CHAPTER XXXI

PIAMOUN

[1] PIAMOUN was a virgin who lived the years of her life with her mother, eating every other day in the evening and spinning flax. She was accounted worthy of the gift of prophecy, of which this is an example. It happened once in Egypt during the overflow (of the Nile) that one village attacked another. For they fight over the distribution of the water, so that murders and woundings ensue. Well, a stronger village attacked her village, and men came in a crowd with spears and clubs to destroy her village. [2] But an angel appeared to her, revealing to her their attack. And, sending for the elders of the village, she said: “Go out and meet the men who are coming against you from that village, lest you also perish with the village, and urge them to cease from their malice.” But the elders were afraid and fell at her feet beseeching her and saying to her: “We dare not meet them; for we know their drunkenness and madness. [3] But if you have pity both on the whole village and your own house, go out yourself and meet them.” Not agreeing to this, she went up to her own cottage—it was night at the time—and stood continually in prayer, not kneeling down, and beseeching God thus: “O Lord, Who judgest the earth, to Whom no unjust act is pleasing, when this prayer reaches Thee, let Thy power nail these men to the spot whereever it finds them.” [4] And about the first hour, when they were about three miles away, they were nailed to the ground and could not move. And it was revealed also to them that this hindrance had come to them through her petitions. And they sent to the village and asked for peace, declaring: “Give thanks to God and the prayers of Piamoun, for they hindered us.”