LAKE LEGENDS.

Shannon News, 15 January 1926, Page 3

LAKE LEGENDS.

POBTENTS IN THE WATERS. STRANGE STORIES ,OF RIVERS. Four hundred and fifty years ago a terrible battle was fought on the shores of Lake Morat, near Neuchatel, in which. 24,000 Swiss peasants defeated 36,000 i French under Charles the Bold. The fight was so furious that the waters of the ,lake were reddened with Mood . At long intervals since that date the lake has been seen to go ruddy all over and although it is known now that; this strange change in colour is due to a tiny water plant, the people of the lake all believe that it is an omen of war. There are several lakes or streams in different parts of the world with which are connected similar strange stories. One is Lake Chrissie, four miles from Ermelo, in the Eastern Transvaal. When the Dutch emigrants from the Cape first settled in the Transvaal an old Kaffir medicine j man predicted that some day the lake would become dry, and then the Boers would lose their independence. This prophecy was fulfilled. We have in Englana several streams described as Woe Waters. The bestknown is at Croydon and is called the Bourne Flood. This underground river usually breaks about once in five years, and in old days was regarded as a portent of "death, pestilence or a great battle." It is a curious coincidence that from 1911 to 1915, inclusive, it every year, and ran down the Caterham Valley. In San Jacopo, Italy, is a great courtyard belonging to an old and now ruined mansion, and in this yard is a deep and very ancient well, of which it is said that strange noises resembling groans come from it whenever death threatens one of the great family who once owned the property. In 1904 such strange sounds came from the well that the neighbours were frightened. Yet nothing happened. The sounds ceased and were beginning to be forgotten when news came from America that the last survivor of the old house had died IB San Franclaco.