Roimund of Roimund was not really a robber knight at all, but the innkeeper Podmíra from Rynoltice who had cheated his customers. As a result, they had gone to his competition and Podmíra had had to close his business. Fully disgraced, he had run away into the forest where the ruin of the old Roimund castle stood on the hill and he had hidden from the people there. He began to name himself after his new “home” and he tried to make a living as a highwayman, but he wasn’t very good at it. He could only rob those who didn’t know him and not very many strangers wandered through the Lusatian forests. If he failed to find a stranger, all that was usually left were people out gathering mushrooms and they usually didn’t have anything to steal. If they had yet to fill their basket, Roimund would usually advise them where various types of tasty mushrooms could be found. Podmíra’s wife had already requested Havránek to persuade the innkeeper to come home and reopen his business and to tell him that his regular guests would come back to him, if he stopped cheating them. But Podmíra did not want to hear a word of it. He claimed that he was making a good living from robbery, but Havránek knew the truth.
When he emerged onto the lower saddle and entered the forest, Havránek guessed which tree Podmíra was hiding behind or which thicket he would jump out of. He looked forward to pretending to be surprised and frightened just to make the innkeeper happy. But this time nothing happened. Havránek made it all the way to the Crow Cliffs without meeting a living soul upon the way. When he reached the hermitage, Podmíra’s wife was waiting for him, wringing her hands:
“Surely you know, lady innkeeper”, blurted out Havránek before she had time to say anything, “that I have tried to persuade your husband at least one hundred times, but he simply does not want to listen!”
“That’s not why I’m here, Havránek. I’m afraid that something has happened to him. He always comes home at night to have something to eat so that nobody can see him, but last night he didn’t come”, sobbed Podmíra’s wife.
“It is true that he didn’t rob me today and I have a fresh loaf of bread for him”, thought Havránek out loud. “Don’t cry, lady innkeeper, I’ll go and see what has happened to Roimund”. He left the loaf of bread for Roimund in his knapsack and added a bottle of herbal bitters in case the real robbers from Robbers’ Height had attacked him. But they usually assailed people at the Horseshoe Cliff or in the rock theatre.
Whenever Havránek went to Petrovice, he always took a bottle of herbal bitters with him. That always pleased the robbers. He accompanied Podmíra’s wife around the Upper Cliffs to the inn at Černá louže. There, he said goodbye to her and set off to find Roimund. When he was under the castle, he called out:
“Knight Roimund of Roimund, are you home?!” Nobody answered and so he went closer to the castle. To be honest, it wasn’t really a castle at all. There were only two semi-dilapidated walls and the partially buried castle cellars beneath them where Podmíra hid from the rain. Havránek had to lower his head when he ended the cellars so that he did not bump it. After looking around in the dark, he saw Podmíra lying on three sheaves of straw. His swollen face was bound with the scarf, his nose was read and tears were pouring from his eyes.
“What are you doing here, innkeeper. This can’t be good for your health”, hooted Havránek at him. Podmíra did not even flinch. He simply rolled from his left to his right side and whimpered:
“My tooth started hurting and then I have a bottled up sneeze that I simply can’t let go. Help me Havránek, I can’t take it anymore!”
“Are you surprised that you have caught a cold, here in this damp? I’ll help you, but you have to promise me something.”
“I do whatever you want! Please just help me in my suffering!”
“Well okay then. I’ll help you with your painful tooth and bottled up sneeze and in return you will go home, open your business and rename your inn. It will no longer be called the “Podmíra” Inn, but the “Correct Measure” Inn”.
“No not that, Havránek! I’ll go home and reopen my business, but I will not rename my inn”, said the innkeeper angrily as he rolled his eyes to all sides.
“Fine. I’ll help you sneeze and you can go and see Drtil the blacksmith in Chotyně with your tooth. I have heard that he is quite the expert when it comes to teeth”, said Havránek looking to see what Podmíra thought of that.
“Not that, Havránek, not that! I’ll rename the inn and stop cheating my guests, just save me already”, promised the innkeeper, who was wringing his hands and trying to kneel before Havránek. But Havránek said to him:
“You’ll have to wait a while until I can go down to the village for the correct medicine”.
“Please hurry, Havránek, or this will literally be my end. I can’t take it for much longer.”
Havránek emerged from the forest under Roimund and set off to Rynoltice. When he reached the closed inn, he banged on the door and called Podmíra’s wife.
“Open up, lady innkeeper. If you help me, your husband will return to you this very day!”
Podmíra’s wife could hardly believe it. Once Havránek told her what he had learnt at Roimund, she said that it served her husband right for being so terribly stubborn, but it was clear that she was happy.
Havránek borrowed a hoe and dug up some horseradish from behind the fence. He took it to Podmíra’s wife and she grated it. As she wiped the tears into her handkerchief, she said:
“Seven-year horseradish, that’s the strongest there is!”
