A castle on a rock has one permanent weakness: water. Some time around the middle of the sixteenth century the garrison began driving a shaft down through the limestone of the lower courtyard, and reached water roughly eighty metres down. How long it took is disputed — the legend and many guides say forty years, while the castle's own dating puts the work between about 1557 and 1570. That much is history. The story told at the wellhead is not: it says a Turkish nobleman called Omar came to ransom Fatima, whom the lord of the castle was holding, and was told he could have her if he brought the castle water; that he and his men cut for years, and when the water finally came he carried the first cup up and said, “you have water, but you still have no heart.” No document names Omar or Fatima. What can be shown is that the diggers were the castle's own soldiers — and that the tale grew up around a real and genuinely remarkable hole in the rock, which is how most good legends work.Hrad na skale má jednu trvalú slabinu: vodu. Niekedy okolo polovice 16. storočia sa posádka zahryzla do vápenca na dolnom nádvorí a razila šachtu, kým asi osemdesiat metrov pod nádvorím nenarazila na vodu. Ako dlho to trvalo, sa pramene nezhodujú: povesť aj mnohí sprievodcovia hovoria o štyridsiatich rokoch, hradné datovanie kladie prácu zhruba medzi roky 1557 a 1570. Toľko sú dejiny. Príbeh, ktorý sa pri studni rozpráva, nimi nie je: turecký šľachtic Omar vraj prišiel vykúpiť Fatimu, ktorú pán hradu držal, a dostal odpoveď, že ju dostane, keď hradu prinesie vodu; hĺbil so svojimi ľuďmi roky, a keď voda konečne vytryskla, doniesol prvý pohár hore a povedal: „Vodu máš, ale srdce stále nemáš.“ Omara ani Fatimu nespomína nijaká listina. Doložiť sa dá to, že kopali hradní vojaci — a že sa povesť nabalila na skutočnú, naozaj pozoruhodnú dieru v skale. Presne tak dobré povesti vznikajú.
