Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 14, 1903.djvu/326

298 by red string, from the person, or out side a bed curtain, or tied to the wrist of a baby; or a number of cash from the reigns of different emperors may be placed under a bridal bed. Some of the cash so used and exhibited are current in Pekin only.

The cash sword shown is too familiar to need description. It may be noted that many brought home by travellers are not genuine charms, but only copies made for sale to tourists as curios. The cash sword is specially valued as a protection for a bridal bed, outside the curtains of which it is hung with its blade parallel to the horizon. The last charm shown, ma tsien or horse money, is blank on one side, and on the other shows a horse with the inscription "shadow of the footprints" (a wish for a safe and speedy return).

I. Having been informed that a gentleman living at Bonarbridge, in Sutherlandshire, was in possession of three stones which were supposed to confer magical powers on a woman who died but three years ago, I endeavoured to get them, in order to exhibit them to the Society. Their owner, while admitting that the stones have no power of their own, attaches some value to them as curiosities. Having got them on loan for a few days, I examined them, and had them photographed. These stones are the three shown on the spectator's left. They are water-worn nodules of sandstone, the larger one of a red stone, the other two, shaped like eggs, of a light grey, spotted with dark brown, as if the spotted portion contained iron. The woman who owned them undoubtedly considered them of value as having some secret virtues. The principal fact recorded about them in the neighbourhood in which she died is that with their assistance she caused the death of the wife of a man who had jilted herself.

II. The centre of the photograph shows what was worn