Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 24, 1913.djvu/387

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A man at S. Jean was toasting his bread, when a woman came and placed herself in front of the stove. A goat came out of the stable and went up to her, and she put her hand on its head. The animal at once fell lame. So the owner quickly took up a knife and cut off the goat's head. This broke the charm. The goat became all right again, and the woman became lame. When dying, the woman averred that four carts would not suffice to carry the yokes of the cattle which she had destroyed by her sorceries.

The Devil. — A cross was erected on the summit of the rock of Cavour to the memory of the Cavourese who died fighting there in 1 69 1. But the peasants give it quite a different origin. They say that the Devil himself was once lord of Cavour, and lived on the top of this rock. The human inhabitants determined to get rid of him by erecting a cross on the very spot. The undertaking proved very difficult, but they finally succeeded, and then the Devil, uttering horrible yells, threw himself into the Nether Regions. He clutched the rock as he fell, and left indelible prints of three fingers, which can still be distinguished. On the summit of the same rock there is a large hole, and tradition says that there is at the bottom of the hole a car laden with gold and drawn by two yoke of oxen. The car is guarded by the Devil, who revenges himself on the peasants who drove him away, by ruining all those who seek to obtain the treasure.

Cavourese legends ascribe to the Devil the power of transforming himself into many shapes, — a black ram, lovely child, cat, crow, vulture, eagle, and sometimes even a dove, — although his com- monest shape is a toad. If, when in any of his shapes, he suddenly disappears, it is because a saint from Paradise has appeared. For instance, at the abbey-church of St. Benignus, the imprint is shown of a taloned hand. The Devil, spited by the monks sending many souls straight to Paradise, proposed to crush the church and all within it by throwing the belfry on top of it. But St. Benignus suddenly appeared, with all the martyred saints of the convent, and the Devil disappeared in terror.

The old bridge between Mt. Bunasco and Mombasso was built by the Devil, who, in order to prove that he was the architect, left a print of his taloned feet in a rock just in front of a neighbouring chapel.