Pausanias, one of the most honest of ancient travelers, gives us a striking exhibition of this feeling. Having visited this monument of divine vengeance at Mount Sipylos, he tells us very naïvely that, though he could discern no human features when standing near it, he thought that he could see them when standing at a distance. There could hardly be a better example of that most common and deceptive of all things—belief created by the desire to believe.
In the pagan mythology of Scandinavia we have such typical examples as Börs slaying the giant Ymir and transforming his bones into bowlders; also "the giant who had no heart" transforming six brothers and their wives into stone; and, in the old Christian mythology, St. Olaf changing into stone the wicked giants who opposed his preaching.
So, too, in Celtic countries we have in Ireland such legends as those of the dancers turned into stone; and in Brittany, the stones at Plessé, which were once hunters and dogs violating the sanctity of Sunday; and the stones of Carnac, which were once soldiers who sought to kill St. Comely.
Teutonic mythology inherited from its earlier Eastern days a similar mass of old legends, and developed a still greater mass of new ones. Thus, near the Königstein, which all visitors to the Saxon Switzerland know so well, is a bowlder which for ages was believed to have once been a maiden transformed into stone for refusing to go to church; and near Rosenberg in Mecklenburg is another curiously shaped stone of which a similar story is told. Near Spornitz, in the same region, are seven bowlders whose forms and position are accounted for by a long and circumstantial legend that they were once seven impious herdsmen; near Brahlsdorf is a stone which, according to a similar explanatory myth, was once a blasphemous shepherd; near Schwerin are three bowlders which were once wasteful servants; and at Neustadt, down to a recent period, was shown a collection of stones which were once a bride and bridegroom with their horses and wagon—all punished for an act of cruelty; and these stories are but typical of thousands.
At the other extremity of Europe we may take, out of the multitude of explanatory myths, that which grew about the well-known group of bowlders near Belgrade. In the midst of them stands one larger than the rest: according to the legend which was developed to account for all these, there once lived there a swineherd, who was disrespectful to the consecrated host; whereupon he was changed into the larger stone, and his swine into the smaller ones. So also at Saloniki we have the pillars of the ruined temple, which are widely believed, especially among the Jews of that region, to have once been human beings, and are therefore known as the "enchanted columns."
