wicked bull, of whom stalwart boys were afraid, obeyed when Bára shook her fist at him.
When Jacob wished to take the herd out to wade or to drive them across the river he would place Bára on the back of one of the cows and say, “Hold on!” He himself would swim across after the herd. Once Bára was not holding tight and slipped off into the water. Lišaj pulled her out by the skirt and her father gave her a good scolding. She asked her father then what a person must do in order to swim. Her father showed her how to move arms and legs, and Bára remembered it and tried to hold herself above the water until she learned how to swim. She enjoyed swimming so much that in the summertime both morning and evening she would go in bathing and was able not only to keep her head above water, but to swim with her head under water. However, no one beside her father knew of her ability in this respect. From dawn until ten o’clock at night there was not a time when Bára had not gone in swimming, yet she had never seen the “water-man,” and therefore she had no faith in his existence nor did she fear the water.
In broad midday and also at full midnight Bára had been out under the clear skies and had seen neither noon nor night specters. In the summer she liked to sleep in the stall beside the open dormer window, and yet nothing unusual had ever appeared before her to frighten her.
Once when she was out herding and was lying under
