_Clach Dearg, or Stone of Ardvoirloch._
[Illustration: Fig. 18. Stone of Ardvoirloch.]
This stone is a clear rock-crystal ball of a similar character, but
somewhat smaller than the Clach-na-Bratach, and placed in a setting (see
Fig. 18) of four silver bands or slips. The following account of the
Ardvoirloch curing-stone is from the pen of one of the present members
of that ancient family:--
"It has been in the possession of our family from _time immemorial_, but
there is no writing about it in any of the charters, nor even a
tradition as to _when_ and _how_ it became possessed of it. It is
supposed to have been brought from the _East_, which supposition is
corroborated by the fact of the silver setting being recognised as of
Eastern workmanship. Its healing powers have always been held in great
repute in our own neighbourhood, particularly in diseases of cattle. I
have even known persons come for the water into which it has been dipped
from a distance of forty miles. It is also believed to have other
properties which you know of.
"These superstitions would have existed up to the present day, had I not
myself put a stop to them; but six years ago, I took an opportunity to
do away with them, by depositing the stone with some of the family plate
in a chest which I sent to the bank. Thus, when applied to for it (which
I have been since then), I had the excuse of not having it in my
possession; and when the Laird returns from India, it is hoped the
superstition may be forgotten, and "the stone" preserved only as a very
precious _heirloom_.
"I may mention that there were various forms to be observed by those who
wished to benefit by its healing powers. The person who came for it to
Ardvoirloch was obliged to draw the water himself, and bring it into the
house in some vessel into which this stone was to be dipped. A bottle
was filled and carried away; and in its conveyance home, if carried into
any house by the way, the virtue was supposed to leave the water; it was
therefore necessary, if a visit had to be paid, that the bottle should
be left outside."
Other charm-stones enjoyed, up to the present century, no small medical
reputation among the inhabitants of the Highlands. In some districts,
every ancient family of note appears to have affected the possession of
a curing-stone. The Campbells of Glenlyon have long been the hereditary
proprietors of a charm-stone similar to those that I have already
mentioned. It consists of a roundish or ovoidal ball, apparently of
rock-crystal, about an inch and a half in diameter, and protected by a
silver mounting. To make the water in which it was dipped sufficiently
medicinal and effective, the stone, during the process, required to be
held in the hand of the Laird. The Bairds of Auchmeddan possessed
another of these celebrated northern amulets. The Auchmeddan Stone is a
ball of black-coloured flint, mounted with four strips of silver. A
legend engraved on this silver setting--in letters probably of the last
century--states that this "Amulet or charm belonged to the family of
Baird of Auchmeddan from the year 1174." In the middle of the last
century, this amulet passed as a family relic to the Frasers of
Findrack, when an intermarriage with the Bairds occurred.
Curing-stones seem to have formerly been by no means rare in this
country, to the south also of the Highland Borders. In a letter written
by the distinguished Welsh archaeologist Edward Lhwyd, and dated
Linlithgow, December 17, 1699, he states that betwixt Wales and the
Highlands he had seen at least fifty different forms of the
party-coloured glass bead or amulet known under the name of Adder-beads
or Snake stones.[226] In Scotland he found various materials used as
healing amulets, particularly some pebbles of remarkable shape and
colour, and hollow balls and rings of coloured glass. "They have also,"
he says, "the _Ombriae pellucidae_, which are crystal balls or
hemispheres, or depressed ovals, in great esteem for curing of cattle;
and some on May-day put them into a tub of water, and besprinkle all
their cattle with that water, to prevent being elf-struck, bewitched,
etc."
In the Lowlands, the curing-stone of greatest celebrity, and the one
which has longest retained its repute, is
_The Lee Penny._
In the present century this ancient medical charm-stone has acquired a
world-wide reputation as the original of the _Talisman_ of Sir Walter
Scott, though latterly its therapeutic reputation has greatly declined,
and almost entirely ceased.[227] The enchanted stone has long been in
the possession of the knightly family of the Lockharts of Lee, in
Lanarkshire. According to a mythical tradition, it was, in the
fourteenth century, brought by Sir Simon Lockhart from the Holy Land,
where it had been used as a medical amulet, for the arrestment of
haemorrhage, fever, etc. It is a small dark-red stone, of a somewhat
triangular or heart shape, as represented in the adjoining woodcut (Fig.
