First you have to meet Duja baba. Duja baba was a giant woman that lived long time ago on a hill called Senica. She was so big she could stand with one feet on Senica and the other one on Logarsce. She washed her laundry in the Baca river.
In my opinion human fear made her a bit bigger as her actual size. I believe she was a giantess, but had somewhere between three and four meters in height. Local people avoided her, and she didn’t want to meet them either. She slept in a cave that still exists. We could visit it on one of our trekks.
Her name Duja baba means wild and tall woman. Occasionally she caught a rabbit and fried it on the open fire. She loved young sheep too. Locals had sheep herds all over Senica hill and they were pretty mad when some of them disappeared.
Well one day a deer came to see Duja baba. She was expecting offspring. She was affraid of an old fox that kept following her and threatened her he would kill her youngster. So the doe came to see her, the giantess, who was even more fearsome as a fox and asked her for help.
“Help me, the old fox finds me everywhere. There isn’t a spot where I could hide and give birth safely,” she asked Duja baba.
Duja baba scratched her hairy head.
“You know that I like young meat too, don’t you,” Duja baba was sceptical. She scratched her hairy head a bit more, so the brain could find the solution.
“Under my cave, on a steep hillside, there is a ledge. I can’t reach the ledge nor does the fox. You can move over rocks, you will manage to get there. You will be safe there until your baby gets too playful. Then it will get dangerous for him as well.”
The doe gratefully rubbed herself against the giant lady and hopped away into the forest. When her time came, she searched for the ledge. She spent there a day and a half and gave birth to a tiny baby deer, little and handsome boy. Both stayed another day and a half and then baby was big enough to walk beside her. They left the hideout in a misty foggy morning.
(Translation: Petra Rovšček)
