My wishes and my tastes
Stop-overs and city breaks
Legends and anecdotes
Legends have settled in the heart of the narrow streets and come to life in the very stones.
The Graoully, legendary dragon, dominates the fantasy world of Metz.
Saint Nicolas and Pierre Perrat follow in its footsteps in a merry-go-round through the centuries…
The Graoully
"With eyes bigger than the stomach, and a head bigger than the rest of the body, with horrific, wide jaws and lots of teeth both upper and lower…".
"With eyes
bigger than the stomach..."
This is the portrait according to François Rabelais of the Graoully, the dragon of Metz, who lived long in the ruins of the Roman amphitheatre until Saint Clément, come to convert the city to Christianism, ordered it to leave the place immediately!
Clément tied up the Graoully with his stole and took him calmly to the banks of the river Seille nearby. The dragon and all the snakes following it dived into the river and disappeared forever.
Saint Nicolas
According to the famous nursery rhyme, there were three little children on their way to harvest the fields.
Having lost their way, they asked a butcher to take them in! He greeted them with open arms: when they had eaten and fallen asleep, the butcher slit their throats, cut them into pieces and put them in the salting tub. Time passed and the butcher forgot all about them.
Seven years later, as he was passing through Lorraine, Saint Nicolas also begged the butcher for hospitality. When questioned as to what he would like for supper, he asked if he could taste some of the salted meat which had been in the salting pot for the past seven years!
There were three little children...
His secret revealed the butcher fled… Saint Nicolas approached the salting pot and worked a miracle: the three little children, stretching and yawning, opened their eyes, a little confused… as though they had just woken up.
Pierre Perrat’s pact with the devil
Once upon a time, there lived a skilled architect and builder of cathedrals, Pierre Perrat.
What a headache this Saint-Etienne cathedral was turning out to be! So few stones, so much light…
The story goes that Pierre Perrat was unable to resolve the mystery of the squaring of the circle, so he concluded a pact with the devil.
Happily he was more cunning than Faust; the architect deceived the Malignant one and saved his soul from damnation.
The Easter bunny
Since the 16th century, the most popular tradition concerning Easter in German-speaking countries is the tale of the hare or bunny rabbit who, in the early morning, does his best to hide his sugar or chocolate eggs in the gardens, to the delight of little children.
It is with great expectation and pleasure that they find the eggs hidden by the imaginary hare, symbol of life and resurrection on the first mornings of spring!
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