According to a very ancient legend in Slavic mythology, storks are believed to bring an abandoned ancient living spirit to be reborn. The storks find these living spirits hidden in caves or in marshes from where they dig to bring them out holding in their beaks and they drop them by placing sweets with the new born, sometimes leaving birthmarks on the body of the newborn baby which is sometimes referred to as a stork-bite. This belief still persists in modern folk culture in many Slavic countries in the simplified childhood story that storks bring babies into the world. Storks are seen by the Slavs as bringing luck and killing those that would bring misfortune.