TOPOGRAPHICAL MYTHS 51 



promontory of Prosnitz Hook and the peninsula of 

 Drigge. There still remained, however, a narrow 

 passage between Pomerania and Rugen which he had 

 no material left to bridge over, and so in a fit of rage 

 and vexation he fell dead, and his undertaking still 

 remains incomplete. 1 The geologist who has studied 

 the singular forms and distribution of the c glacial 

 drift ' can best appreciate this and similar attempts 

 to account for the shapes and grouping of these still 

 enigmatical mounds and ridges. 



The progress of Christianity extirpated the pagan 

 gods and giants, but failed to destroy the instinctive 

 craving after a supernatural origin for striking physical 

 features. This surviving popular demand consequently 

 led to gradual modification, of the older legends. In 

 Catholic countries the deeds of prowess were not in- 

 frequently transferred to the hands of the Virgin or of 

 saints. Thus at Saintfort, in the Charente region, a 

 huge stone that lies by the river Ney is said to mark 

 where the Virgin dropped from her apron one of four 

 pillars which she was carrying across. In Britain, and 

 especially in Scotland, the devil of the Christian faith 

 appears to have in large measure supplanted the war- 

 locks and carlines of the earlier beliefs, or at least to 

 have worked in league with them as their chief. All 

 over the country ' devil's punchbowls,' ( devil's cauld- 

 rons,' ' devil's bridges ' and other names mark how 

 his prowess has been invoked to account for natural 

 features which in those days were deemed to require 

 some more than ordinary agency for their production. 



These popular efforts to explain physical phenomena 



1 See Grimm's Deutsche Mythologie, i. 502. 



