LJIG, July 15 (Xinhua) -- Full of enthusiasm for their traditions, scythe mowers from Serbia and the region dressed in their unique folk costumes gathered here for the 47th festival held on the meadows of Mt Rajac in western Serbia, the first time in pouring rain.

The Rajac Scythe Festival (Kosidba na Rajcu) opened here with a traditional ceremony: a toast spoken in verse, and a word of welcome from an 88-year-old participant, who has attended the event every year since it was first held.

Moving to the beats of a brass orchestra, the crowds rushed into the meadows, where the main segment of the three-day event -- the scythe competition -- was held.

A phenomenon rare in the area in July -- a rain shower -- briefly surprised the thousands of visitors, the mowers, the jury and the performers. According to some of experienced mowers here, this has never happened here during decades of the festival's existence.

Vladimir Ivanovic, director of the Tourist Organization of Ljig Municipality, told Xinhua that the first scythe competition was held here back in 1892, but it did not become a tourist attraction until the 1960s, and since then it has never rained.

"We are not expecting rain again for the next fifty years on this day. Since the seventies, our municipality has been organizing the Rajac Scythe Festival in order to symbolically present to visitors an important and hard job that was long ago performed by livestock farmers in mountains to provide food for their herd during the whole winter. Since it was a great and essential task for them, they teamed up and worked together. Today, we celebrate their hard labor in order to show how they once managed to do it," he explained.

Ivanovic pointed out that 20 competitors who had previously qualified through local competitions came here from Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Slovenia and Montenegro and other countries of the region to compete for the Golden Scythe.

Competitors said they had come here to revive traditions and the ways of life of their ancestors. It takes plenty of practice to cut wide swaths like they do, they explained.

"It's not my first time here, one can say I am already very experienced. The skill is most important. It is not so hard for people who practiced it before. I am here in order to help preserve our old ways and traditions, because such things cannot be bought -- neither with dollars or nor with euros. These are special things," said Mladen, a senior competitor.

Asked if the rain presented a problem for the scythe mowers up in the mountain, Zeljko Bursac, a competitor from Drvar in Bosnia and Herzegovina, looked surprised and then quickly answered: "Where I come from, scythe mowing works best after rain, or if there is dew. It's not good when its sunny, it goes very hard if the grass is dry."

While the jury selected the winners of the competition, the mowers enjoyed a traditional lunch prepared by the organizers.

The Golden Scythe was then presented to Vuk Vuckovic from the town of Preljina in Serbia.

Ivanovic explained that the scythe festival is the biggest event in the calendar of Ljig Municipality, attracting throngs of visitors to Mt Rajac and its surrounding areas each year.

"Currently there are around 50 scythe festivals in the world, all of which are mainly local in nature. The Rajac Scythe Festival tops all of them when it comes to the number of visitors. These meadows, where just three people live on ordinary days, host between 30,000 and 60,000 visitors per festival day, depending on the year in question," he said.

Recalling that people from several countries have visited or even participated in the festival over the years, Ivanovic said he hoped that one day someone from China would come to demonstrate the kinds of scythes they use there. Enditem

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