Havránek poured the horseradish into a bottle, closed it well so that the horseradish could not leak out and said to Podmíra’s wife:
“Now I need a piece of string. But it has to be strong enough to carry a stone from the castle wall”.
When she brought it to him, he pulled it tight in his hands to see what it could withstand, glanced out the window and said:
“That will do”.
When he returned to the castle, Podmíra was already waiting for him and he whimpered:
“That took forever. You must have gone all the way to Varnsdorf for the medicine!”
“You managed to stay here all night whimpering, so I’m sure you’ll be able to withstand it a short while longer. Don’t worry about anything. Shortly you won’t even know that you had a toothache and you will sneeze so hard that the rest of the castle will fall into the valley!”
Then Havránek stood Podmíra on a large stump and tied one end of the string to his painful tooth.
“Take this rock from the castle wall and hold onto it, Podmíra.” Podmíra simply rolled his eyes in disbelief and did not understand what Havránek was doing. In the meantime, Havránek had tied the second end of the string to the rock and had positioned herself directly behind the innkeeper. He plucked a long blade of grass and began to use it to tickle Podmíra alternately behind his right and left ear. Podmíra could not resist the tickling and simply had to scratch it. He let go of the rock and the weight of it pulled out his painful tooth. When the innkeeper saw the rock rolling down into the valley with his tooth on the string behind it, he wanted to take a deep breath and give a whistle out of sheer relief, but at that very moment Havránek shoved the open jar of grated seven-year horseradish under his nose. Podmíra began crying as if a tap had been turned on. For a moment, it looked like he would give up the ghost, but he suddenly let loose such as sneeze that it knocked Havránek into the nettles on one side and one of the castle walls into the valley on the other.
“I always knew that horseradish was mighty strong. But I didn’t know that it could knock down half the castle”, laughed Havránek as he scrambled out of the nettles. Podmíra began to slowly come to terms with what had happened. He stopped rolling his eyes and when he found that his tooth no longer hurt and that all his bottled up sneezes had been released, he jumped from the stump and helped Havránek to his feet.
“Thank you, Havránek, you have saved my life!”
“I just hope that you don’t forget what you promised me.”
“Of course not”, shouted Podmíra and he ran off along the path down towards Rynoltice. “I’ll reopen my business tomorrow and when you come to see us, it will be on the house!”
One week later, Havránek was returning from Jablonné, where he had gone to get his shoes repaired by Dratvičky the cobbler. Walking in those repaired shoes was like walking on spring moss and so he said to himself, “It’s quicker to go home through Polesí, but as the shoes are so nice to walk in, I’ll go the extra mile through Rynoltice to see if the innkeeper has kept his promise.” While still far away, he could see a newly hung a sign above the entrance to the inn on which was written in festive lettering “THE CORRECT MEASURE INN”, but an even bigger surprise awaited Havránek when he went inside. The inn was buzzing like a beehive. Farmers were playing cards at the table under the coat rack, the mayor was playing billiards with the teacher and two wood cutters were arguing about who was the strongest over by the window. Laughter and the clinking of pint glasses could be heard from all sides. Podmíra’s wife was running about the inn like a dervish and the innkeeper was having trouble keeping up with the orders for beer. When she saw Havránek standing in the doorway, Podmíra’s wife rushed over to him and twittered:
“Welcome to our inn, Havránek! Have a seat and tell us what you would like.” She sat him near the window on the last available chair and smiled like the sun in springtime.
“Well the trip from Jablonné has made me so hungry I could eat a horse and I’m gasping for something to drink. I’ll have a nice cold beer and a plate of beef goulash. And don’t forget to grate some horseradish onto it”, instructed Havránek with a wink at Podmíra. When he had finished the goulash, he wiped the plate clean with his last piece of bread and finished his beer. He was wiping the thick foam from his beard with his palm, when Podmíra turned to him and quietly asked:
“Havránek, can I please rename my inn?”
“Fine”, acceded Havránek. “Seeing as you are taking good care of your business, your goulash is delicious and your beer likewise, you can call your inn whatever you want.”
The innkeeper jumped for joy and ran outside. Havránek said farewell to the innkeeper’s wife and she gave him some hot garlic soup in a pot to take with him, telling him that it would be “good for his dinner”.
“Thank you, lady innkeeper, I will be sure to bring the pot back sometime when I am passing”, said Havránek and he left the inn. The innkeeper had just put down his paintbrush and paint. The sign now said something new: “THE KNIGHT ROIMUND OF ROIMUND INN”. Havránek the hermit laughed, patted the innkeeper on his back, wished him lots of luck and set off home to the Crow Cliffs.
Since that time, the Roimund Castle has only had one wall and the innkeeper’s at all the inns in the foothills of the Lusatian Mountains always serve the correct measure, because they are afraid lest their teeth begin to hurt and their sneezes become bottled up.
