Page:Researches into the Early History of Mankind and the Development of Civilization.djvu/234

224 for their presence. But it is also believed that the stone celts and hammers found buried in the ground are thunderbolts. The country folks of the West of England still hold that the "thunder-axes" they find, fell from the sky, and the Shetlanders agree in the opinion. In Brittany, the itinerant umbrella-mender of Carnac inquires on his rounds for pierres de tonnerre, and takes them in payment for repairs; and these are fair examples of what may be found in other countries in Europe, and not in those inhabited by our Aryan race alone, for the Finns have the same belief. The remarkable Chinese account of the thunder-stones has been already quoted, and it has been noticed that stone celts are held to be thunderbolts in Japan and the Eastern Archipelago. Even in a country where the use of stone axes by the Indians is matter of modern history, and in some places actually survives to this day, the Brazilians use, for such a stone axe-blade, their Portuguese word corísco, that is, "lightning," "thunderbolt" (Latin coruscare).

As the stone axes and hammers are but one of several classes of objects thought to be thunderbolts, it is probable that the myth took them to itself at a time when their real use and nature had been forgotten, and the reason of their being found buried underground was of course unknown. This view is supported by the fact of the existence of such instruments being also accounted for by taking them up into mythology in other ways. Thus in Japan the stone arrow-heads are rained from heaven, or dropped by the flying spirits who shoot them, while in Europe they are fairy weapons, albschosse, elf-bolts, shot by fairies or magicians, and in the North of Ireland the wizards still draw them out from the bodies of "overlooked" cattle. Dr. Daniel Wilson mentions an interesting post-Christian myth, which prevailed in Scotland till the close of the last century, that the stone hammers found buried in the ground were Purgatory Hammers for the dead to knock with at the gates.

The inability of the world to understand the nature of the