In Pozezdrze, a noise can be heard from deep beneath the ground. Metallic sounds come from under a hill on top of which a pine grows, its old branches twisted. Criminals used to be hanged on that tree, and their weight has bent its branches. People living around cannot understand what is happening underground. They decide to ask for advice from an old wise man. He persuades them to dig a deep hole into the hill. Under the ground, they hit a brick wall. The old man descends to see what is hidden behind it. Inside the mountain, he finds a treasure – a chest of gold. The wise man asks for payment – a leather purse found deep beneath the hill. But the people of Pozezdrze are taken over by greed; they drive the old man away empty-handed. When the villagers pull the chest out of the hole it slips from their hands. It slides down the mountain and plunges into the Sapina River. The old man explains that it is a punishment for greed. The villagers lose all of the gold. The old man – golden gloves from the leather purse, with the power to heal people and animals. Since then, the resourceful villagers extract bricks from under the hill, using them to build huge stables. But the mountain sits in silence.

Only the lonely pine was soon forgotten. (…) It did not become part of the legend like the chest with gold, because in legends there is no place for pines, even the ones with the most twisted branches.
Jadwiga Tressenberg, „Mazurskie opowieści”


