Credit: Ali Sahib/Chronicle.lu
Despite its compact size, Luxembourg has its fair share of fables, folktales, myths and legends, from a mermaid and a wild woman to a wolfman and an underwater bogeyman.
In this series of articles, Chronicle.lu will be delving into some of these tales and their lasting impact in Luxembourg.
Next up is the legend of the Péiter Onrou statue.
Located in a grotto where the Rue du Glacis and the Côte d’Eich meet in Luxembourg City, the statue is associated with an old and intriguing superstition. For years, women who had been betrayed by their husbands would visit this life-size statue to seek revenge. They performed a strange ritual around it, hoping to bring their unfaithful spouses back to them.
The ritual involved lighting candles filled with needles and placing them around the statue. As the candles burned and the needles heated up, it was believed that the unfaithful husband would feel stinging pain and restlessness (Onrou means unrest in Luxembourgish), forcing him to return home.
Today, the Péiter Onrou statue remains a reminder of these stories. It stands beneath another grotto that houses a sculpture of Jesus Christ. While the rituals are most likely no longer practiced, the statue, classified as a national monument in 2017, continues to draw visitors to its beautiful spot. There has also been much debate about the historical individual behind Peter Onrou. According to some sources, the statue represents Christ, while some claim that Onrou could be Saint Crispin or Peter of Verona, a 13th-century Italian Catholic priest.