19). It is set in the reverse of a groat of Edward IV., of the London
Mint.[228]
[Illustration: Fig. 19. The Lee Penny.]
When the Lee Penny was used for healing purposes, a vessel was filled
with water, the stone was drawn once round the vessel, and then dipped
three times in the water. In his _Account of the Penny in the Lee_,
written in 1702, Hunter states, that "it being taken and put into the
end of a cloven stick, and washen in a tub full of water, and given to
cattell to drink, infallibly cures almost all manner of deseases. The
people," he adds, "come from all airts of the kingdom with deseased
beasts."
One or two points in its history prove the faith that was placed in the
healing powers of the Lee Penny in human maladies of the most formidable
type. About the beginning of last century, Lady Baird of Saughtonhall
was attacked with the supposed symptoms of hydrophobia. But on drinking
of, and bathing in, the water in which the Lee Penny had been dipped,
the symptoms disappeared; and the Knight and Lady of Lee were for many
days sumptuously entertained by the grateful patient. In one of the
epidemics of plague which attacked Newcastle in the reign of Charles I.,
the inhabitants of that town obtained the loan of the Lee Penny by
granting a bond of L6000 for its safe return. Such, it is averred, was
their belief in its virtues, and the good that it effected, that they
offered to forfeit the money, and keep the charm-stone.
About the middle of the seventeenth century the Reformed Protestant
Church of Scotland zealously endeavoured, as the English Church under
King Edgar had long before done, to "extinguish every heathenism, and
forbid well-worshippings, and necromancies, and divinations, and
enchantments, and man-worshippings, and the vain practices which are
carried on with various spells, and with elders, and also with other
trees, and with stones, etc."[229] They left, however, other practices,
equally superstitious, quite untouched. Thus, while they threatened "the
seventh son of a woman" with the "paine of Kirk censure," for "cureing
the cruelles (scrofulous tumours and ulcers),"[230] by touching them,
they still allowed the reigning king this power (Charles II. alone
"touched" 92,000 such patients);[231] and the English Church sanctioned
a liturgy to be used on these superstitious occasions. Again, the Synod
of the Presbyterian Church of Glasgow examined into the alleged curative
gifts of the Lee Penny; but, finding that it was employed "wtout using
onie words such as charmers and sorcerers use in their unlawfull
practisess; and considering that in nature there are mony things seen to
work strange effects, q^{r}of no human witt can give a reason, it having
pleasit God to give to stones and herbes special virtues for the healing
of mony infirmities in man and beast, advises the brethern to surcease
their process, as q^{r}in they perceive no ground of offence: And
admonishes the said Laird of Lee, in the useing of the said stone to tak
heed that it be used hereafter w^t the least scandal that possiblie may
be."[232]
[Footnote 217: _Natural History_, Book xxx. chapters i. ii.]
[Footnote 218: "What we are going to say," observes Pliny, "is
marvellous, but it may easily be tested by experiment. If a person
repents of a blow given to another, either by hand or with a missile, he
has nothing to do but to spit at once into the palm of the hand which
has inflicted the blow, and all feeling of resentment will be instantly
alleviated in the person struck. This, too, is often verified in the
case of a beast of burden, when brought on its haunches with blows: for,
upon this remedy being adopted, the animal will immediately step out and
mend its pace. Some persons, also, before making an effort, spit into
the hand in the manner above stated, in order to make the blow _more_
heavy."--Pliny's _Natural History_, xxviii. Sec. 7.]
[Footnote 219: _Natural History_, Book xxx. Sec. 4. Archaeologists are now
fully aware of "the accord" of the ancient inhabitants of Britain with
those of Persia and the other eastern branches of the Aryan race in many
other particulars, as in their language, burial customs, etc. According
to some Indian observers, stone erections, like our so-called Druidical
circles, cromlechs, etc., are common in the East. Is it vain to hope
that amid the great and yet unsearched remains of old Sanscrit
literature, allusions may yet be found to such structures, that may
throw more light upon their uses in connection with religious,
sepulchral, or other services?]
