The Devil and the Porta Westfalica

In olden times, it is told, the Weser had to squeeze its water through the narrow valley of the Wallücke in the Wiehengebirge, for the Porta did not yet exist. In the broad valley lived pious, God-fearing people, and it was precisely this that stirred the Devil’s anger. He wanted the whole Weser valley under his thumb. He tormented and harried the inhabitants, yet however hard he tried, not one would be turned from the faith.

So he devised a craftier means. From the southern hills he dragged huge boulders, one after another, and with them he dammed the gorge of the Wallücke until it was sealed tight. The water of the Weser, which had its only outlet there, could go nowhere. It rose against the mountain wall, climbed day by day, and spread out over the land.

What at first seemed a pond became a lake, and the lake became a sea without a shore. The Devil watched from the heights and waited for hardship to wear the people down.

The rising waters flooded the villages and the hills and formed a vast inland sea. Before this deluge the people fled into the mountains, and many met their end in the waves. Yet no one would worship the Devil. In their distress they prayed to God, that He might see what befell them and banish the Evil One back to his hell.

The misery of his faithful moved the Lord. He heard their prayer and let a mighty storm arise. The people on their mountain tops believed their last hour had come and that the world would perish with man and mouse. But all of this happened for their salvation.

A bolt of lightning came down and, with a terrible clap of thunder, split the mountain ridge open. A cleft yawned, and through it the water could drain away like smoke through a chimney. Slowly the hills rose again like islands out of the flood, the fields and houses came forth, and the Weser returned to its bed. From then on it flowed north through the new Weserscharte, and so the Porta Westfalica came to be.

The Devil had to admit that he had lost his game. Still he would not give in. He went south, loaded a whole mountain onto his shoulders, and meant to plug the new passage with it. But this time he had overestimated his strength.

As he flew with his heavy load of sin across the border of Lippe, the sack tore and the entire burden crashed down. It heaped itself into a great mountain. In the crashing and hurling, the tempter with horn and hoof came under his own load and was buried beneath it. That is why the people of that country call this mountain the Velmerstot, which is said to mean the Devil’s death.

To this day, people say, the Evil One sits down there, buried under his own burden. At times it rumbles and roars within the mountain, so that those living nearby grow afraid. But he cannot come out again; he stays bound in the stone until the evening of all days. And the narrow gate by Minden still stands, as proof that the prayer of simple folk was stronger than the cunning of the Devil.