The devil, however, gained on them rapidly, and it appeared certain that he would catch them, when, just as he put out his hand to touch the maid, a strange light appeared in the sky, and a voice called out the one word—“Hold.”
The Devil staggered as though he had been shot, and when he recovered the light had vanished, and with it the maiden and her lover.
They were never seen again, but the legends say that they were made perfectly happy by the fairies, and that they still haunt the banks of the Etherow at certain seasons of the year in the forms of two white swans.
As for the devil, he received a shock. At the moment the light appeared, his right arm had been bent at the elbow for the purpose of seizing hold of his prey, but lo! when his victims had disappeared, he found that the powers which had delivered them from him had turned his right arm into stone. Not a muscle of it could he move, it would not bend, it was worse than useless, it was an encumbrance.
So Satan, being a philosopher in his way, determined to make the best of a bad job. He tore the arm out by the roots, and left it there—the elbow showing prominently over Longdendale. And that is how the great rock known as the Devil’s Elbow came to be perched high up above the Etherow valley.
Author’s Note.
The Devil’s Elbow is the name given to a picturesque rock which stands on the brow of a high and steep hill above the valley of the Etherow. This rock is one of the landmarks of the Longdendale country.
