Ják: The Devil Goes to Rome (Small Town Legends A to Z)

This year my A to Z theme is Small Town Legends. I am exploring folklore from villages and small towns around Hungary, bringing you the most entertaining bits. You can plan your next visit around them!

Ják is a municipality in Vas County, Western Hungary, with about 2,500 inhabitants. It lies fairly close to Szombathely, the Savaria of Roman times, and the Amber Road that facilitated trade between the Baltics and the Mediterranean for millennia. No wonder that there are Roman ruins scattered in the area - including the large broken columns that were known to locals as Devil Stones.

The story has dozens of variants, but here is the gist:

In Ják there was a potter who had a young son. The boy kept accidentally breaking the pottery until his father said "The Devil take you!" in anger. The Devil did show up to take the boy - but the father begged him until he promised to return in 20 years. In that time, the boy grew up and became a priest. When the Devil showed up to take him again, he was about to conduct mass in the church in Ják. Devil and young priest made a bet: if the Devil could bring a stone from Rome before mass was over, he could take the priest's soul.

The Devil then flew to Rome and was returning with the stone soon enough. The priest saw him from the window, turned around, and spoke the closing words really fast. Thus, the mass ended, and the Devil was so angry he threw the stone at the church. By divine intervention, the church was undamaged, and the stone broke in two, just as it is today (the Devil Stones are indeed two parts of the same column). Legend says one can even see the marks of the Devil's claws on them.

There is one variant that also mentions that the Devil's shoes were filled with sand/pebbles along the way. He either emptied the pebbles around Ják, or he flew to Egypt and emptied the sand there, creating the Sahara. There was even one storyteller who claimed an Egyptian person visited the town once, and confirmed the latter story.

Source here. Image from here (the column is now a WWI memorial)

Ják does have a beautiful church from the 13th century. Image from here.