Once upon a cold and frosty Christmas night – with the moon shining brightly, a man and his son were driving their cart close to the very midnight hour by the ‘Migļi’ household in the Sesava lands.
The father was lost in deep contemplation but the son who was, presently, holding the reins, suddenly started nudging his father – and the boy had been, indeed, left speechless in his great fright.
‘What is it that you want?’ asked the father.
The boy barely mumbled out a whisper, ‘Can you not see who is running beside the horse?’
Now the old man lifted his gaze and what he saw was a white, slender man clad in shirt alone and with his feet bare and his head uncovered in the wintry chill.
‘Who are you to be running plain naked in such cold without freezing to death?’ bellowed the father.
But the white man kept racing alongside their cart as before – issuing no answer at all.
‘Now, now, I shall teach you to better – with my horse whip!’
The father began lashing at the white man with the whip but each stroke landed upon the father’s own body.
Then the father stopped the horse and began crossing himself incessantly.
As soon as the ninth cross had been completed and thrown – the whip vanished out of the father’s hands and the white man, too, most mysteriously, dissipated into thin air.
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Latvian Folk Tales 