As to the stone celt discovered at Ash, Mr. Douglas remarks it may not “be improbable that this stone instrument was deposited with the dead, as an amulet; and which the owner had found and preserved with a superstitious reverence.” In a tumulus in Flanders,[473] six celts were found placed upright in a circle round the interment, but from the difference in the condition of their surface they appeared to be of different ages, so that it has been suggested that they also were gathered from the surface of the soil and placed in the tomb as amulets. We shall subsequently see that flint arrow-heads were frequently thus preserved in Merovingian cemeteries. In many cases in Germany,[474] stone axes, for the most part perforated, are said to have been found in association with objects of iron; but the proofs of the contemporaneity of the two classes of objects are not satisfactory. The religious veneration attaching to the Thor’s hammers may, however, have had to do with their interment in graves, at a time when they had ceased to be in ordinary use. Moreover, the axes may have been preserved to ward off lightning. Another argument in favour of these instruments having remained in use in Britain until a comparatively late period, has been derived from the circumstance of the words _stan-æx_ and _stan-bill_, occurring in Ælfric’s Saxon glossary. These words are translated by Lye[475] as a stone axe, a stone bill—terms which have naturally been regarded as referring to axes and bills made of stone, which, therefore, it might be reasonably inferred were in use at the time when the glossary was written, or about A.D. 1000. On examination, however, it appears that no such inference is warranted. The glossary is Latin with the Saxon equivalents annexed to each word, and the two words referred to are |146| _Bipennis_, rendered _twibille_ and _stan-æx_; and Marra, rendered _stan-bill_. Now _Bipennis_ is an axe cutting at either end, and the word is accurately rendered by “twibille;”[476]—the axe having “bill” or steel at its two edges. But a double-cutting axe in stone is a form of very rare occurrence, and this alone raises a presumption of the _stan_ in _stan-æx_ referring to stone in some other manner than as the material of which the axe was made. The second word, _Marra_, seems to clear up the question, for this was a mattock or pick-axe, or some such tool, and this is rendered _stan-bill_,—the steel for use on or among stones. The stone axe may be one for cutting stones, like the mill-bill of the present day, which is used for dressing mill-stones, and this being usually sharp at each end, might not inaptly be regarded as the equivalent of the ancient _bipennis_. An axe is still a bricklayer’s tool, and is also occasionally used by stone-cutters. It seems, then, that the “_stan_” in these two Saxon words refers, not to the material of which the axes or bills were made, but to the stones on or among which they were used.