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In Romanian folklore there are many stories regarding știma apei/vâlva apei. They can generally be summarized in this way:
Passing by a body of water
A woman / or group of people
hear a voice / or see a woman coming out of the water
The voice says ‘The hour has come but not the man.’ / or calls over the passerby
A peasant abandons his work and runs to the water/ or a stranger appears running towards the water on horseback
The woman / or group of people try to stop him
But the man still manages to jump into the water/ or touch it
And dies.
A story from Vatra Dornei:
‘When I was young - I remember it like today - in the summer, right around when the hay was ripe, I had to quickly build up the haystacks as the next day would be Sunday. I finished around midnight. Afterwards I still had to round up my cattle and milk them. I had to go through the valley of Bistrița as it was a straighter way - singing and with my bag on my back. As I was passing by the ditch at the bottom of the valley I heard someone call out from the ditch:
‘The hour has come but not the man.’
And so the voice yelled this out three times and as it yelled it out for the third time I saw a young man as beautiful as the Evening Star riding a horse like a zmeu. It rode quickly and the man spurred the horse to enter the water, though the horse did not want to. Eventually the horse gave in, neighing so loudly that the mountains shook and jumping forward, in three leaps he was in the middle of Bistrița river. There the horse sank together with the young man hoisted on its back. The horse swam back out but the young man remained at the bottom of the river.
Știma Apei asked for a man’s head and when the time came, a man’s head it received.’