Three maidens on one donkey

Before the former Thionville gate at Luxembourg, on the right of the old country road called the Berlinerweg, stands a chapel enclosing a stone cross.

On its upper beam the Saviour is roughly carved on the cross with two servants, one of whom holds a spear and the other the sponge towards him. On the main beam St Wendelin is shown with hat, bag and shepherd’s staff in his left hand and a rosary in his right, his name beneath. Under that figure is an inscription of 1738.

On the left side wall of the chapel is a group worked in wood, about fifty centimetres high, showing three maidens seated on a donkey. All three ride in the manner of women, their faces turned to the right like the donkey’s head. The middle one has her eyes bound with a white band and is marked out by particularly long hair. All three hold the left hand on the breast and the right gracefully raised.

Fifty paces down the valley are the St Quirinus grotto and the Quirinus spring.

The present St Quirinus chapel was, beyond all contradiction, originally a robbers’ den.

Once an old woman lived there with her three sons, who plied the wicked trade of robbery.

Three maidens who came along that road one day were set upon by them, plundered and ill used. They escaped, however, on their donkey, and had the chapel built by the road with the group described as an ex voto.

The band round the middle maiden’s head means that she had been wounded on the forehead.

Another time a gentleman came riding by with his servant. As they were tired, they put up at the robbers’ den. The old woman was alone, for her sons were out robbing.

The two guests asked the old woman for supper, and while she was busy with it the gentleman and his servant heard the gentleman’s horse scraping with its hoof. Made suspicious by this, they examined the place where the horse stood, and behold, a quantity of corpses lay buried there under the earth.

Now they knew where they were, made ready to defend themselves, and when the robbers came back they shot two of them dead.

Here the recorded text breaks off. What became of the third son and the old woman the teller did not go on to say, or Gredt did not write it down.