Welcome to Noeple Blood, a production of I Heart Radio and Grim and Mild from

Aaron Manky, listener discretion advised.

There's a book by the 19th century check writer, Eloise Hirasak, that any

listeners who happen to grow up in a Czech school system might remember. Old Czech

legends is a collection of stories from a rich cultural history, some dating

back to the days of Bohemia, one of the earliest incarnations of a Czech state.

One of the tales in the book details how the Czech people first found their way to

their homeland, while other stories talk of brutal wars or feats of bravery.

There is one legend that stands out from the rest though, about a princess,

about magic, prophecy and eventually an uprising by women against men. While

there is no historical evidence to prove that any of these legends are

anything more than just that, legends, the story of LeBouche, the prophetic

pagan princess who founded Prague strongly persists in the Czech cultural

imagination. I'm Dana Schwartz and this is Noeple Blood.

Like any legend, LeBouche's differs based on who's telling it and when they're

doing so. Hirasak's version of events is the most popular so it's the one

that will default to. He was writing during the Czech national revival in the 19th

century. A cultural movement dedicated to the Czech language and national

identity during a time of Germanization spearheaded by the Habsburgs. The

Kingdom of Bohemia, known today as the Czech Republic, was at the time under the

rule of the Austrian Empire. The Czech language had been essentially erased from

the school system so a number of works by Hirasak and his contemporaries were

...