anged into stone for offending Mercury; Pyrrhus for offending
Rhea; Phineus, and Polydectes with his guests, for offending Perseus:
under the petrifying glance of Medusa's head such transformations became
a thing of course.

To myth-making in obedience to the desire of explaining unusual
natural appearances, coupled with the idea that sin must be followed by
retribution, we also owe the well-known Niobe myth. Having incurred the
divine wrath, Niobe saw those dearest to her destroyed by missiles from
heaven, and was finally transformed into a rock on Mount Sipylos which
bore some vague resemblance to the human form, and her tears became the
rivulets which trickled from the neighbouring strata.

Thus, in obedience to a moral and intellectual impulse, a striking
geographical appearance was explained, and for ages pious Greeks looked
with bated breath upon the rock at Sipylos which was once Niobe, just
as for ages pious Jews, Christians, and Mohammedans looked with awe upon
the salt pillar at the Dead Sea which was once Lot's wife.

Pausanias, one of the most honest of ancient travellers, gives us a
notable exhibition of this feeling. Having visited this monument of
divine vengeance at Mount Sipylos, he tells us very naively 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
Bors slaying the giant Ymir and transforming his bones into boulders;
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 Plesse,
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.
Cornely.

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 Konigstein, which all visitors to the Saxon Switzerland
know so well, is a boulder which for ages was believed to have once been
a maiden transformed into stone fo