How the plague was born

Како се родила чумата

Before there was plague on earth, there was a king in a land across the nine seas where it was always summer. This king was the most evil man in the world, he did hundreds of evil things to his peasants; he did whatever he felt like doing. The greatest evil that he committed was this: he would dishonor whatever woman he saw. It's even shameful to say how he dishonored them.

A certain poor woman had a daughter. Both the woman and the daughter were very religious. One day the king saw the woman as she was leaving church with her daughter, and he sent people to bring the poor woman's daughter to him, so he could rape her. The king's people went and took the girl from the poor woman, and they brought her to the king. No sooner had they brought her to the king, than he wanted to rape her. However, since the girl was exceedingly honorable, she would not give in to him at all. When the king realized that the girl would rather die than yield to him, he sent her to be tortured; she was either to submit to the king's desire, or die. Finally, the girl died from the torture, and she hadn't yielded. Well, after the girl died the damned king raped her, so that he would have it his way, and locked her up in the basement. At that time some other king had begun a war, so he gathered all the soldiers he had, and ran off to war. However, from all the evil he had done, the Lord wouldn't help him at all, and all his soldiers were killed and half of his land was taken. Nine months later he returned to his palace, ashamed, like no one else in the world. Despite all the trouble that had befallen him, again he couldn't resist doing evil. Half his peasants had been destroyed by his evilness. One day he thought to go and see the girl whom he had raped after she had died, and whom he had locked up in the basement. He went into the basement, he looked at the girl: she hadn't decomposed at all, she was stretched out as if she were sleeping, but there was a swelling in her heart, and something moved as if it were alive. He stopped to see what it was that was moving in the girl's heart. Finally, because he hated her, he kicked her in the heart with all his strength, and immediately the plague was born of the dead girl, and it stood on its feet and said to the king:

"I've been engendered by an evil father and born from a dead mother. Because of that, I will defile and kill in his hidden places whomever I see. I've seen you for the first time, father, and I will defile you, so that you'll die immediately. Now you'll get your reward for what you've done."

That is what the plague said, it defiled the king, its father, and the king died within the hour. After it killed its father, the plague went out of the basement, and whenever it saw someone, it defiled him and smote him, and then it killed him. At that time, they saw the plague openly, even recognized it. They couldn't get away from it at all, no one could get away from it. It killed people very easily. It killed and killed, until it had killed off all the evil people, and when only the honest ones were left it went to another land and began killing there. For this was the will of God; the plague went into every land and struck people down: many hundreds, even thousands of men and women a day, so that the people cried out: "God damn the soul of him who is the cause and who created the plague!"

And as the old people say: "One acts, thousands die." In the days when the plague was raging violently, it even stood right in front of the people. As soon as they saw it, realizing that it would kill all of them, they fled and ran to the mountains, the valleys, in order to hide from it. But the plague found the evil people even there and struck them down. It changed itself into a woman, a cat, a lamb, and other things.