I hope I've posted this in the right place, but anyway...I was in Prague from the 22nd of July to the 29th, and I got a book called 77 Prague Legends, by Alena Ježková. In it was this story:

A long time ago, street urchins would climb the walls of the Church of St. Martin's in the Wall, in order to steal young pigeons from the nests (it doesn't say why). One day, one the of the street boys was sitting on a stone buttress just under the roof, shouting to the other boys, messing around and being a general nuisance. Seeing this, a passer-by scolded him. The boy just pulled a face (). The passer-by raised both his arms and muttered something - and the boy turned to stone. He is still there to this day.

Wasn't that a lovely story, children? Anyhoo, I went to the church to see if there really was a stone boy, and there was. My dear father took a photo of him for me, and I give it to you now:


Can I have opinions on this, please? Petrified child or just a gargoyle type thingy? I look forward to hearing your ideas.

(I'm going to insert a thumbnail, in case the pic gets deleted from Wikipedia, 'cos I dunno what'll happen)

Uhm, a stone-sculpture representing the folk-tale perhaps?

Actually, I think that if the story is not true it was made up to explain the presence of the sculpture.

Yay, I've gone from 'Alien Embryo' to 'Ectoplasmic Residue!'

It's clearly not a petrified boy. As was said, either the story was made up to 'explain' it or the other way around. But I must say I love Prague I'm originally from Czech, been living in Australia for over 20 years but went back 3 years ago with my family for 8 weeks. Just loved it!

<-- That's the house I was born in, no 42. Ahhhh, the memories... *daydreaming*

Guardian

You've obviously never tasted fried pigeon before, cuz if you had you wouldn't need a reason... Yummy

Who the hell would WANT to eat filthy, disease-ridden, flying rodent birds anyway? Come to think of it, I'm stereotyping. I don't agree with the killing of pigeons. Hang on...how do street urchins FRY the pigeons? They probably ate them raw...