[Footnote 220: Grimm thinks that the formulae of Marcellus partake more
of the Celtic dialects of the Irish, and consequently of the Scotch,
than of the Welsh. As one of the shortest specimens of Marcellus's
charm-cures, let me cite, from Pictet, the following, as given in the
_Ulster Journal of Archaeology_, vol. iv. p. 266:--"Formula 12. He who
shall labour under the disease of watery (or blood-shot) eyes, let him
pluck the herb Millefolium up by the roots, and of it make a hoop, and
look through it, saying three times, '_Excicumacriosos_;' and let him as
often move the hoop to his mouth, and spit through the middle of it, and
then plant the herb again." "I divide," observes Pictet, "the formula
thus: _exci cuma criosos_, and translate it, 'See the form of the
girdle.'" After a long and learned disquisition on the component words
Pictet adds--"The process of cure recommended in this formula is of a
character altogether symbolical. Girdles (_cris_), which we shall meet
with again in formula No. 27, seem to have performed an important part
in Celtic medicine. By making the eye look through the circle formed by
the plant, a girdle, as it were, was put round it; and it is for this
reason that the formula says, see the form (or model) of the girdle. The
action of spitting afterwards through the little ring expressed
symbolically the expulsion of the pain." The so-called Celtic
word-charms in the formulae of Marcellus are usually longer than the
above; as, "_Tetune resonco bregan gresso_;" "Heilen prossaggeri nome
sipolla na builet ododieni iden olitan," etc. etc.]
[Footnote 221: On this subject I elsewhere published, two years ago, the
following remarks:--"The medical science and medical lore of the past
has become, after a succession of ages, the so-called folk-lore and
superstitious usages of times nearer our own. Up to the end of the last
century, patients attacked with insanity were occasionally dipped in
lakes and wells, and left bound in the neighbouring church for a night.
Loch Maree, in Ross-shire, and St. Fillan's Pool, in Perthshire, were
places in which such unfortunate patients were frequently dipped. Heron,
in his _Journey through Scotland_ in the last century, states that it
was affirmed that two hundred invalids were carried annually to St.
Fillan's for the cure of various diseases, but principally of insanity.
The proceedings at this famous pool were in such cases an imitation of
the old Greek and Roman worship of AEsculapius. Patients consulting the
AEsculapian priest were purified first of all, by bathing in some sacred
well; and then having been allowed to enter into and sleep in his
temple, the god, or rather some priest of the god, came in the darkness
of the night and told them what treatment they were to adopt. The poor
lunatics brought to St. Fillan's were, in the same way, first purified
by being bathed in his pool, and then laid bound in the neighbouring
church during the subsequent night. If they were found loose in the
morning, a full recovery was confidently looked for, but the cure
remained doubtful when they were found at morning dawn still bound. I
was lately informed by the Rev. Mr Stewart of Killin, that in one of the
last cases so treated--and that only a few years ago--the patient was
found sane in the morning, and unbound; a dead relative, according to
the patient's own account, having entered the church during the night,
and loosened her both from the ropes that bound her body and the
delusions that warped her mind. It was a system of treatment by mystery
and terrorism that might have made some sane persons insane; and hence,
perhaps, conversely, some insane persons sane. Mr. Pennant tells us that
at Llandegla, in Wales, where similar rites were performed for the cure
of insanity, viz., purification in the sacred well, and forced detention
of the patient for a night in the church, under the communion-table, the
lunatics or their friends were obliged to leave a cock in the church if
he were a male, and a hen if she were a female--an additional
circumstance in proof of the AEsculapian type of the superstition. But
perhaps, after all, the whole is a medical or mythological belief, older
than Greece or Rome, and which was common to the whole Aryan or
Indo-European race in Asia before they sent off, westward, over Europe,
those successive waves of population that formed the nations of the Celt
and Teuton, of the Goth, and Greek, and Latin. The cock is still
occasionally sacrificed in the Highlands for the cure of epilepsy and
convulsions. A patient of mine found one, a few years ago, deposited in
a hole in the kitchen floor; the animal having been killed and laid down
at the spot where a child had, two or three days previously, fallen down
in a fit of convulsions."--See the _Medical Times and Gazette_ of Dec.
