Page:The Celtic Review volume 3.djvu/282

Rh said he, ‘you’ll have enough.’ They had. Before morning the ground was a lake, and a lake it remains. Similarly, the Lac de Grand Lieu, Loire Inférieure, was once a fertile valley. The Château of Bex, Switzerland, is due to the wickedness of its châtelaine. Endowed with beauty and wealth, that lady had no heart for misery and distress. She had even issued the strictest orders that none of her retainers or servants should give any beggar the smallest bit of bread. She had her reward. When her husband was out hunting, and her guests had just gone, an old decrepit beggar, who had been refused charity, and had cursed her, watched the engulfing lake rise round the castle, and the husband’s despair, as he returned only to see sink into the waves wife and home and happiness. The innocent one was saved, aa the guiltless are in the Bible story of the Plain Pentapolis. Between the famous locale of the Nijni-Novgorod fair and Kazan, a whole town, Kitach, has sunk under the water. In Tonkin, a similar lake is that of ‘the night,’ Da Thrach.

Jungfernsee was once the site of a midnight club, where Black Masses were the rule, and revel and riot held mad sway. Like it is Bartschee, near Paulshorst, Ruppin.

Another castle engulfed is that of Wesebye, on the Schlee.

Another, that of Daskow, near Stolzenburg, Pomerania.

South-east of Ragnit, Prussia, at Schuppinen, Abyssinia has another, at Tallaki, and Transylvania yet one, at Grandelsmor.

Nothing can transcend in beauty the Lac Leman, whereon stood the old Roman city of Tauredunum. In 563-4 A.D., in a second of time, it was precipitated into the water for ever.

In Savoy, Agaune, dating from old Gaulish days, and re-named Ternade from the Roman occupation, stood within some twelve miles’ distance of Martigny. The voice of its iniquity went up, and the city sank.

The Vallé d’Abondance holds now a sterile lake, and, under it, steeples and homes and hamlets.