The famous Vyšehrad, built on a steep cliff washed by the waters of the Vltava River, became the seat of the youngest but wisest of Krok’s daughters—Princess Libuše. She ruled the people wisely and justly, yet the men in the land resented female rule. Everything culminated when the princess settled a border dispute between two angry elders. The defeated man, in a rage, struck the ground with his stick and threw scorn in Libuše’s face, saying that a woman with “long hair and short mind” could not judge men from feather cushions. Libuše bore the insult with princely nobility, though righteous anger burned within her. “You wanted a firmer hand, you shall have it,” she declared, ordering an embassy to be sent.

Her faithful white horse then guided the elders alone through deep forests and over mountains to a small river called Bílina, to a settlement named Stadice. There they saw a man in simple linen clothes and bast shoes, ploughing a fallow field with two piebald oxen. As soon as Přemysl, as the ploughman was named, heard their message, he thrust his hazel goad into the ground and released his oxen, which rose into the sky and vanished. Over the night, three branches sprouted from the hazel stick, and while the envoys ate bread and cheese from his bast pouch with the man, the ploughman accepted his new fate as prince and husband to Libuše herself. However, he took his bast shoes with him to Vyšehrad. He wanted to forever remind his descendants that regardless of wealth and glory, nobility survives only where humility and honest labor walk hand in hand.