The Hangman Who Mended a Fate

While people still knew a good deal more than how to eat porridge, it was hangmen above all who prophesied, healed and worked magic. In public people shunned them, but at night they often came to them for advice. Such a jack-of-all-trades hangman is said to have lived on Štvanice too, and one evening a mother came to him with her boy to have him cured. As they entered, the hangman's sword stirred on the wall — an evil sign that the boy would one day fall to the executioner's blade. But the master of executions not only cured the boy; for a good fee he mended his future fate as well: he pricked the boy's hand lightly with his sword, so that the ominous steel should have at least a drop of his blood. In memory of it the mother had a picture painted in gratitude, showing a great sword touching a hand from which blood springs. And the boy grew into a pious man and died of natural causes at a great age.