Story Number 3: Women Were Millers Too

Ane Petrović was born in Rastoke, in house number 10 in 1949. She now lives in Taborište with her family.

Her ancestors lived in Rastoke since time immemorial. She remembers a lot of stories told by her grandfather – whom she affectionately calls Dade – whose name was Jure Skukan, and by her father Pavo and mother Marija. Ane had four sisters and three brothers.

“In 1873, there was cholera. Crafsmen were building our wall from large stones, which was the foundation of our house, and you can still see it from the Korana bridge. There were four masters, two left because of cholera and two stayed in Slunj. My father and Dade told me about that. The people believed in and were faithful to God in those times so I also remember that nine nine-year-old girls went to church for intercessory prayer asking for the end of cholera. The people formed a procession and walked from the church to Lalićev gaj, where the girls remained for nine days in prayer without food. People checked on the girls regularly so that animals would not attack them and no one slept. All that happened some time before the beginning of spring. And the cholera was gone. As my parents told me; after nine days, the procession went to get the girls in Lalićev gaj, returned to the church, received communion and since then, on Friday of Sorrows, the Slunj Parish celebrates the day of confession before Easter and it has been a day-off for the Slunj Parish ever since.

In the early days, girls were married into a miller’s family because it was great honour for the girl to stay in the village. So, I stayed in my village as well. The Petrović family also had a mill until the World War II bombing, when it was destroyed, alongside the bridge. Since then, they were without it. Nearly every house had a mill before, but my house also had fields, hay meadows and cattle. We had a servant who helped with fields and the mill and we paid him just enough so that he had money for food; it was not much of a salary.

And the millers, when they came, we had to take care of them. Yes, we took ujam, but we also had to give them our beds and feed them. All of that was done so that they would not take their grain to another mill. Ujam was a wooden container, which we used for taking four to five litres of grain that someone had brought us for milling. That was something you could do in front of your customer, that was your salary,” Ane remembers.

Even after a Hard Day’s Work, We Would Always Sing

“In the old days, we would always sing, my brothers had guitars. Everyone loved to come for prelo (an evening get-together where certain chores would be done and people would help each other, but it also had a social and entertainment function). The boys would come with tamburice. My mother would bake pogača, that was life. Prelo was something we had before. But not every house organized a prelo, we also had perušanje (shucking corn), stupanje na konoplje (making yarn from hemp), tribli perje (removing the barbs from the shaft of feathers, which are then used for pillows).

I remember an old man, who was a carter, had horses and went to Senj to get salt. He told us stories of fairies. When I was a child, I was afraid of the fairies and did not like going to prelo until I was a bit older. Rastoke are abundant with water and the Rastoke residents liked to freshen up by drinking water from the well (spring), which was even colder than Slušnica in the summer months. Water from the well was a lot colder, around 7 degrees Celsius, whereas Slušnica was around 14 degrees in the summer months. When my grandfather sent us to get water – and he could not be fooled – he knew if the water was from the nearby well, which was the wrong one, he would try it and spill it if he was not happy… So, my sister Đurđa and I had to go for water again. One time, we made three trips for water,” Ane smiles as she remembers.

“We worked a lot every day. My mother would prepare everything for lunch every morning and went to the field and my father cooked lunch because he was at home, taking care of the melja, meaning flour. We had cows and we delivered milk to the houses and to the Slunj school. That was life in those days. Saturday was a special day because on that day bread would be made for the whole week. We ate a lot of bread. I still respect bread, even today!

People went to the hill called Glav’ca near the village Lađevac to get the stone for milling. The stone was broken off from the boulder and put onto a wagon. I remember that my father once told me that he needed the hardest piece of stone and he was unable to break it off the boulder. So, he went to the statue of Mary, mother of God, kneeled and made the sign of the cross. Then he returned to the boulder, hit it twice and a piece broke off. I still believe in the help and power that Our Lady of Mount Carmel gave to my father.”

“The Rastoke residents did not really go to church,” Ane remembers. They would rather visit Štigle and play cards, but her father always went to church on Sundays. “Three children went to church in the morning with our mother and the rest of us cared for the cows. When our mother returned from the church, the other three would go to church with our father. And in the afternoon, we would determine who would take the cows to pasture and those who did got masnica (a type of strudel). Masnica was filled with cream in those days, but we did not get as much cream as we wanted. Cream was kept under lock and key back then.” Proudly, but with a touch of melancholy, Ane says, “By the way, women also worked as millers, but that is a whole other story…”

Masnica