The Sleeping Knights of the Tatras

A poor shepherd from the mountains was searching one day for his strayed sheep high in the Tatras. By a rock face he met an old man with a long beard, who asked whether he would work a single day for good wages. The shepherd agreed.

The stranger touched the rock, and a hidden gate swung open. Together they descended into a vast cavern beneath the mountain, lit by a soft, cold light.

What the shepherd saw there took his breath away. Row upon row stood armoured knights, motionless, each with a hand on his sword and his head bowed as if asleep upon his horse. Neither dust nor time seemed to touch them.

«They are waiting,» said the old man. «When the land is in its greatest need, I shall wake them, and they will ride forth.» He set the shepherd to feed the horses and polish the armour, and at nightfall paid him with a handful of old gold.

The old man led the shepherd back to daylight and laid one condition upon him: he must never show anyone the way to the gate. Whoever came out of greed to disturb the army before the right time would drive the knights away forever.

The shepherd kept his word. He told of the sleepers beneath the mountain, but never where the gate was. And so they keep their vigil still in the Tatras, beneath the Giewont that rests like a reclining knight above Zakopane, until the day Poland truly needs them.