Lady Midday
At harvest time in the Slavic countryside, people said a woman in white walks the fields at noon. If she stops you, you must answer her riddles.
What was reported
Polednice, Lady Midday, is a spirit of the fields in Czech, Polish and other Slavic folklore. She appears in the heat of summer at noon, as a tall woman in white, sometimes carrying a scythe, to those still working in the fields.
She stops them with questions or makes them talk with her until the hour is over. Anyone who can't answer, or tries to leave, is struck with a pain in the head, a fever or worse. Parents warned children not to wander into the cornfields at midday.
Explanations offered
She looks very much like a personification of sunstroke and heat exhaustion during harvest, when people worked through the hottest part of the day. The Czech poet Karel Jaromír Erben wrote a ballad about her, set to music by Antonín Dvořák.
- When
- Told for centuries
- Where
- As told across the Czech lands
- Witnesses
- Czech, Polish and Slavic folklore
- Status
- Legend
Famous cases are real, widely reported events. Each file sets out what witnesses said and the explanations that have been offered, without taking a side.
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