Page:Early Man in Britain and His Place in the Tertiary Period.djvu/367

] and they have been traced, by M. Desor and others, over a large part of Europe, from the Pyrenees to Scandinavia, sometimes occurring on tombs, and at others on isolated blocks of stone. They are called cups, bowls, basons, "marmites du diable," and in some places in Germany "stones of the dead." From these names, coupled with the fact that at the present time they are filled with butter or lard, Madlle. Mestorf concludes that they were intended to hold offerings to the souls of the dead, who were waiting again to be clothed with a human body to appear among mortals. The prosperity of the living would depend on their good will. This superstition has taken deep root in the religious sentiment of Europe, and, like many others, has been sanctioned by Christianity. Sometimes the bowls are accompanied with Christian signs. In the neighbourhood of Niemegk-in-der-Mark, in Prussia, there is a holed stone bearing the name of Bischofs-stein, and the figure of a cross and of a cup. In no less than twenty-seven churches in Prussia, and two in Sweden, these holes have been made in the walls of the churches after they were built. In the town of Griefswald it used formerly to be the practice to get rid of fevers and other maladies by blowing into them. Sometimes they bear marks of having been recently filled with grease. According to M. Hildebrand, the Swedish peasants of the present day call them elfstones, and place in them needles, buttons, and the like, as offerings to the elves. These holes have been observed in some of the Icelandic churches built by Scandinavian colonists. The "cup-stones," as they are termed by the countrymen, are still pointed out to the stranger on the moors near Eyam, Derbyshire, and