry about it. The closest thing that this lonely princess had for a companion was a magic sword. Not a talking sword, unfortunately, but one that could give whomever wielded it the strength to vanquish any army. Basically, it was the source of all the stories of the king’s might.
I said that the king was mighty, but I definitely didn’t say he was wise. He’d had his daughter locked up in a copper castle in a place that not even he could get to, along with the only thing that could keep his land safe from an invading army if one should decide to test the stories of the king’s might. And wouldn’t you know it, some upstart general with a big fucking army decided to do exactly that.
It was only after he received word that a massive army, one far too large for his small force to handle, was headed his way that he realized the flaw in hiding the sword so thoroughly. Being a noble in a folk tale, he naturally sent out a proclamation throughout the kingdom offering his daughter’s hand in marriage and the right to be the next king to whomever could retreive the magic sword, please and thank you.
The king’s subjects were by and larger smarter than he was, and so none of them were willing to risk certain death to marry a princess none of them had ever seen and ask for a crown that might have the king deciding to cut off their heads and remove a threat instead. Well, almost none of them. As you’ve almost certainly guessed, the scholar slash archer decided that this was the perfect opportunity for him to move up in the world (never mind the fact that the last time he had good fortune, it nearly got him killed). He presented himself to the king and offered to retrieve the sword after getting a letter to show the princess that he was, in fact, there on her father’s behalf and not some random thief (which was good thinking on his part and definitely something the king had never thought of).
The people were amazed that this humble archer thought he could pull this incredible feat off, but the king was just glad to have someone to fix his fuck up for him, so off he went. Despite his time in armed service to the king, the scholar was a very naive, trusting man, and so he never thought to check if he was being followed as he set out. Another archer from the court was tracking his movements through the forest. He was a shifty, unscrupulous man, and he was planning villainous plans to let the archer do the dirty work, slit his throat, and then take the princess and the kingdom as his own.
Once he was in the forest and away from prying eyes (or so he thought, for he hadn’t bothered to actually check), the scholar transformed himself into a hare to more easily make his way through the thick underbrush, and then into a deer to more quickly reach the shore. The asshole archer stood in the forest, mouth agape, as he watched his fellow melt into a small fuzzy animal and dash off into the trees.
Having lost the pursuer he didn’t even know was there, the scholar made his way down to the copper castle off the coast. In his animal form, it didn’t take him terribly long to reach the isolated place. His fur melted off to be replaced by feathers, and a crow took wing out over the open ocean. The castle might be completely unreachable by boat, but it was no obstacle by air since everyone knew that people couldn’t fly (unless they made friends with a dead man, at least). Soon, the scholar found himself standing in the courtyard of the copper castle.
He marched up to the castle doors and knocked politely. It simply wouldn’t do to barge in on the princess in her home when she thought she was alone. Hearing the unmistakable but impossible sound of someone else on her island, she rushed to meet them. The princess was even more beautiful than the stories had said, and the scholar knew she had his heart. Fortunately for him, her complete and utter isolation meant that he in turn was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen in her life, and she fell in love with him hard. I mean, he was literally the only person she had seen in over a decade, so of course she fancied him.
“Okay, hi, nice to meet you, polite bullshit, blah blah blah. How did you get here? This place is supposed to be impossible to reach!” Being a scholar, he appreciated her naked curiosity and so he answered her with complete honesty, telling her about the spell he knew to change forms. She may have spent her entire life completely alone, but she still knew that what he was saying should be impossible, but then, so should standing here in this castle with her, so she figured her only move was to ask him for a demonstration, which he happily obliged.
He changed first into the graceful deer and pranced merrily around, delighting the princess. She cooed and clapped at his mincing steps and, somehow without his noticing, managed to pluck a small tuft of hair from the deer’s back. Why she wanted it, I don’t know and the story doesn’t say. Maybe she’d just gone a little stir crazy in her isolation and wanted proof for later that it was real.
