Among all the peaks of the Świętokrzyskie Mountains, high above the clouds, only the peak of Łysa Góra reigns. This place was hated by local residents. Nobody dared to go there, especially on stormy nights. It was then that witches who lived in nearby towns gathered at the top of Łysa Góra. The gathering of the nearby witches was called Sabbaths.
Every day witches pretended to be exemplary women who were not afraid of any work. Men wanted such wives, but knowing the cunning of witches, they had to beware of such women as well. When evening came, clouds appeared in the sky from which terrible lightning bolts were beating. Witches mounted their brooms and sometimes even shovels. They flew over the household, casting charms on those houses that were not protected by holy pictures or holy devotional articles. Witches could send disease and even death upon people and their animals. They also often poisoned water and food. The worst crime, however, was charms that took away husbands’ love for wives and children for their parents.
When they finished teasing people, they chanted a spell that would take them straight to the top of Łysia Góra to celebrate the Sabbath. The spell was:
“The fence is not the fence
forest not forest
a village is not a village
you will carry “
Terrified people took advantage of the short period of peace to build a monastery on Łysa Góra. The works were quick, it was feared that the witches might disrupt the construction. When the building was erected, prayers and the ringing of bells began immediately. However, to stop people associating the place badly, Łysa Góra was called the Holy Cross Mountain.
Daily prayers of monks and people, and the tolling of bells weakened the powers of the witches. The devils, frightened by the diminishing number of witches with whom they performed blasphemous practices, decided to remove the monastery. So they pulled a huge boulder out of Hell and flowed to the ground through a hole that today is called the Hell Cave. To destroy the monastery, they took a huge boulder with them, but before they reached the rooster’s crowing announced the arrival of dawn. Then the devils lost their strength and returned to Hell. The huge boulder still stands where it was left by demons and is called the Devil’s Stone.
Enraged, Lucifer ordered his subjects to go back to St. Cross and get rid of the dangerous monastery once and for all. This time devils were carrying stones in sheets. They seemed to be at their destination when the geese, frightened by a noise, alerted the monks. One of them, thinking it was high time for morning prayer, began to ring the bell, which again thwarted the attack of the forces of hell. Stones abandoned by devils rolled down the hill and broken into pieces lie there to this day. This is how the gravel bore was created.
The monastic prayers were driven away once and for all by the local witches, who never organized any more sabbaths on the top of Łysa Góra.
