The King Stone.
THE SHADOW CURSE OF THE RAGGEDSTONE.
Near the middle of England, where the Malvern Hills rise abruptly to a height of nearly 1,400 feet above the sea, is the double-peaked rugged Raggedstone hill about which several strange old legends centre. A restless spirit is said to haunt the bleaker portions of the summit, but a stranger legend is that of the Shadow Curse, called down upon this hill by a monk of Little Malvern in the olden time.
Little Malvern lies in the plain at the foot of these hills, and at the Benedictine monastery there, as the old story tells, there was once a rebellious brother. His offences against the monastic discipline were so serious that the Prior decreed, as his punishment, that he should crawl on hands and knees every day and in all weather, for a certain period, from the monastery to the top of the Raggedstone and back again.
The wretched monk had to obey, and day after day, week after week, he performed his penance. But the pain and degradation of his task embittered him, and they say that before his punishment was completed he died upon the hill of exhaustion and humiliation. Others say that he sold his soul to the devil in order to be free of his hated task, but anyhow before he disappeared from human ken, he put a bitter curse upon the hill that had caused him so much suffering.
He cursed with death or misfortune whomsoever the shadow of the hill should fall upon, having in mind that in those days of sparsely populated land the people who would suffer most would be the Prior and his brethren in the monastery beneath.
Now the shadow of the Raggedstone is very seldom seen. Only at rare times when the sun is shining between the twin peaks does it appear, and those who have seen it describe it as a weird cloud, black and columnar in shape, which rises up between the two summits and moves slowly across the valley.