LEPA MARA (BEAUTIFUL MARA)

She is whiter than snow, fairer than a rose and has golden hair brighter than the sun. She wakes up in March when the thundermaker Perun makes the first thunders and lightning. Together with Perun's wife Perunika, she opens the heaven's gates in spring.

Spring is the time when her future husband and twin brother, the mythical Green George sets her free from a chest. She descends heaven, i.e. the golden bough of a mythical tree on St. George's day. She drinks dew and gets her strength from the wind and her joy from the smell of flowers. She is tall and thin, has rosy cheeks more beautiful than a rose, black eyes like the thorn bush and walks making small steps like a quail. She wears a white dress decorated with rose buds and stars, with golden circles embroidered on it, she has a string of pearls on her forhead and around her neck. She wears an apron and a cape of flowers, leaves and moonlight. She is a weaver, tailor, embroiderer, lacemaker, knitter, washer, cleaner, keeper of the home fire, baker, inn keeper, shepherdess, coachwoman, chaser of witches, medicine woman, poetess, bride, spring, moonlight, golden star, dawn, giver of light, love, hapiness and fertility. During the day she is a kind girl sitting on a high, dry/golden/strong/holy branch of a mythical tree in the middle of Paradise or a flowering meadow and at dusk or during the night and in winter she is a girl whose sweetheart left her and together with her mother she is represented as an unknown, poor, fickle, proud, evil, cruel or ageing resident and ruler of the west or underground empire. Her mother is the fire lightning (Mary, Perunika). The mother becomes baba Jaga/Luca/Roga (the Lithuanian Rugiuboba), she is poverty, hunger, waste land, the stepmother, misfortune, death, widow, old and ugly witch who can cast evil spells by looking at you with her evil eye. The mother is then known as Jagbaba, Jez(i)baba, M(a)rzana, Mokos, Vodanojka, Zim(n)a (''winter''), (Z)deracica (''devourer''). Her daughter Lepa Mara then becomes a stranger, a woman from Arabia, Budim, Greece, Turkey or a poor Cinderella, changeable moon or moonlight, a proud girl or cruel Mora(na). The name Morana comes from the indoeuropean stem ''mer'', meaning ''to crumble'' or ''to die''. Croatian words ''mrijeti'', ''umirati'', ''umarati'', ''smrt'', ''moriti'', ''zamor'', ''odmor'', ''mrak'', ''Mura'' all meaning death or tiredness (Mura is the name of a river in Croatia) are derived from it. The two of them are inconstant like the time of day or the seasons. Changing their form from fairies into witches, they represent the dual spirit of nature. They are godesses and representatives of darkness and light, white and black, clear and cloudy sky, spring and winter, plenitude and hunger, medicinal and poisonous things, health and sickness, youth and old age, love and hate, care and carelessness, morality and sinn, fortune and misfortune, good and evil.