Chapter XLVIII: How a Man Was Saved From Robbers (lb)

This story, summarily and rather obscurely told in the text before us, is related more clearly in the Life of Brenainn (VSH, i, 101). The saint, seeing a man hard pressed by his enemies, bade him take up his position beside a standing stone; he then transformed the victim into the stone, and the stone into the victim. The assailants, thus deceived, cut off the head of the stone, and departed in triumph: the saint then reversed the transformation, leaving the man to go his way in peace. An analogous story is that of Cadoc, who turned raided cattle into bundles of fern, and transformed them back to cattle when the raiders had retired discomfited (_Cambro-British Saints_, pp. 49, 342).