The St. John's Day Sacrifice
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| Geographic Coordinates: 52° 2' 3.66" N, 11° 52' 33.52" E |
In Dornburg, a village near the town of Barby, the local church sunk beneath the ground one day. At the spot where this church once stood, a deep lake has formed, which is still called the Kirchsee (“church lake”) today. This lake demanded a victim every year, and always on St. John’s Day. The victim was always a boy from the village. How it came to be that no boys have drowned in the lake for many years is told by the following story.
When the old village pastor died, the congregation received a new pastor. This pastor loved to fish, and thus he went to the Scharlachsee or Kirchsee lakes to cast his fishing line on every day whenever the season and weather permitted. Once, on St. John’s Day, he sat on the shores of the lake and enjoyed his fishing. Everything was quiet around him. Then he saw how two large fish appeared out of the waters, and one of whom said to the other: “The day and the hour has come, but the boy is missing.”
The pastor was so startled by what he had seen and heard that he hurriedly retrieved his fishing line and prepared to go home. At that moment a boy from the village approached the lake. The pastor asked him where he planned to go. The boy answered that he wanted to bathe in the Kirchsee when the honorable reverend had gone home. Now the pastor had to think about the words of the fish, and had an ill premonition. Therefore he decided to prevent the impending misfortune if it was in his power. He thus told the boy that he didn’t want to go home yet but lay down in the grass and read for a bit. The boy should thus fetch him a certain book from his house.
The boy thus went to the parish house and asked the pastor’s wife for the book. But when he returned with it, the pastor told him that he had brought him the wrong book and that he should go back to the parish house and get the correct one. The boy immediately went back to the parish house, but when he returned with the book the pastor again told him that the book was not the right one. Then he sent the boy to the parish house for the third time. This time, when the boy came to him with the book, the pastor told him that this was the right one, and now he wanted to read in it for a while. Since the boy couldn’t bathe in the Kirchsee while the pastor was present, he gave up on bathing and went home.
Meanwhile dusk had begun to fall and now the pastor likewise set forth for home.
In this way the Kirchsee was deprived of its victim, and no boy drowned in it at later times either, but the pastor died soon thereafter. Thus, the two fish in the lake must have taken their revenge on the pastor.
Source: Veckenstedt - Zeitschrift für Volkskunde 1. Band, p. 178f