The oldest stone bridge over the stormy Vltava, called the Judith Bridge, struggled with the frequent ruthlessness of the destructive river force. When the Vltava once tore off twelve of its heavy and centuries-paved grated pillars and devastated all the surrounding buildings, the noblemen of that time had to have a sturdier and more indestructible work built. For this bold, meticulous project, they summoned a silent but exceptionally gifted master builder from the Italian lands to the shores of the Old Town, whose face and bodily mask were wildly overgrown with a tremendously large, coarse, and opaque beard. The locals never laughingly called this visiting old artist anything other than Bradáč (The Bearded One). For the construction, he masterfully used an intricate technique of dressed red Hořice blocks and mortar poured with wine and heavy milk for durability, which commands undiminished respect for him to this day.

It was the ancient right of every exceptional and chief builder to carve their motionless portrait at the end of a successfully completed task on one of the focal points of the structure as an author’s signature for the dust of eternity. Bradáč therefore personally and with great artisan exaggeration, using honest marlstone and a brush with colored varnishes, carved his rough, gloomy portrait directly into the frontal sandstone bridge pillar by the shore. When, after centuries, the merciless threat of water eroded a piece of the foundation, skilled Prague masons took Bradáč’s captivating facial relief and inserted it into the bank of the coastal stone wall of the new Charles Bridge above Křižovnické Square so providently and purposefully that it would forever warn all the wretched and endangered human swarming below the bank against the devastating spring whims of the elements.

The face of the Stone Builder thus completely lent the local market traders and ordinary city people a sort of roar of unusually clear prophecy before a flood. Up until that time, no one had a better measuring stick for fears of a growing torrential water storm. For as soon as the dark, frothy water muck ravenously reached the bearded man only at the lower edge of his flowing sandstone beard, the inhabitants of the adjacent Old Town houses got terrifying goosebumps at the sight and quickly dragged all valuables from dwellings and drying rooms from basements to mezzanines into leather bundles to safety. No one made fun of the memorial Bradáč anymore. He became the manly grid of survival and the boundary angle of the entire bank.

The most panic-inducing phase, however, was when the water level drowned even the stone lips. The flooding of the Křižovnické sandy passages took to their heels in a whisper by all the inhabitants of the cross houses, and then the perceptive Prague poor with a thorny lantern would cross along the Vltava and warningly call out into the black streets a slushy and clear alarm for future generations of boatmen. People even flooded the very markets and sandstone-filled tiles of the Old Town Square behind the castle knee-deep in little boats, whereby Bradáč’s face preached the unchangeable command: “Flee, Praguers, up to the slopes, for the water will now wash away absolutely everything along with human stupidity.” Since then, the old sculpture of Bradáč protects the residents’ attention from every cruel force of the river.