Máriagyűd: A Church Rolling on Peas (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!

Image from here

Máriagyűd is now a part of the town of Siklós in Baranya county, southern Hungary. Before 1977, it was its own municipality with about 1,500 inhabitants. The church, rebuilt in the 18th century, is a famous shrine and pilgrimage site for the Virgin Mary.

Here is the legend:

In the olden days the church of Gyüd was not in its current place. It used to be up on the mountain. But the priests didn't like that they had to climb all the way up every morning. So they got together and tried to figure out how to move the church to a more convenient place. One of them had an idea: they should lift the church, spread dried peas under it, and roll it.

And so they did. They got people together, lifted the church with levers, spread buckets of dried peas under it, and spread even more peas along the mountainside (don't ask). Then they gave the church a push. The church began to roll down the mountainside, to its current place. There, the ground leveled out, and so the church had been ever since, making it easier for people to visit.

(Collected in 1969 from Molnár Béni. Quoted in the Hungarian Folktale Catalog)

This is also a very common legend type; my grandfather had the same story about a neighboring village. Usually, however, it doesn't succeed. People try to push and shove the church, and then conclude they had moved it enough (while not moving it at all).