ted for by a long and
circumstantial legend to the effect that Peleus threw it at Phocas.

A similar mode of explaining such objects is seen in the mythologies of
northern Europe. In Scandinavia we constantly find rocks which tradition
accounts for by declaring that they were hurled by the old gods at each
other, or at the early Christian churches.

In Teutonic lands, as a rule, wherever a strange rock or stone is found,
there will be found a myth or a legend, heathen or Christian, to account
for it.

So, too, in Celtic countries: typical of this mode of thought in
Brittany and in Ireland is the popular belief that such features in the
landscape were dropped by the devil or by fairies.

Even at a much later period such myths have grown and bloomed. Marco
Polo gives a long and circumstantial legend of a mountain in Asia Minor
which, not long before his visit, was removed by a Christian who,
having "faith as a grain of mustard seed," and remembering the Saviour's
promise, transferred the mountain to its present place by prayer, "at
which marvel many Saracens became Christians."(422)

(422) For Maxime Du Camp, see Le Nil: Egypte et Nubie, Paris, 1877,
chapter v. For India, see Duncker, Geschichte des Alterthums, vol. iii,
p. 366; also Coleman, Mythology of the Hindus, p. 90. For Greece, as to
the Lycabettus myth, see Leake, Topography of Athens, vol. i, sec. 3;
also Burnouf, La Legende Athenienne, p. 152. For the rock at Aegina,
see Charton, vol. i, p. 310. For Scandanavia, see Thorpe, Northern
Antiquities, passim. For Teutonic countries, see Grimm, Deutsche
Mythologie; Panzer, Beitrag zur deutschen Mythologie, vol. ii; Zingerle,
Sagen aus Tyrol, pp. 111 et seq., 488, 504, 543; and especially J. B.
Friedrich, Symbolik und Mythologie der Natur, pp. 116 et seq. For Celtic
examples I am indebted to that learned and genial scholar, Prof. J.
P. Mahaffy, of Trinity College, Dublin. See also story of the devil
dropping a rock when forced by the archangel Michael to aid him in
building Mont Saint-Michel on the west coast of France, in Sebillot's
Traditions de la Haute Bretagne, vol. i, p. 22; also multitudes of other
examples in the same work. For Marco Polo, see in Grynaeus, p. 337; also
Charton, Voyageurs anciens et modernes, tome ii, pp. 274 et seq., where
the legend is given in full.

Similar mythical explanations are also found, in all the older religions
of the world, for curiously marked meteoric stones, foss