Devil's Furrow

[1][2] Based on recent research, it appears that the foundation of the legend lies in a 5.5 km long (completely straight) linear earthwork (rampart with two ditches) that controlled a significant east-west transportation corridor in the early Middle Ages or earlier.

[5] In addition, due to the fact that the Battle of Lipany took place in this area, descriptions of the battlefield are available, which preserve valuable information about the state and progress of the furrow.

It reappears just south of the village of Mělník [cs], from where it turns in an arc to the west and descends the slope along a wide road towards Sázava.

[8] The first written mention of the Devil's Wake is given at the beginning of the seventeenth century by Pontanus of Breitenberg [cs] in his collection of church songs.

[9] In 1903, Jozef Miškovský, a former employee of the Podlipanske Museum in Český Brod, and his friend, journalist and military topographer Hanuš Kuffner, noticed that there were no traces of the Devil's Furrow in many places in the landscape, and decided to describe the route according to the accounts of eyewitnesses.

Originally, it was probably a uniformly deep ditch, but it was plowed up, filled in, and over time overgrown so that today, although it can be traced along its entire length, it is only deeper in places, as, for example, near Lipany.

Through field research in the area between Chotouň and Sázava, they found a number of locations which they interpreted as alternative sections of the furrow not noticed by Miškovský and Kuffner.

[1] The work of Bernat and Štědra was followed ten years later by Čestmír Štuka and Petr Nový, who investigated the route of the furrow especially in the vicinity of Lipany Mountain using newly available remote sensing technologies.

Procopius is a historical figure from the turn of the first millennium A.D. His life connects Chotouň (place of birth) and Sázava (where he worked and died), similar to the Devil's Wake.

Jan František Beckovský, in the second part of Poselkyně starých příběhův českých, describes the legendary plowing of the furrow in more detail, "... when St. Procopius harnessed the evil spirit in his cave in Sázava to a horse, and rode with him from that cave through forests, through plains, hills, and valleys directly across the road or wagon road, which is used to walk and drive from Prague to Kolín, all the way to the village of Chotouň, and on that hill of Chotouň forced the evil spirit to scrape off the mud or greasy earth from the earth from which the hill was made at that time, and which can be seen from the Prague road today..."[13] František Jan Vavák [cs] furthers the legend in the numbered description of the map of the Lipany battlefield from 1788: "The village of Chotouň, the homeland of St. Procopius... there is a furrow in the form of a trench from St. Procopius driven by evil spirits to the Sázava monastery.

It is the Devil's Wake that runs along the Kouřim fault and connects the fords on the Sázava and the Elbe by a direct route, without crossing other important watercourses.

[14][10][11] Advances in remote sensing methods, especially the use of Lidar, have made it possible to reveal a 5.5 km long linear embankment with trenches in the route of the Devil's Furrow on Lipany Mountain.

At the southern end of this linear portion, a well-preserved remnant of a rampart accompanied by two shallow ditches on the sides was discovered in a wooded ravine.