(Slovenian Legend)
In ancient times when Christ and St. Peter were still walking around our region, they climbed also the green plateau of Pohorje. There they visited the mountain village Šentjungota. They stopped by a poor hut standing alone outside the village, and asked the old woman sitting at the threshold for some gift.
“I’ve only got a piece of brown bread but I don’t know if you will want it. This year barley hasn’t been plentiful, so there is a lot of awny bran in it,” said the old woman. Then she went into the house and brought out a piece of really black and bad bread. Christ broke that bread in two pieces. One half he offered to St. Peter. The old woman went into the house again to bring the travellers some water. In the meantime St. Peter grumbled that the bread is nothing but straw. He decided that he wouldn’t eat such bad bread. He put it into his travel bag. Christ thanked the old woman and they walked away.
After a while St. Peter became very hungry and he remembered he’s got some bread in his bag. Although it was full of bran and awn, St. Peter started to reach in his bag for small pieces of it, took them out and ate them. The awny bran which got stuck between his teeth he spat out.
Christ, who was walking in front of him, bowed down and took a clod of dry Pohorje soil. He crushed it in his hands and threw it over the field as if he were sowing some grains.
“A new cereal be it – oats,” he said. “It will grow in the fields cultivated by poor farmers, cottagers and woodmen. Oats will be cereals for high mountain places where golden wheat doesn’t grow. Let oats be insensitive to cold, snow and frost, even hail should not hurt it. So be it!”
The same year new cereal started to grow in the Pohorje fields. It had no ears and no awn, but panicle full of grains wrapped in chaff. Oats gave bread to cottagers and poor farmers. Oat bread got a nickname – “The oatmeal bread is a poor man.” But it protected many poor people from hunger.
