mistress of one of these stones. It is a small piece of great renown, and cost her 680 piastres, i. e. nearly 7l. sterling.”
In the neighbourhood of Stamfordham, Irish stones are the favourite charms. The Rev. J. F. Bigge informs me that he knows of three, all in high estimation. A servant of Mrs. ——, of Kyloe House, related to him how he was once sent to the house of a neighbouring lady to borrow such a stone. It had been brought from Ireland, and was never permitted to touch English soil. The stone was placed in a basket, carried to a patient with a sore leg, the leg rubbed with it, and the wound healed. People came many miles to be touched with these stones, but they were considered more efficacious in the hands of an Irish person. We learn from Mr. Denham’s Notes that Irish stones were at one time common in the Northumbrian dales, and in high repute as a charm to keep frogs, snakes, and other vermin from entering the possessor’s house. Evidently the blessing bestowed by St. Patrick upon the Emerald Isle was supposed to dwell in its very stones. Mr. Denham describes one of these stones, which belonged to Mr. Thomas Hedley, son to a gentleman of the same name, at Woolaw, in Redesdale. It was of a pale-blue colour, three-and-a-quarter inches in diameter, and three-quarters of an inch thick. It is not perforated, and therein differs from the holy or self-bored stones of the North.[1]
Nor does it seem that the blessing stopped here. It is believed at Chatton, in Northumberland, that, if a native of Ireland draw a ring round a toad or adder, the creature cannot get out and will die there. My informant, the Rev. Hugh Taylor, adds, “My groom mentions, that, when a dog is bitten by an adder, the only remedy is to wash the place with the milk of an Irish cow.”
The late Canon Humble mentioned to me the following mode of
- ↑ As to this later description of stone, however, we often come across it in the Folk-Lore of the whole of England. Self-bored stones are considered charms against witchcraft, and they keep away nightmare both from man and beast. They are therefore suspended at the head of the bed as well as in stables. I have heard of this belief in the North of England, and also in Suffolk and in Cornwall.
