Page:Notes on the folk-lore of the northern counties of England and the borders.djvu/207

 Rh The difficulty in churning milk, however, proceeds most commonly from the cow having been struck by an elf-stone while grazing in the field. However much the poor creature may suffer from the wound, no human eye will see it till she has been rubbed all over with the blue bonnet belonging to the chief of the family, or to some very aged man. The wound, or its scar, if the mischief be of old date, will then be plainly seen.

The elf-stone is described as sharp, and with many corners and points, so that whichever way it falls it inflicts a wound on the animal it touches. Popular belief maintains that, the elves received these stones from old fairies, who wore them as breast-pins at the fairy court, and that the old fairies received them in turn from mermaidens. Such is Mr. Wilkie’s account of the matter. Doubtless they are really the flint arrow-heads of our ancestors. Mr. Denham maintains this, and describes them as formed of flint about an inch long and half-an-inch broad. Irish peasants wear them about their necks, set in silver, as an amulet against elf-shooting. He adds that the disease, said to be produced by an elf-shot, consists really in an over-distension of the cow’s first stomach, from eating to excess clover and grass with the morning dew upon it. Mention is made of elf-stones in the confession of Isabel Gowdie, who was tried for witchcraft in April 1662, and afterwards executed. She declared that the elves formed them from the rough flint, the archfiend himself perfecting or “dighting” them; and she gave the names of many persons whom she and her comrades had slain with them, stating that whoever failed to bless himself when the little whirlwind passed which accompanied their locomotion fell under their power, and they had the right of shooting at him.

Mr. Wilkie records that a few years ago a ploughman in Ettrick Forest was said to have obtained an elf-stone thus. While ploughing a field he heard a whizzing sound in the air, and looking up perceived a stone aimed at one of his horses. He drove on, and it fell by the animal’s side. He stopped and picked up the stone, but found its angles so sharp that they cut