This story, summarily and rather obscurely told in the text before us,
is related more clearly in the Life of Brenainn (VSH, i, 101). The
saint, seeing a man hard pressed by his enemies, bade him take up his
position beside a standing stone; he then transformed the victim
into the stone, and the stone into the victim. The assailants, thus
deceived, cut off the head of the stone, and departed in triumph: the
saint then reversed the transformation, leaving the man to go his
way in peace. An analogous story is that of Cadoc, who turned raided
cattle into bundles of fern, and transformed them back to cattle when
the raiders had retired discomfited (_Cambro-British Saints_, pp. 49,
342).