Next, he shifted into the adorable little bunny and looked up at her with his big bunny eyes, head cocked to the side, ears and nose twitching, and she fawned even harder over this version of the scholar than she had the deer. Again, she managed to sneak a tuft of hair from the bunny’s back without him noticing. Because these things always come in threes, he then changed into the crow and soared around the courtyard and she somehow managed to pluck several feathers from his wings as he sailed by without his noticing.
Thus having proven himself both honorable and powerful, the princess immediately agreed to honor her father’s request for the magic sword in the letter the scholar carried and sat down to write a response to her father. The young scholar was more than happy to deliver her letter when he returned, sword in hand, to obtain royal permission to return and free her. For once, the princess in the story was looking forward to this arranged marriage every bit as much as the humble commoner was.
With the magic sword and his soon to be fiance’s letter to her father secured, the scholar turned back into the crow and winged his way across the sea. Now, I personally think it would have made more sense for him to have flown the whole way home, but he apparently preferred to be on terra firma, so he landed on the shore and transformed back into the deer for the long run through the woods.
As he drew close to the kingdom, he changed once more into the hare for the final race towards home. He took one short hop before agony exploded in his ribs. The little hare collapsed to the earth, twitching and screaming a high bunny scream, as his life’s blood poured out of him. His world grew dark and cold, but he could still make out the feathered shaft of an arrow jutting from his side and the face of his fellow archer, a man he recognized but didn’t know terribly well. That man’s cruel smile was the last thing the scholar saw before he died.
You see, the archer, having lost his quarry, reasoned that the scholar would almost certainly come back this way if he were successful, so all he had to do was wait here and ambush the man/deer/bunny when he returned. He’d seen the scholar’s trick of changing form into a hare already, so he was watching for both the man and the beast to strike him down. When he saw the deer morph into the hare, he knew he had his quarry and let fly. His victim dead, the archer left the body to rot where it lay and collected the letter and the sword (which raises the question of how exactly the rabbit was carrying them if they hadn’t been magically turned into part of his body, but alas, I have no answer for you).
The archer went directly to the king and presented him with the sword and the letter addressed to the king, demanding the fulfilment of his promise. The king was overjoyed to have been saved from his incredible blunder (and I can only guess that the archer didn’t know the power of the sword, or he almost certainly would have kept it himself). Promising the cruel archer that he would marry his daughter just as soon as he took care of the minor annoyance of the army marching for his head, the king mounted his horse, sword of victory in hand, and rode for the front.
He soon came to where the army was arrayed for battle against his own meager forces, and the king rode boldly out past the lines, just short of arrow range, and drew his sword. He swung the blade four times, once towards each of the four cardinal directions, and with each swing, great swaths of his foes felt it. Their flesh opened under the icy razor of unseen steel, spraying their blood like fountains and spilling their intestines on the grounds in long, glistening gray ropes that they tried desperately and in vain to shove back inside their gaping wounds. The small number that survived that awful magical blade threw down their arms and got the fuck out of dodge as fast as their legs could carry them, trampling their dead and any poor souls unlucky enough to trip with an equal lack of concern.
The king marched home again at the head of his victorious army and sent a messenger for his daughter. This is a massive plot hole, because the whole reason they needed a patsy in the first place was because no one could get inside the copper castle on its forlorn island, but that somehow isn’t a problem now and I have no idea why. I’m going to pretend that there was some magic in the castle that was bound with the sword and was therefore broken when the scholar removed it, but that’s pure invention on my part. It’s a frustrating element of this story.
