“If thou canst not read forwards, read backwards!”
The roaring waves this time effectually drowned his voice. The servant read on, but long before he had arrived at the end of the incantation, the sea had covered the profane priest, and the demon whom the magic lines had evoked carried off his prey.[175]
[173] Editor’s Note.—Mr. S. Carey Curtis, who is an architect, has made some very interesting plans of the ruins of Lihou Priory, and has shown their correspondence with the architecture of the building depicted on this stone. I will quote his exact words:—
“There is built into the wall of a house, on the Paysans Road, a sculptured stone, which corresponds so exactly with what might have been the Chapel of Lihou that I have, on the plan, restored the chapel on those lines. All the principal features work in exactly, the tower, the windows, the roof, etc.,—all except the door, of which there is positively no trace; but possibly, in view of the various coats of paint on the stone, it is merely a fancy of one of the many artists who have retouched it. Of the ruins which remain there is sufficient to show what its measurements once were. Of the tower, about twelve feet is still standing, a large portion of the north wall, and several smaller pieces; these all show that it consisted of a nave about thirty-four by twenty-three feet inside measurement, and a choir or sanctuary about thirty-four by twenty feet. There is enough of the north wall still standing to shew where the spring of the vaulting began, and thus, approximately, the height of the walls and roof. The corner of the chancel arch pier is a Caen stone, with a plain beading on it; there is also trace of a porphyry column on the south side of the sanctuary, and under the site of the altar is a paving of Malachite green and buff tiles, some of which still remain; they measure six and a quarter inches square and were laid alternately.”
The lettering has been explained as standing for “H … Dominus Lihou Mel,” “H … priest of Lihou Mel, (as Lihou was called in ancient times) in 1114.”
[174] From Mrs. Savidan.
[175] From Dr. Lukis, to whom the story was told by an old woman at l’Erée.
Editor’s Notes.
A somewhat similar story was told me in 1896 by Mrs. Le Patourel, who had heard it from her mother-in-law. A schoolmaster, either at St. Pierre-du-Bois or at Torteval, was given to witchcraft, and owned one of these “bad books.” He took it one day to his school and, by an oversight, left it on his desk. It was a lovely day, and, impatient to be out, he omitted to lock it up, and hurried home to get his dinner. Whilst in the middle of eating it, quite suddenly a terrific storm came on, such thunder and lightning as had never before been seen in the country, and was most unaccountable in such a hitherto lovely weather. It seemed to be at its worst just over the school. Terrified, remembering the book he had left there, he rushed back and there he found one of the boys reading this book out loud. He snatched the book from his hand, and asked him to show him where he had begun, and where he had read to, and then began at once to read backwards from where the boy had left off. As he read, the storm began to lull, and when he reached the place where the boy had begun to read, the storm had stopped as suddenly as it begun. (This is possibly another version of the story of “Satan and the Schoolmaster,” related in the chapter on the Devil.)
Mrs. Le Patourel also knew a man who had once owned a “Grand Albert” and used it, and, repenting, tried to burn it, but it is well known that if you have once used one of these books you can never rid yourself of it, try as you will. He heated his oven red hot, and put the book within it. Two minutes afterwards he looked up and saw the book, unsinged even, in its old place on the dresser. My cousin Miss Le Pelley sends me a story told her by an old servant Judy Ozanne, how some very religious people, going into a house found a “Grand Albert” on the poûtre (the centre beam) in the kitchen, so they threw it into the fire, but in vain, for “it went back to its old place and stayed there!”