Legend "Legend of the owl"

Sarcophagus of the parents and their twelve small children are kept in the crypt of the Farny Church, the family tomb of the Radzivils in Nesvizh. The mother of all early dead children was Catherine, the wife of Mikhail Radzivil. The legend describes Catherine as a deeply unhappy woman, her children died one by one, not living until the age of adulthood. The suffering of the mother was so great that at night her soul did not know peace and left the body and flew to the dungeon where the children were buried. Through narrow lattices, the soul reached the small coffins and then turned into an owl. The bird was wailing terribly over each sarcophagus. Those who unexpectedly found themselves not far from the church and heard these cries, their hair stood and some even fainted.

One of the daughters of Princess Caroline lived to be sixteen years old and was preparing to marry. Mother believed that she had already crossed the line that threatened her life, but just in case Caroline was transferred to another castle. The girl began with trying wedding dresses. She was delivered the best dresses from Warsaw, Paris, Berlin. Local craftswomen sewed and embroidered wonderful clothes for the wedding. After the fittings, a young beauty in a white peignoir with flowing hair loved to read, sitting at the table in her room, through the high windows of which flowed the bright spring rays of the sun. Once Catherine at such a time went to her daughter and called out to her, Caroline was silent. Her head lay on the table on the unfolded book. It seemed that the girl fell asleep under the action of the sun”s rays. Mother walked over to the table and took her hand. She was cold. At Catherine”s cry, the servants came running, carried Carolina to the bed, but could not bring her to her senses.

Mother”s despair and grief were inconsolable. She ordered her daughter”s figure to be poured out full-length from wax and put at the table as she sat on the last morning of her short life. The similarity was so great that it seemed that now the girl would lift her head from the book, smile with red lips and throw herself into the arms of her mother. Time passed, Karolina”s friends forgot about her, the groom consoled with another woman, and only her mother’s heart remembered her daughter, even time could not heal the wounds.