A great feast was prepared to celebrate both the king’s victory and his daughter’s forthcoming nuptials. She wouldn’t be married tonight, since the king needed time to put together an event worthy of the marriage of his daughter to a great hero. Musicians filled the palace with song and light filled every inch of the palace as the sun began to set. Everyone was drinking and celebrating their great joy, except for the princess. She had no idea who this asshole she was being married off to was, but it sure as shit wasn’t the gentle young scholar who had stolen her heart. Her father had proved himself to be a passionately stupid man, and she feared what might happen to her if she dared to question him about who this supposed savior of the kingdom was, since he wasn’t the one who had actually completed the quest, so she sat alone, drowning in grief and loss. When she was alone, she would weep for the man she was sure her soon-to-be husband must have murdered.
This is where you’re hoping I’ll tell you that some good witch wandered along and saved the poor scholar, or that it was just a flesh wound, right? Well, I’m not going to tell you that. The little rabbit was dead, stiff, and cold, and his body had already begun to rot. What’s more, the scholar’s anger and sorrow anchored him to this world, and his shade clung to the decaying corpse of the rabbit. He lay there, alone and forgotten, a ghost trapped in the stinking skin of a dead rabbit for a full year without seeing another soul. One night, that finally changed.
The ghost was lying there on the forest floor as he usually was now, having given up on pretty much everything but his love of the princess, his grief at losing the chance to be with her, and his regret over the pain he must have caused her. The forest was as silent as ever, but he saw the flicker of motion from the corner of his eye and sat up. Standing there beside him was a familiar spirit. The ghost of the man he had buried shook his head sadly. “Why are you lying here, scholar? The princess is to be wed tomorrow, unless you stop her.”
The scholar’s ghost laughed ruefully. “And what exactly am I supposed to do, spirit? I’m as dead as you!” The buried man went still then, his eyes closed, and the scholar felt something shift. All at once, the world crashed down on his senses, suddenly real in a way it hadn’t been since he died. The scholar gaped at himself, warm and human and alive again. He started to ask the spirit how he had managed such an incredible thing, but the shade cut him off. “There’s no time! Hurry to the castle and stop your beloved from marrying the wrong man! She will surely recognize your face when she sees you again, but beware, for the man who murdered you will also know it.” Thanking the spirit profusely for his aid, the young scholar, once more among the living, hurried off towards the city.
It was a long way, and the scholar was still getting used to having a body again, so he arrived late the next day. He went straight to the castle and burst into the great hall, where the wedding feast was in full swing. Everyone stopped and turned to look at this ghastly intruder (who although very much alive again, was still in clothes that his corpse had been lying in for a year), and the room went deathly quiet. The silence was broken by the sound of the princess gasping in shock, weeping for joy, and rushing from the side of her new husband to embrace the ghoulish stranger. The groom stood, clearly intending to ask what the fuck this guy thought he was doing with his wife, when the stranger met his gaze. He dropped bonelessly back into his chair, skin turning pale tinged with a sickly green as he realized who this man was.
The scholar announced to the room that the groom was a murderer and a liar, and it was he who had actually retrieved the sword from the castle by changing his form. The king realized that he had never actually bothered to wonder how the archer had managed the deed, let alone ask him, but the scholar didn’t pause to give him time. He told the crowd that he could prove it, and promptly shifted into his deer form. The princess, who had taken to carrying the bits of fur she had taken from the beasts as the only thing she had of her lost love, placed the fur in the bald patch on the deer’s back. The crowd gasped as one as the fur somehow grew back into the spot, becoming again one solid pelt. Then, he changed to the hare, and the princess replaced the second piece of fur. Finally, he changed into the crow, and there was a collective ‘oh’ as everyone figured out how he had gotten into the copper castle. Again, the feathers fit the bald spot and grew back. After one quick pass around the room, the scholar landed next to the princess and returned to human form.
As the princess well knew, her father was a man of passion, and he didn’t take kindly to being lied to, or to having the true hero murdered by a coward. He ordered the archer seized and, wasting no time on niceties like a trial, ordered four strong horses brought out of the stable. The archer was lashed to the horses, each limb firmly tied to the saddle of a different horse, and then all four were whipped to make them charge off in four different directions. The man screamed, high and awful, as his very body was ripped into four bloody, shaking pieces by the horses and he died with the sight of his own entrails dragging out behind him.
