How the World Came to Be
Long, long ago, before the world existed, and when God and the Devil were all there was, these two started out on a journey together. All about them as they journeyed was nothing but water, with once in a long way a few scattered fragments of sand and clay.

After travelling for a while, God and His companion became tired, and began looking for a place to rest. None was to be found, and so God gathered into His hands some sand and clay that He saw lying nearby. Shaping this into a flat cake, God placed the cake upon the water and then proceeded to lie down on it and go to sleep.

The Devil was furious. He determined to get rid of God. So while God slept, the Devil pricked the cake of sand and clay on which He rested, pricked it full of holes. He hoped that without further ado the cake would sink to the bottom of the sea.

But God was not to be disposed of so easily. Waking from His sleep he commanded the cake of sand and clay to come to life and to grow. The mass responded. Bigger and bigger it grew, until finally it seemed to cover the whole water everywhere.

Now the Devil was even more angry. He began striking out at the now giant mass of clay and sand, trying to smash it to bits. But he had no luck, and all he succeeded in doing was merely to roughen the mass and puncture holes here and there in its surface. The cake remained intact and serenely afloat.

Thus it was that the Earth, which was the cake of sand and clay fashioned by God, came to have rivers and mountains, lakes, valleys, and seas. The Devil made a place for these in God’s divine creation by his constant puncturing and punching, and so he outdid even God Himself in helping to make the earth gracious and varied.

From: A World Remembered: Tales and Lore of the Polish Land. Ed. Marion Moore Coleman. Cheshire, CT: Cherry Hill Books, 1965.