Jealousy is dangerous. It causes what it fears most – the loss of love. We meet this hostile emotion, that led to a cruel murder in the allegorical ballad, Margita and Besná. Ján Botto wrote it on the basic of an old legend of Strečno.

It is connected to two rocks - Margita and Besná, between which the river Váh flows. The rocks, threatening to the rafters, were emblazoned with legend about a widov who, from jealousy, threw her pretty stepdaughter from a high rock into the river Váh. Under the weight of remorse, she lost her mind and later jumped into Váh on the same spot. According to the ballad, she will drown the rafters until her anger subsides. Then Margita and Besná will fall and the Váh river-bed will be released. The archetypes of human mind, and the passion of the human heart revealed so sharply in this ballad are helpful in moral reasoning and evaluation. The ignorance of anger disrupts life so much, that its river spills inadvertently through side streams and swamps. Something sinister protrudes from the eyes of the raging rock. We may have taken some step forward since Ján Botto lived, but human nature has not changed. The protruding rocks of Margita and Besná remind us of this. It remains only to believe, that the river of life will one day return to its own bed.