Everyone thought this brutal execution made for a fine bit of entertainment, and so they all went back inside and watched as the scholar was married off to the princess then and there. Both of them were incredibly happy to be together at last, and the assembled guests toasted their health and long life as they kissed for the first time.
That’s kind of a sweet happy ending (if you ignore all of the brutality, at least). It’s an interesting take on the whole trope of the brave hero setting out to rescue the princess trapped in a castle. There are some plot holes big enough to ride a horse through, but that doesn’t really make the story any less entertaining (though I do still wonder if the buried man’s spirit spent it’s afterlife following the scholar and his wife around, watching them. He did seem to keep popping up at the most opportune times). It’s a mystery that will never be solved, though, so it’s time to turn to Gods and Monsters. This is a segment where I get into a little more detail about the personalities and history of one of the gods or monsters from this week’s pantheon that was not discussed in the main story. This week’s monster is the bauk.
Fear of the dark is one of humanity’s oldest fears and, according to Serbian folklore, the bauk is a major part of the reason why. Very little is known about the elusive creature. It’s name is basically an onomatopoeia of the word ‘Bau!’, a Serbian word that basically means boo! It’s name is literally just the sound of being scared.
The bauk is a secretive beast, lurking in the shadows and the dark places of the world, such as caves, holes, and abandoned buildings. It hunts by surprise, waiting until an unlucky victim wanders too close to its hiding spot. In that moment, the bauk will explode from the darkness in a mass of grasping claws and rending teeth, hungry for blood. If you’re lucky, it will kill and eat your quickly. More often though, it drags its victims into the shadows to devour slowly and painfully.
On the plus side, the reason that it has to wait in ambush is because it is a clumsy creature with an awkward gait, so you might have a chance to escape if you can avoid its initial violent rush. Also, the bauk is easily confused and frightened by bright lights and loud noises, but again, that only works if you’re prepared and can avoid being dragged screaming into the waiting darkness before you can find your light. It is said that its eyes glow in the darkness, which may be your only warning that you’re in mortal peril.
Experts suspect that the bauk is derived from a corrupted memory of very real and very deadly bears. In much of Serbia, bears were already regionally extinct, and the stories of the huge, lumbering, deadly mass of fur and claws survived only in legends. Interestingly, its name was used as a stand-in for several literary monsters, including the goblins of the works of J.R.R. Tolkein, the Imp of George R. R. Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire series, and the boggart from J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series. So if you find yourself in Serbia after the sun goes down, make sure you walk carefully and bring a bright light with you if you don’t want to meet a sudden, bloody end in the grinning darkness.
That’s it for this episode of Myths Your Teacher Hated. Keep up with new episodes on our Facebook page, on iTunes, on Stitcher, on TuneIn, and on Spotify, or you can follow us on Twitter as @HardcoreMyth and on Instagram as Myths Your Teacher Hated Pod. You can also find news and episodes on our website at myths your teacher hated dot com. If you like what you’ve heard, I’d appreciate a review on iTunes. These reviews really help increase the show’s standing and let more people know it exists. If you have any questions, any gods or monsters you’d want to learn about, or any ideas for future stories that you’d like to hear, feel free to drop me a line. I’m trying to pull as much material from as many different cultures as possible, but there are all sorts of stories I’ve never heard, so suggestions are appreciated. The theme music is by Tiny Cheese Puff, whom you can find on fiverr.com.
Next time, we’ll head to the tropics for our first Filipino story! You’ll see that gods make shitty dads the world over, that you shouldn’t let kids get drunk, and that your perfect match is just a bean away. Then, in Gods and Monsters, we’ll discover a terrifying horror lurking outside the bedchambers of virgins and pregnant women. That’s all for now. Thanks for listening.