Section XI Church-Stories
Several of these, given by Jannsen, may be briefly narrated.
The Church at Revel
Revel was formerly an unimportant place, and the inhabitants wished to make it famous by building a church. They contracted with the great architect Olaf73 to erect it; and when it was completed, and he was about to fix the cross on the summit, his wife cried out joyfully, “Olaf will come home to-day with a thousand barrels of gold.”74 But scarcely had Olaf fixed the cross in its place, when he slipped and fell to the ground, and a toad and a snake sprang out of his mouth. The Devil wished to destroy the church, but could not get near it; so he made a sling at Pernau, and hurled a great rock at it. But the sling broke, and the rock fell half-way between Pernau and Revel, where it now remains. (Similar tales are related of the Devil in many countries, but are perhaps commonest in Scandinavia.)