In the present century this ancient medical charm-stone has acquired a world-wide reputation as the original of the _Talisman_ of Sir Walter Scott, though latterly its therapeutic reputation has greatly declined, and almost entirely ceased.[227] The enchanted stone has long been in the possession of the knightly family of the Lockharts of Lee, in Lanarkshire. According to a mythical tradition, it was, in the fourteenth century, brought by Sir Simon Lockhart from the Holy Land, where it had been used as a medical amulet, for the arrestment of haemorrhage, fever, etc. It is a small dark-red stone, of a somewhat triangular or heart shape, as represented in the adjoining woodcut (Fig. 19). It is set in the reverse of a groat of Edward IV., of the London Mint.[228] [Illustration: Fig. 19. The Lee Penny.] When the Lee Penny was used for healing purposes, a vessel was filled with water, the stone was drawn once round the vessel, and then dipped three times in the water. In his _Account of the Penny in the Lee_, written in 1702, Hunter states, that "it being taken and put into the end of a cloven stick, and washen in a tub full of water, and given to cattell to drink, infallibly cures almost all manner of deseases. The people," he adds, "come from all airts of the kingdom with deseased beasts." One or two points in its history prove the faith that was placed in the healing powers of the Lee Penny in human maladies of the most formidable type. About the beginning of last century, Lady Baird of Saughtonhall was attacked with the supposed symptoms of hydrophobia. But on drinking of, and bathing in, the water in which the Lee Penny had been dipped, the symptoms disappeared; and the Knight and Lady of Lee were for many days sumptuously entertained by the grateful patient. In one of the epidemics of plague which attacked Newcastle in the reign of Charles I., the inhabitants of that town obtained the loan of the Lee Penny by granting a bond of L6000 for its safe return. Such, it is averred, was their belief in its virtues, and the good that it effected, that they offered to forfeit the money, and keep the charm-stone.