The Legend of the Magic Stone
Colehill First School
A long time ago there lived a Celt named Athopothix. He had eyes that looked as though they were almost closed and a long beard. On his head he wore a pointed hat made of horse leather with little circles with holes in the middle engraved on it.
Now Athopothix was a Wise Man. Indeed, he was said to have magical powers. He lived right at the top of a huge mountain. Once the mountain had been a volcano or Fiery Mountain, as the Celts called it, but Athopothix had created a magical force field to calm the heat and the flames died down.
Around the edge of the fiery mountain was a spiral pathway. Athopothix used to like walking around this spiral path, looking for natural objects that could help him with his magic. One day he noticed a tree growing out of the side of the mountain. Something was hanging off a branch, tied there by a leather thong. Athopothix took it off and noticed that it was a stone shaped like an axe head. But because his eyes were poor he did not notice the hole in the middle of it so he decided to throw it away. Just as he raised his arm, a little voice coming from his leather hat whispered to him, warning him that he was making a mistake. But it was too late.
The stone flew through the air, right up to the top of the fiery mountain where it landed inside. There was a bubbling, boiling noise and then, suddenly, huge bubbles shot up into the air. The stone flew up again in an arc through the sky, all the way around the spiral pathway and back towards Athopothix. It was glowing with heat and cloudy with smoke so the Wise Man was sure it was going to burn him. But, as it landed back in his hand, it felt only a little warm.
The stone had travelled full circle. It was a magic stone just right for healing, Athopothix decided. For many years Athopothix used the stone for healing. But one day he knew it was time for him to die and go to the other World. So he made his way slowly up the spiral pathway for the last time until he reached the centre of the mountain where he lay down. Before he died he called Rionn, one of Maeve’s grandfathers, who was a brave Celtic warrior.
When Rionn arrived, Athopothix told him to take the healing stone and use it for the good of the tribe. Rionn tried to make Athopothix use the healing stone to stop himself from dying but Athopothix refused. He said he was not ill but merely at the end of his life on this earth. His time had come. So sadly Rionn left Athopothix and brought the healing stone to the Durotriges.
They still told the legend of Athopothix and the stone at their festivals and they still remembered the magic spell Athopothix chanted to calm the heat of the volcano:
“Spirally path
Come forth
Stop the fiery mountain
Stop it growing angry
Stop it
Stop it
Stop it now.”
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Once there was a fiery mountain
With red hot lava
Streaming and flowing.
This is the story Athopothix
A wise man
Who tamed the Fiery Mountain
With magic words
And discovered there
A magic healing stone.
One sunny evening long ago
Athopothix dawdled along
A spirally path
Searching for twigs and stones.
SUDDENLY
A stone swaying
In an olive tree caught his eye
But a small voice in Athopothix’s hat
Said “Keep it, keep it”
But too late
He hurtled it into
The mountain’s boiling fire
Bubbling, boiling
Hissing, spitting
Bubbling, boiling
Hissing, spitting
And shot out like a hawk
In an arc
Across the sunset
Round and round the spirally path
Into Athopothix’s shaking palm.
The stone was red hot
Yet it didn’t burn.
So Athopothix knew it was
A healing stone.
Time passed quickly
Athopothix felt worn out.
It was time to travel
To the Other World.
Slowly up the spiral pathway
For the last time.
Lying in the centre he called Rionn,
A Celtic warrior, to him
And gave the stone
For the welfare of the tribe.
Rionn said “Can you not heal yourself
From death?”
Athopothix said “My time has come.”
So Rionn took the stone
And left sadly
Returning to the Durotriges.
We still tell this legend
At all our festivals
Winter, autumn, spring, summer.
The Legend of the Magic Stone
Pamphill First School
Two thousand years before the Veneti arrived, a huge statue of an eagle stood in the woods where Kingston Lacy is today. The statue was made of shiny smooth gold.
One day a witch who was goddess of a star decided to bring this statue to life.She moulded a round shape in the sky and breathed life into it. So the first full moon appeared. The witch breathed on it again and the moon began shining onto the statue on the earth. The hot beams of moonlight slowly melted the golden statue until it came to life.
A real, live, huge golden eagle opened its beak, opened its claws, flapped its wings and soared up high into the sky.
For a long time the eagle sought out all enemies of the Celts, tearing the straw roofs off their houses with its claws and gobbling up the people with its beak. In this way four thousand enemies died.
But another witch was watching all this – the goddess of the sun. She felt sorry for all the people who were dying and decided to stop all the killing. She waited until the star witch goddess had a rest. Then she made the sun shine hotter and hotter, hotter and hotter…until the heat was so strong that the golden eagle could bear it no longer. He fell to the earth crashing into the rocks. The eagle was dead.
Over the years the sea washed stones over the eagle’s body. It became a huge fossil embedded in the rock.
Thousands of years later Maeve’s grandfather, a brave warrior, came along and saw a stone “claw” sticking out of a huge rock by the sea. Being a brave warrior he thought he would use the claw as an axe so he broke it off and made a hole in it to fit a handle through.
But little did he know that the sun witch goddess had put magic into the eagle’s claws as she killed it so that the claws would heal people and well as hurting them. From that time onwards the stone claw would be used for healing and not for killing.
So the Durotriges have always kept the stone safe and used it in times of danger to make things better.