very ancient date. It has still survived in Italy,[1] where the peasants keep flint arrow-heads to preserve their houses from lightning, believing that the lightning comes down to strike with a similar stone—a superstition which Professor Gastaldi also found prevalent in Piedmont. In some instances they are carried on the person as preservatives against lightning, and in parts of the Abruzzo[2] they are known as lingue di S. Paolo, and the countryman who finds one devoutly kneels down, picks it up with his own tongue, and jealously preserves it as a most potent amulet. In the Foresi Collection[3] at the Paris Exhibition were some arrow-heads mounted in silver as amulets, like those in Scotland, but brought from the Isle of Elba. Another has been engraved by Dr. C. Rosa.[4]
M. Cartailhac[5] has published an interesting pamphlet on such superstitions, and Professor Bellucci has also dilated upon them. They are abundant in the neighbourhood of Perugia.[6]
It is a curious circumstance, that necklaces formed of cornelian beads, much of the shape of stemmed arrow-heads, with the perforation through, the central tang, are worn by the Arabs of Northern Africa at the present day, being regarded, as I was informed by the Rev. J. Greville Chester, as good for the blood. Similar charms are also worn in Turkey. I have a necklace of fifteen such arrow-head-like beads, with a central amulet, which was purchased by my son in a shop at Kostainicza,[7] in Turkish Croatia. Among the Zuñis[8] of New Mexico, stone arrow-heads are frequently attached to figures of animals so as to form charms or fetishes.
Enough, however, has been said with regard to the superstitions attaching to these arrow-heads of stone; the existence of such a belief in their supernatural origin, dating, as it seems to do, to a comparatively remote period, goes to prove that even in the days when the belief originated, the use of stone arrow-heads was not known, nor was there any tradition extant of a people whose weapons they had been. And yet it is probable that of all the
- ↑ Gastaldi, "Lake Habitations of Northern and Central Italy," Chambers's transl., p. 6.
- ↑ Nicolucci, "Di Alcune Armi ed Utensili in Pietra," 1863, p. 2.
- ↑ Mortillet, Mat., vol, iii. p. 319.
- ↑ Archivio per l'Antropologia, vol. i. pl. xv. 8.
- ↑ "L'âge de Pierre dans les Sonvenirs et superstitions populaires," Paris, 1877.
- ↑ Bull. di Paletn. It., 1876, pl. iv. 7.
- ↑ A. J. Evans, "Bosnia and Herzegovina," 1876, p. 289; 1877, p. 291.
- ↑ 2nd Ann. Rep. of Bur. of Ethn., 1880—1. Mat., 3rd S., ii., 1885, p. 532.
