Ravijojla

Ravijojla

Let me tell you about Ravijojla. In my land there are different kinds of fairies. There are mountain fairies, river fairies, thunder fairies, herbalist fairies… Ravijojla was all of that and more. She could walk on water, fly over the mountains and through thunderclouds and cure the sick with her medicine. She was stronger than ten men and she sang like an angel. Yet, history will remember her best by her hair. It was long and thick and beautiful. And strong. 

Once Ravijojla used her hair as a rope to help a group of villagers build a church.  On more than one occasion, she invited birds to nest in her hair. She got on well with all animals, big and small. Yet, her favourite was always her winged white mare, Bela. The two of them understood each other without words. They flew together through thunderclouds and brought rain to thirsty arid lands. Ravijojla was not afraid of thunder. In fact, she would hold a lightning on the top of her palm and she often used it as a weapon.

Ravijojla’s best friend Marko also had a horse. His horse’s name was Šarac, which means the colourful one. The four of them would often sit together around a fire and drink wine. By the end of the night Marko and his horse would be sleeping in drunken stupor, while Ravijojla and Bela would just get up and fly away. Wine had no effect on them.

Once Marko got in trouble with some people and almost got himself killed, but luckily Ravijojla was there to help him. She single-handedly fought an army of fifty men and killed them all. 

Once a handsome young king fell in love with Ravijojla. He became quite a nuisance and chased her on his horse. Ravijojla was on foot. She outran the king and his men and all their horses. When they almost caught up with her, she plucked a hair from her head and threw it onto the ground. A thick forest grew from her hair and the king and his men got lost in it. When they found their way out, they resumed the chase. Ravijojla started crying. Big tears fell from her cheeks and onto the ground. And, where her tears fell, fast rivers would form. Everybody drowned except the king. Ravijojla took pity on him and pulled him and his horse out at the last moment. Yet she decided to teach him a lesson, for his own good. She climbed onto the king’s horse willingly and she let him take her to his castle. The king’s castle was on the top of a mountain, high above the clouds. All night they rode and all night he talked to her, painting a beautiful picture of their life together. In the morning, when he arrived at his castle, he finally turned around to look at Ravijojla, but there was nobody behind him. 

GloPoWriMo Day 12  - a tall tale

In this "tall tale" I have mixed various Balkan legends about fairies and especially about Fairy Ravijojla, who appears in several Serbian epic poems, usually as a friend of Kraljević Marko (our national hero and a superhuman being in his own right). I have irreverently inverted the myth of Marko and ascribed some of his feats to Ravijojla. Throughout this blog post, I have used the images I have generated with the NightCafe AI.