Sudice

Bread, salt and butter go down on a white cloth. Three chairs are drawn up to a table nobody in the house intends to sit at, and the candles are left burning past midnight. In the next room a woman has just given birth and has been put into a sleep so deep that shouting would not reach her. Whatever comes through the house tonight is not to be greeted. It is to be fed.

The Czechs called them Sudičky or Sudice, and the word has a courtroom inside it: sud, judgement. They are the judging women. Croatians say Sudjenice, Slovenians Sojenice, Bulgarians Sudženici, and where the name slides to Rodjenice, Rojenice or the Polish Rodzanice the root slides with it, from judging to giving birth. Bulgarian villages also knew them as Narŭčnici, from narok, a person’s allotted portion, and as Orisnici, lifted straight from the Greek word for those who set a boundary. In the Russian north they were the Udělnicy, the dispensers. Every one of those names is a job description.

They arrive dressed for either a wedding or a funeral and the accounts cannot agree which. Czech tradition makes them tall white maidens or mild old women, so slight of body that light seems to carry through them, their cheeks bloodless and their eyes bright enough to hold a person still. South Slavic accounts put them in white cloth with gold and silver at the throat, heads wrapped in a white kerchief, sometimes the whole face shrouded. Some say a glistening robe with stones set in the hair. Others say nothing finer than a wreath of woodland flowers. Each carries a lit candle, which is why on a clear moonlit night they can be made out at all, and why the flames go out the instant the last of them has spoken.

Seeing them is not lucky. Anyone who catches sight of the three is struck rigid with horror and cannot take a single step, and the household itself almost never does. The witness in these accounts is usually a guest sleeping over, or a beggar given a corner by the stove.

The work takes minutes. They lift the newborn away from its mother, set it down on the table, and settle three questions in order: how long it will live, whether it will be poor or rich, and how it will die. One spins the thread, one measures it, the third cuts. That third is the eldest and the strongest, and Bohemian belief often stopped pretending she was anything other than Death under a politer name. The first two may wish the child whatever they please. The last word stands.

Three is usual rather than fixed. The same tradition speaks of one, of four, five, seven or nine, with a queen at their head, and their pronouncements routinely contradict each other, which is rather the point: the order of speaking counts for more than the content. In some Czech districts they never came indoors at all, but stood outside the window or sat up on the roof and read the child’s future out of the stars.

Since the verdict could not be appealed, everything depended on hospitality. Croatians and Slovenians set out wax candles, wine, bread and salt on the night after a birth, and to forget was to hand the child a bad life. The Slovenes of Istria carried loaves up to the caves where the Rojenice were said to live and wedged them under stones at the entrance. Bulgarians cooked a full supper for the Orisnici and invited the relatives to eat it. In Bohemia the white cloth took bread, salt and butter, sometimes cheese and beer, and at the christening feast the remains of the meal were deliberately left where they lay. Neglect the table and the danger ran past poverty: they might take the child and leave something else in the cradle.

Where they came from is a question the sources answer sideways. The oldest written traces in the Slavic world are not of the Sudice but of Rod and the Rožanice, ancestral powers who received bread, cheese and honey in early Russian sources. Fate in that arrangement ran through a man’s forefathers and through his mother. The forefathers eventually fell out of the reckoning and the Rožanice were left holding all of it, which is what tends to happen to a belief that has to survive several centuries of official disapproval. The same shape shows up across the continent: the Roman Junones and the Scandinavian dísir both began as the dead and finished as dispensers of fortune.

The record is late. Belief in the Czech Sudičky is documented from the fifteenth century, and nearly everything known about them was gathered by folklorists in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, out of household custom rather than out of story. That gap is worth stating plainly, because the sixth-century historian Procopius reported that the Slavs of his day knew nothing of fate and denied outright that it had any hold on a person, promising sacrifices instead when war or sickness came close. Whatever the Sudice were then, they were not yet inevitable.

They did not stay in the cottage. The three women at the cradle walked into the fairy tale more or less unaltered, becoming the visitors at a christening whose gifts cannot be given back, and in 1895 Jaroslav Vrchlický handed them a book of poems with a section apiece, Klotho, Lachesis, Atropos. The Greek names sit awkwardly on them. Nobody in a Bohemian village was thinking about Thessaly.

What they can do is narrow and absolute. They cannot be reasoned with, bribed after the fact, or outrun, and no tale exists in which someone talks them out of a verdict. Their authority runs one way only, from the table to the grave, and it covers precisely the three things a farming household actually feared: a short life, a poor one, and an ugly end. Their limits are just as real. They are compelled to come, at every birth, invited or not. They can be swayed before they speak, which is the entire logic of the loaves and the candles and the chairs nobody sits in. They work by seniority and cannot cut in ahead of one another. They can be seen, and a thing that can be seen can be caught out. And a portion handed over at birth still has to be lived: the Russians personified that portion as Dolya, a shabbily dressed woman behind the stove who either labours for you unseen or sleeps through your entire life, while the Serbs made her Sreča, spinning gold thread for whoever she favours. Dolya cannot be sold, abandoned in a wood, or drowned. The Sudice never had a temple, a myth cycle, or one named individual anyone can point to. They had a table, laid every time, in case.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who are the Sudice in Slavic mythology?

The Sudice are the fate-women of Slavic folk belief, usually three, who appear at a newborn’s cradle within days of its birth and pronounce its destiny. Their name comes from the Slavic word sud, meaning judgement or court, so they are literally the judging women. They are known as Sudičky in Czech, Sudjenice in Croatian, Sojenice or Rojenice in Slovenian, and Sudženici, Narŭčnici or Orisnici in Bulgarian.

What do the Sudice decide about a child?

The Sudice settle three things: how long the child will live, whether it will be poor or rich, and the manner of its death. One of them spins the thread of the life, a second measures it, and the third cuts it. The third is the eldest and most powerful, and in Bohemian belief she was frequently identified with Death herself.

Can the fate given by the Sudice be changed?

No. The Sudice can be influenced before they speak but never after, and the verdict of the last one to pronounce is final and overrides the others. This is why households laid a table for them on the night after a birth, with bread, salt, candles and wine, hoping to sway the judgement while it was still open.

What did people leave out for the Sudice?

Croatians and Slovenians set wax candles, wine, bread and salt on a table in the room where the mother lay. In Bohemia the offering was bread, salt and butter on a white cloth, sometimes with cheese and beer, and the remains of the christening feast were left uncleared. Slovenes in Istria carried loaves to the caves where the Rojenice were believed to live and placed them under stones at the entrance.

What did the Sudice look like?

The Sudice appear as tall women in white, either young and so slight that light seems to pass through them or as mild old women, with white kerchiefs or veils covering their heads and sometimes their faces. South Slavic accounts add gold and silver ornaments at the throat, and some traditions give them glistening robes and jewelled hair while others describe only a wreath of woodland flowers. Each carries a burning candle, which goes out once the last of them has spoken.

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