If Long Compton thou canst see,
King of England thou shalt be.”
The king, now certain of success, exclaimed:
“Stick, stock, stone,
As King of England I shall be known!”
But as he took the seven strides forward there rose before him the long mound of earth which crowns the hill, and prevented him from seeing Long Compton. The witch then cried:
“As Long Compton thou canst not see,
King of England thou shalt not be.
Rise up, stick, and stand still, stone,
For king of England thou shalt be none;
Thou and thy men hoar stones shall be,
And I myself an eldern-tree.”
Forthwith “the king and his army were turned into stones where they stood, the king on the side of the mound and his army in a circle behind him, while the witch herself became an elder-tree. But some day, they do say, the spell will be broken. The stones will turn into flesh and blood once more, and the king will start as an armed warrior at the head of his army to overcome his enemies and rule over all the land.”[123.1]
In the last tradition the witch’s words fell upon her own head, as well as upon her foes. Incautious or wicked words often have this effect in European folklore; and I strongly suspect they owe their origin to Christian teaching. Tales of imprecations fulfilled upon the perjurer pervade English history from the great, and probably innocent, Earl Godwin downwards. Joan Flower, not more guilty, mentioned in an earlier chapter, is another example. The case of Dorothy Mately of Ashover, related with all circumstance by the master-pen of John Bunyan, is more famous. In fact, the tales are endless; but I must limit my illustrations to two or three of such as account for stones and rocks.
On the island of Sardinia, near the village of Tresnuraghes, in the district of Oristano, are two stones, once a peasant and his ox. This unhappy man was ploughing on the vigil of Saint Mark, and neglected to doff his cap when the saint’s colossal statue was carried by in procession. Being remonstrated with by one of the confraternity, he answered that he did not worship a piece of wood. What could be expected after such profanity, but that he and his ox should be turned to stone? A similar judgment is recorded as the origin of a monolith standing near the church of Saint Constantine, on the side of a hill in the district of Sedilo, on the same island. It is the custom there to perform a ceremony called S’ardia, or the Guard, which consists in a cavalcade of about a hundred persons running at full speed thrice around the church, and then flinging themselves down the valley upon a sacred enclosure containing a cross. This enclosure they encompass in the same manner. The spectacle, considered as a religious rite, is doubtless grotesque enough; and a woman who once witnessed it was profane enough to burst out laughing. She stands there still, never to laugh again.[124.1] A bridal train on the Frisian island of Sylt once met an old woman who recognised the bride as a witch, and called out to warn the party. The leader replied: “If our bride be a witch, I would that we might all sink down here and rise up again grey stones.” No sooner said than done; and the identical stones were on view up to the early years of this century.[125.1] So it is related of an unwilling bride from the village of Bonese, in Altmark, that when she arrived with her cavalcade on the boundary of the district of Markau, where she was to wed the son of a rich magistrate, she sprang from her seat after an altercation with her kinsmen and exclaimed: “Rather will I be turned to stone than overstep the boundary of Markau!” and she alighted on the ground a stone. Round that stone at midnight, when the full moon sheds her rays, the many-coloured bridal ribbons gleam even yet.[125.2] Sometimes the catastrophe is occasioned by the mere breach of a taboo. Such is the case in a story told by the Lapps concerning the origin of the Aniov Islands. Three giants who were shamans determined to cut a piece of land off Norway and bring it away with all its reindeer and other wealth in order to increase their own stores. They succeeded in doing so, and were conveying it round to its destination, when their mother dreamed she saw them returning. She ran out of the hut and, hearing a noise, cried: “See! my children are coming, they bring goods, oxen, reindeer; they spoke truth.” But she thus violated the rule of strict silence during the performance of magical rites, and was punished by being turned, together with the whole parish, into stone, while her sons and the reindeer they had stolen were drowned, and the land they had cut off became two islands.[125.3] Another woman underwent the like transformation in the island of Coll, off the western coast of Scotland. She was gathering shellfish when the tide rose, and “finding no other means of escape made a last effort by climbing the rocks. When at the top, and almost out of danger, she said: ‘I am safe now, in spite of God and men!’ ” Her blasphemy was immediately avenged by her conversion into a stone, which now forms part of the rock whence the headland of Cailleach Point (the Old Wife’s Headland) takes its name.[126.1]