8, 1860, p. 549.]
[Footnote 222: See, for example, Kemble's work on the Anglo-Saxons, vol.
i. p. 528, for various Teutonic medical superstitions and cures.]
[Footnote 223: A very intelligent patient from the North Highlands, to
whom I happened lately to speak on this subject, has written out the
following instances that have occurred within her own knowledge:--"Twenty
years or more ago, in the parish of Nigg, Ross-shire, there was a lad of
fifteen ill with epilepsy. To cure him, his friends first tried the charm
of mole's blood. A plate was laid on the lad's head; the living mole was
held over it by the tail, the head cut off, and the blood allowed to drop
into the plate. Three moles were sacrificed one after the other, but
without effect. Next they tried the effect of a bit of the skull of a
suicide, and sent for this treasure a distance of from sixty to one hundred
miles. This bit of the skull was scraped to dust into a cup of water,
which the lad had to swallow, not knowing the contents. This I heard
from a sister of the lad's. There was a 'strong-minded' old woman at
Strathpeffer, Ross-shire whose daughter told me that the neighbours had
come to condole with the mother after she had fallen down in a fit of some
kind. They strongly advised her to bury a living cock in the very place
where she had fallen, to prevent a return of the ailment. A woman in
Sutherlandshire told me that she knew a young man, ill of consumption,
who was made to drink his own blood after it had been drawn from his arm.
This same woman was ill with a pain in her chest, which she could get
nothing to relieve; so her father sent off for 'a knowing man,' who, when
he saw the girl, repeated some words under his breath, then touched the
floor and her shoulder three times alternately, and with alleged success."]
[Footnote 224: In the first chapter of Adamnan's work, the miracle is
again alluded to as follows:--"He took a white stone (_lapidem
candidum_) from the river's bed, and blessed it for the cure of certain
diseases; and that stone, contrary to the law of nature, floats like an
apple when placed in the water."]
[Footnote 225: For other instances of waters rendered medicinal by being
brought in contact with saint's bones--such as St. Marnan's head, with
St. Conval's chariot, etc. etc., see Dalyell's _Superstitions of
Scotland_, p. 151, etc. Sibbald's _Memoirs of the Edinburgh College of
Physicians_, p. 39.]
[Footnote 226: See _Philosophical Transactions_ for the year 1713, p.
98. For instances of curing-stones in the Hebrides, see Martin's
_Western Isles_, p. 134, 166, etc.]
[Footnote 227: I was lately told by the farmer at Nemphlar, in the
neighbourhood of Lee, that in his younger days no byre was considered
safe which had not a bottle of water from the Lee Penny suspended from
its rafters. Even this remnant of superstition seems to have died out
during the present generation.]
[Footnote 228: I state this on the high numismatic authority of my
friend, Mr. Sim. Sir Walter Scott describes the coin as a groat of
Edward I.]
[Footnote 229: Kemble's _Anglo-Saxons_, vol. i. p. 527, etc.]
[Footnote 230: See a case of this prohibition in the _Ecclesiastical
Records of the Presbytery of St. Andrews_ for September 1643. "It is
manifest by experience," says Upton, "that the seventh male child by
just order, never a girle or wench being borne betweene, doth heall only
with touching, by a natural gift, the king's evil; which is a speciall
gift of God, given to kings and queens, as daily experience doth
witnesse." See Upton's Notable Things (1631), p. 28. Charles I. when he
visited Scotland in 1633, in Holyrood Chapel, on St. John's day,
"heallit 100 persons of the cruelles, or kingis eivell, yong and
olde."--Dalyell's _Superstitions_, p. 62.]
[Footnote 231: See the "_Charisma Basilicon_" (1684) of John Browne,
"Chirurgion to His Majesty," for a full and charming account of the
whole process and ceremonies of the royal "touch," the prayers used on
the occasion, and due proofs of the alleged wondrous effects of this
"sanative gift, which hath (says Dr. Browne) for above 640 years been
confirmed and continued in our English Princely line, wherein is not so
much of their Majesty shown as of their Divinity," and which is only
doubted by "Ill affected men and Dissenters."]
[Footnote 232: See the _Gentleman's Magazine_ for December 1787.]