The devil’s horses are mythological beings from Cantabria that appear on the night of Saint John, flying through flames, smoke, and sulfur fumes and disrupting the silence and peace with hellish roars. Legend has it that there are seven of them and they look like giant dragonflies, as they have long, transparent wings, and fly through the Cantabrian night skies. Their colors are red, white, blue, black, yellow, green, and orange. They always fly together and the first of them is the red horse, the largest and most robust, the leader who leads and directs the others in their search. Those who have seen the horses say that the devil himself rides one and that the rest are ridden by demons. They are harmful to the mountain people, as they stomp or burn the crops. The horses move along the paths leaving footprints on their hooves. Their snorting is as loud and cold as the winter wind that makes the leaves fall from the trees. Their eyes glow like glowing fires.

According to myth, these hell horses were sinful men who lost their souls and were forced to wander Cantabria for the rest of eternity. The red horse was a man who lent money to peasants and then by dirty tricks seized their property; the white was a miller who stole many grains from his master’s mill; the black was a hermit who deceived people; the yellow a corrupt judge; the blue a tavern keeper; the green a landowner who dishonored many young girls and the orange a son who out of hatred mistreated his parents.

It is a tradition in Cantabria, on the morning of San Juan (Saint John), to go to the mountain to look for the water flowers that are born in the fountains and the four-leaf clovers that sprout that same night. But it is very difficult since during the night the devil’s horses have dedicated themselves, as their mission and maliciousness obliges them, to destroy the water flowers and clovers that they have found to prevent the young men and women from finding them. If even so, some lucky one finds the water flower, he will find love and happiness with it, while whoever finds one of these rare clovers, will be fortunate with the four graces of life, one for each leaf:

To live a hundred years.
Not to suffer pain for the rest of his life.
Not to go hungry.
To endure with serene spirit all discomfort.

When after a night of uninterrupted evil flying and trotting through fields and villages, the dawn surprises the devil horses, sweaty and exhausted, and they disappear until next year through caves covered in blood. As they retreat, wheezing and whistling, drool falls from their jaws, which, when they cool on the ground, turn into bars of gold. In Cantabria, everyone knows that whoever collects them will have riches in abundance, but after death, his soul will irretrievably go to hell. Even so, many ambitious people do not listen to this advice and before dawn, they go around with lanterns looking for them among the grasses of the meadows. When they return from their search, they have to hide among the trees so as not to be seen by the young men and women who roam the meadows jumping and singing:

The bonfires of San Juan in Cantabria perpetuate the auspiciatory and purifying tradition. But the flight of the horses in the glow of the bonfires is a sign of great misfortunes. Not even the blessed Anjanas have power before their galloping and the only way to be safe is to make seven crosses in the air before they approach, but being so fast and in anticipation of not working, people resort to another useful procedure, carrying a branch of verbena or grass of San Juan, the sacred herb that scares away all evil and that must have been taken in the early hours of the night of San Juan the previous year.

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