much the same method of cure, prevailed, and indeed in places even now prevails, in Scotland.[1]
The late Dr. J. Hill Burton informed me that it is still an article of faith that elf-bolts after finding should not be exposed to the sun, or they are liable to be recovered by the fairies, who then work mischief with them.
Mr. Llewellynn Jewitt has recorded a similar elf-arrow superstition[2] as obtaining in Derbyshire, where flint arrow and spear heads are by some regarded as fairy darts, and supposed to have been used by the fairies in injuring and wounding cattle. It was with reference to discoveries near Buxton, in that county, that Stukeley wrote—"Little flint arrow-heads of the ancient Britons, called elfs'-arrows, are frequently ploughed up here."[3]
The late Sir Daniel Wilson[4] gives many interesting particulars regarding the elf-bolt, elf-shot, or elfin-arrow, which bears the synonymous Gaelic name of Sciat-hee, and cites from Pitcairn's "Criminal Trials," the description of a cavern where the archfiend carries on the manufacture of elf-arrows with the help of his attendant imps, who rough-hewed them for him to finish. He also mentions the passage in a letter from Dr. Hickes[5] to Pepys, recording that my Lord Tarbut, or some other lord, did produce one of those elf-arrows which one of his tenants or neighbours took out of the heart of one of his cattle that died of an usual death (sic). Dr. Hickes had another strange story, but very well attested, of an elf-arrow that was shot at a venerable Irish bishop by an evil spirit, in a terrible noise louder than thunder, which shaked the house where the bishop was.
Similar superstitions prevailed among the Scandinavian[6] nations, by whom a peculiar virtue was supposed to be inherent in flint arrow-heads, which was not to be found in those of metal.
The fact, already mentioned, of arrow-heads of flint being appended to Etruscan[7] necklaces of gold, apparently as a sort of charm, seems to show that a belief in the supernatural origin of these weapons, and their consequent miraculous powers, was of
- ↑ Pennant's "Tour," vol. i. p. 115. "Stat. Account of Scotland," vol. x. p. 15; xxi. 148. Collins' "Ode on Pop. Superst. of the Highlands." "Allan Ramsay's Poems," ed. 1721, p. 224. Brand's "Pop. Ant.," 1841, vol. ii. p. 285.
- ↑ Reliquary, vol. viii. p. 207.
- ↑ "Itin. Cur.," (ed. 1776), vol. ii. p. 28.
- ↑ "Preh. Ann. of Scot.," vol. i. p. 178, et seqq.
- ↑ Pepys' "Diary and Cor." (ed. 1849), vol. v. p. 366.
- ↑ See Nilsson's "Stone Age," p. 197. Wilson's "Preh. Ann. of Scot.," vol. i. p. 180.
- ↑ Mat., vol. xi. p. 540.
