In Scotland such a stone is often called a witch-stone,[1] and hung up in the byres as a protection for the cattle. The same is the case in some parts of England. In the Museum at Leicester is a "witch-stone" from Wymeswold, a pebble with a natural hole towards one end, which has been preserved for many generations in one family, and has had great virtues attributed to it. It prevented the entrance of fairies into the dairy; it preserved milk from taint; it kept off diseases, and charmed off warts, and seems to have been valuable alike to man and beast. In the Western Islands[2] ammonites are held to possess peculiar virtues as "cramp-stones" for curing cramp in cattle.
Stones remarkable either for their colour or shape appear at all times to have attracted the attention of mankind, and frequently to have served as personal ornaments or charms among those to whom the more expensive and civilized representatives of such primitive jewellery, which now rank as precious stones, were either unknown or inaccessible.
Among the cave-dwellers of a remote age, both of France and Belgium, fossil shells appear to have been much in use as ornaments, numbers having been found perforated for suspension. Pendants of stone occur in some abundance with interments in the dolmens of France;[3] occasionally the living forms of shells also were perforated and worn as ornaments, both in the days when the reindeer formed the principal food of the cave-dwellers, and in more recent yet still remote times. A black polished oval pebble, found in the lake-dwelling of Inkwyl,[4] has been regarded by De Bonstetten as an amulet.
In Merovingian and Teutonic interments, we find occasionally, pendants of serpentine[5] and other materials, balls of crystal, and sometimes of iron pyrites.[6]
A peculiar stone with a groove round it, not unlike in form to the Danish fire-producing stones of the early Iron Age, was in use for divining purposes among the Laplanders, and has been engraved and described by Scheffer.[7]
What are regarded as ancient amulets of stone, found in Portugal,[8] are highly decorated.
Numerous amulets, commonly formed of various kinds of stone and teeth of animals, usually perforated for suspension, were worn by the North-American Indians.[9] Indeed, among almost all savage nations such charms and ornaments abound.
As I am not treating of the hidden virtues of stones and gems, nor of their use as amulets, it is needless to say more in illustra-
- ↑ P. S. A. S., vol. v. p. 128. Anthrop. Rev., vol. iv. p. 401. See also Journ. Anth. Inst., vol. xvii. p. 135, and "The Denham Tracts," vol. ii.. Folklore Soc., 1895.
- ↑ Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot., vol. v. p. 315.
- ↑ Arch. Assoc. Journ., vol. xxiv. p. 40. Matériaux, vol. v. p. 118, 249, &c.
- ↑ "Supp. au Rec. d'Ant. Suisses," pl. i. 2.
- ↑ Baudot, "Sép. des Barb.," p. 78.
- ↑ Lindenschmidt, "A. u. h. V.," vol. ii. Heft xii. Taf. vi. 12.
- ↑ "Lapland," ed. 1704, p. 277.
- ↑ Cong. Préh. Lisbonne, 1880, pl. v. Da Veiga, "Ant. de Algarve," 1856. Cartailhac, p. 92.
- ↑ Schoolcraft, "Ind. Tribes," vol. i. p. 86.
