Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 23, 1912.djvu/65

Rh The passage in Marmion runs as follows:—

But with regard to this reference, the important factor is not the oft-quoted, I had almost said "over-quoted," text, as Mr. Robinson's article suggests, but Sir Walter Scott's own note (No. 26) upon it, to which he does not refer, but which is printed at the end of the volume, and runs as follows:—

The word "Protestant" is evidently meant to "conceal a jest" on the part of Sir Walter! This, however, is not the whole of the story, for, as Mr. G. C. Crick has pointed out in a recent paper, as far back as 1818 James Sowerby figured in The Mineral Conchology of Great Britain "an example of common Whitby ammonite that had been furnished with a head." Mr. Sowerby's remarks upon this point are as follows:—

"The Ammonites are called in common [parlance] Snakestones, and superstition has accounted for their having been found constantly without heads, saying, the curse of St. Cuthbert [the local saint] was the cause of it; but as some of the dealers felt it a possible inconvenience, they were determined to be less barbarous, and compassionately supplied some with heads. I was so curious as to desire to see what sort of heads might be substituted, and Lady Wilson kindly procured me a specimen