The Petrified Man

This is the name of the menhir standing to the right of the church’s main entrance in Družec, with a head suggested in a similar way to the Horoměřice menhir. Together with the stones at Drahomyšl, Selibice and Droužkovice, it forms a solstitial alignment according to Dr Špůrek. Two brothers supposedly once quarrelled here and one cursed the other into stone. Tormented by remorse, the guilty brother wanted to bury it, but the priest allowed only its placement in a cemetery corner. At first a little roof sheltered it, but this later collapsed. “Everyone fears it and everyone avoids it.” Another version identifies the approximately 150-cm menhir as a petrified shepherd who drove sheep past the church during the Passion reading, mockingly cracking his whip. A wooden tablet supposedly once bore a trilingual inscription: “A man swearing falsely was turned to stone here.” The menhir appears in the anonymous ecclesiastical work Via Sancta Praga Vetero-Boleslavium, the second-oldest known depiction of menhirs in this country.