Often, however, the Deity himself, or some holy man endowed with a portion of divine power, by curses or prayers effects the metamorphosis. Thus, it is believed in Bombay that the moon once became enamoured of Ahalyá, the wife of the Rishi Gautama, and visited her in her husband’s absence. Unluckily the Rishi returned and found the guilty pair together. His wife was turned into stone as the effect of his curses; and the moon bears, and will bear for ever, the black mark of the blow he received from the Rishi’s well-aimed shoe.[126.2] So, too, when Ino fleeing from Juno’s wrath flung herself into the sea, and was made immortal by Neptune at the prayer of Venus, her attendants, as Ovid tells us, reproaching the vengeful goddess, were metamorphosed. Juno exclaimed: “I will make you terrible monuments of my displeasure.” As she uttered the words, some of the women, attempting to follow their mistress into the water, were stiffened in the various attitudes of the moment into rocks on the shore, while others were transformed into seabirds that now stretch their wings over every wave of the Ionian sea.[126.3] The kind of superstition here portrayed has of course survived into Christianity. It is partly the superhuman might of the priest as such, and partly the strength of his incantations, which nobody but he knows so well how to perform that gives effect to his words when, like the Cardinal Lord Archbishop of Rheims, and other priests before and since, he calls for his candle, his bell, and his book. It was the superhuman might of the shaman that was acknowledged by Balak in the Hebrew saga, when he sent for Balaam to come and curse Israel; “for I know that he whom thou blessest is blessed, and he whom thou cursest is cursed.” Balaam, indeed, performed his function with due solemnity and order; yet the ceremonies, however valuable in themselves, would hardly have been effectual if performed by a lesser man. This belief has constantly tended, in all religions alike, to invest the lightest word of a saint with efficacy graduated according to his sanctity. Take the following Christian examples out of many. Saint Constant, pursued by a party of heathen up a hill in the neighbourhood of Deonero, in the Italian province of Cuneo, launched his maledictions upon them with such effect that they were changed into stones, many of which are still to be seen on the spot. His potency must have been exhausted by the effort; for he had scarcely reached the top when another band of persecutors seized and put him to death. But the night fell murky and wet; and a labourer, going home after an evening’s enjoyment, beheld the saint toiling up the steep laden with stones. In the morning the Church of Villar San Costanzo stood on the place of the martyrdom, built by the saint’s own hands out of some of the very men whom he had conveniently petrified; and there it is to be seen at the present day. Strangely enough, his holiness did not avail to procure him mortar. Nor was it needful, for the stones, whether naturally or supernaturally fitted together, stand perfectly well without it. When his work was done, his body, which had been left by his murderers where it fell, disappeared. Some say that it was transported by angels into heaven; and there can be no more difficulty in crediting this than the rest of the story.[128.1] In the Isle of Man Saint Patrick cursed a sea-monster, which was following to devour him, and turned it into a solid rock at the foot of Peel Hill.[128.2] According to Sardinian belief a greater than Saint Constant, or even Saint Patrick, inflicted the same vengeance for a smaller crime. One day Our Lord and Saint Peter presented themselves at a threshing-floor near Mores, and prayed for alms, but were denied. Thereupon Jesus Christ uttered an imprecation; and in a moment the corn became sand, while the guilty farmer and his innocent workmen were alike transformed into stones.[128.3] Judging doubtless by their own unhappy experience, the greater the personage the more trifling is the occasion to which the peasants ascribe his wrath. On the right-hand side of the road from Flatow to Lobsens, in the province of Posen, about half a German mile from the latter place, is a great stone, formerly a landed proprietor, who, being out hunting, put his horse to jump a ditch at that spot. The horse refused, perhaps for some similar reason to that which animated Balaam’s talking donkey, since we are told that the Lord flew into a passion and cried, “Become stone!” Forthwith horse and rider were turned into a stone which is alive at this day to testify to the truth of the story, though many have been the attempts to destroy it.[128.4]
So far the power of words. Another magical power which appears in the märchen is that of a blow. Nor is it absent from sagas told to explain the origin of rocks whose form has appealed to the imagination of uncultured peoples. The story of the discovery of Inishbofin, an island off the coast of Galway, relates that two fishermen lost in a fog landed on an unknown shore. When the fog lifted they found themselves on what is now called the north Beach of Inishbofin.