Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 23, 1912.djvu/59

 "SNAKESTONES" AND STONE THUNDERBOLTS AS SUBJECTS FOR SYSTEMATIC INVESTIGATION.

BY WALTER W. SKEAT, M.A.

(Read at Meeting, June 28th, 1911.)

a book published as lately as 1908 we read,—"When we hear of the good or bad luck which is assumed to go with St. Cuthbert's beads, (joints [or, as our geological friends insist we should call them, ossicles] of fossil encrinites), St. Peter's fingers and thunderbolts (belemnites), Devil's toe-nails (gryphaeas), and snakestones (ammonites), we might hastily conclude that the picturesque name has originated the belief. But fossils as charms or mascots form an ancient chapter in history and an unwritten chapter in pre-history."

The chapter in question is certainly unwritten, in the sense that, although an immense number of isolated details have been recorded about "fossil folklore" and celt superstitions, there has been no proper survey of the facts, and the object of this paper is simply to focus attention on this class of facts and on the system required for investigating them. We find, when we come to look into the matter, a far larger number of fossil forms which have given birth to folklore elements of various kinds than we could have believed possible. For example's sake, let us take the foregoing list. We may add to what the author has said that the small fossil plates from the Fame Islands,