The Legend of the Stoneman
This happened long time ago. There were some mates drinking wine in a pub, when the tinkling of a little bell, accompanied by the whistle of some voices praying, was heard coming from the same direction of the Parish Church of San Lorenzo.
These mates looked out the door of the pub. At the begining of the street with candles and lanterns they saw a reduced group of people who were coming with the priest. Tight against his chest, he carried in his hands a little box of the Viaticum in which he brought a host in order to administer the last Communion to a sick person.
Even though these heavy drinkers of the pub were few religious people given more to drink wine and to gamble than to piety, they interrupted their conversations
when they saw the procession getting a little closer. They hurried up kneeling down for a moment while the Sacrament was going past. But one of them, a neighbourhood's thug called Matthew the blond, considering himself brave and boasting about disbelief to show his calmness before the others, said in a loud voice:
- Hey! Bunch of chickens who kneel as women, you will see a bullying man now. I will not kneel, but I will remain standing forever.
And in effect, he stayed there forever, since a deafening thunder broke out on the street. A bolt of lightning stroke on the wicked man, which turned him into stone and buried him up to the knees in the soil.
And the petrified body of the blaspheme sinner who dared to challenge God is still there.
Esta es otra:
The Legend of the Fishman
As it has come to us through some writings and the oral tradition, the story tells thus:
in the middle of the 17th century in a town called Liérganes, in Cantabria, there was a couple, Francisco de la Vega and María de Casar, who had got four children. Francisco died, and his widow sent his son Francisco to Bilbao to learn the trade of carpenter.
Being in Bilbao, the day before San Juan Day in 1674 he went to swim with some friends.But taken by the current, he disappeared and nobody got to know of him again. In Cádiz, just five years later, in 1679, some fishermen affirmed to have seen to an aquatic being with human appearance, which dissapeared rapidly. This apparition was happening constantly until the capture of the creature with chunks of bread and a few nets. Once captured they could see that it was a fishshape man with scales.
Then he was taken to the Convent of San Francisco, where he was interrogated to know who he was, and after a time he was able to stammer a word: "Liérganes". Nobody knew what it meant, until a person from Cantabria, who was working in Cádiz, commented that in Cantabria there was a town called this way. Domingo de la Cantolla, secretary of the Spanish Inquisition, also confirmed the above mentioned affirmation since he was from there.
Later, the news came to Liérganes to discover if something strange had happened in the last few years. From Liérganes they answered that only Francisco de la Vega's disappearance had been registered five years earlier. Then Juan Rosendo, a friar of the convent, accompanied Francisco up to Liérganes to verify if it was true that he was from there. At the height of the Monte de la Dehesa, Francisco went forward and went directly up to María de Casar's house, who rapidly recognised him as her son.
At his mother's house, Francisco lived calmly without having any interest in anything. He went barefooted, sometimes naked and scarcely talked. Sometimes he was several days without eating and he did not show enthusiasm for anything. After living nine years at his mother's house, he disappeared in the sea without getting to know anything of him at all.