Sorbian legends - Germany / Federal Republic of Germany 1991 - 100 Pfennig

The midday woman represents the most clearly drawn shape of the natural forces acting in field and forest. In contrast to Aquarius, the midday woman was not subject to any "physical" transformations. In the imagination of the people she was mostly an ugly woman dressed in white with a sickle in her hand. In different areas of Lusatia she was called a sickle-footed woman. The high time of the midday woman was the harvest season of the flax. Especially on the barren and sandy soils of the Mittellausitz, the fields around Schleife, Rohne and Nochten, flax was one of the most important field crops. Women and girls who stayed in the field at lunchtime were surprised by the midday woman. A sample connected with the survival had to be passed. For a whole hour, those involved had a story to tell, without interruption, mostly about the care and processing of the flax. But when the women and girls ran out of cloth, the midday woman with a sickle struck her head. Our Nochtenerin could outwit the midday woman with her imagination and rhetoric. Anyone who had once overcome the midday woman left her alone. In the motif "Midday Wife and Nochtenerin", which was also borrowed from Martin Nowak-Neumann, we see the midday woman in a field in Nochten (circle white water) in action. An interesting social aspect of the interpretation of the midday woman has been handed down to us from the area around Muskau. Here the midday woman appeared at the cutters in the field, making sure that servants and maids could rest at lunchtime. But if the bailiffs and peasants also drove people over at lunchtime, they simply overturned the impellers. The midday woman is unknown in this form in the German saga. There are similar figures among Czechs, Poles, Slovaks and Russians. That also applies to Aquarius. (Text: Jan Kosk, Bautzen)