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In the Arabian chronicles it was mentioned as the Forest of the Thousandfold
- where the fierce being of the pagan's worship reigned: the Slavic and Ugric godlike creature Tharapithia, who
could not endure the light of the sun eluding it by tunnelling deep under the roots of the oaks. Old tales spoke
of the German raiders cutting down a small portion of the forest down by the seaside, as for revenge to the natives,
who had looted and destroyed the newly built chapels, which were in their mind too close to the groves that they
held sacred. The old tales do not explain the way the armour-clad and blessed warriors were slain and ripped to
pieces by something that had no natural position in the perpetum mobile we call Life. But they do tell that the
entity was not pleased with the roots of the mighty oaks drying up and dying, so It could no longer suck on them
for nourishment.
Who knows? There were some men who used to go around and collect tales of old and folklore from the peasants that
had been slaves for the German folk for hundreds of years. The dark age of Europe, however, was ending and drawing
to a blossoming nigh. The rigid and creaking hinges of the chambers of justful torture, in which men did terrible
things to other men in the name of the God of all Men, and the central power of Rome, weakened before the ongoing
march of sciences. Books, that defied and questioned everything told to the writers by the legal distributors of
faith were no longer burn as heresies - wisdom spread, although not all books that should have seen the light of
day did. But the renaissance gave birth to itself and to the basics of democracy, of which, of course no great
nation wished to fall behind of and defy.
After my country became relatively free of slavery, educated men started to roam the land, spurring the young of
the land to learn, to collect their cultural heritage, that was long lost between the longswords of the conquering
Christians. Then, in the midst of the first fresh breaths of invigorating freedom, a severe blow came to the cultural
societies of folklore, when an old and distinguished man was found perished - or what was left of him.
He had went out to help preserving a heritage, had went in search for older folk in the more mountainous regions
of the land. Some farms were untouched by any baron or lord for their scatteredness, their inhabitants shunned
for their queerness and the roads leading to them were as unlightened as the centuries that had blinded them.
He had gone out never to come back again - not entirely on his own, that is. It had been a stormy night, when the
howls and the nightly noises were carried well in the wind and where, between a blink of an eye and a bolt of lightning
striking downwards, a keener of eye could witness with his eyesight strange people walking slowly beneath the trees,
men in crude leather armorings and faces covered with wild beards, who disappeared whenever the electric storm
pulled back its shocking tentacles.
A knock on the door of his son, who had now found a wife, and that was all that was left of the stranger who quickly
ran into the woods, after leaving the body he, or possibly she, had been carrying to their doorstep. The son picking
up the corpse of his father was my grandfather.
Would it take a death of a parent who dealt in collecting legends and traditions to turn the son into a rationalizing,
educated doubter and arm him with atheism and a view of the world through the clear window of materialism? Will
the experience harden his heart against all sorts of claims of the unexplained and out of the ordinary?
Maybe it was the fact that my grandfather turned skeptical of all the things olden folk whispered in the twilight
of their rooms and even skeptical before the power of the repelling sign of the Cross? I could not explain his
passed on attitude towards occultism and therefore the doubtful and scoffing too about the three standing stones
in the horizontal depths of the forest. Of the subject my grand grandfather was collecting information on and how
could native stories become fatal to him, I do not know to this day, and neither do I care. The past is made not
to be repeated and mistakes are made for making.
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