The swamp at Achagaval in Morvern was tenanted by a King Frog or Toad,
the reputation of which was widespread. It was called _Seid_, a word of
which the usual meaning is “a truss of hay or straw.” One, who stayed
in the neighbourhood of the fen, said, he heard, not once but scores
of times, the cry of the animal from as great a distance as the top of
a neighbouring hill, _Beinn nam Bearrach_, and he could compare it to
nothing so much as the yelping of “a soft mastiff whelp” (_bog chuilein
tòdhlair_). The part of the fen which the King Frog most frequented was
called _Lòn na Seid_, and in winter, when it was frozen over, a tame
otter was let down through a hole in the ice in the hope of driving the
frog to the opening. Otters must come occasionally to the surface to
breathe, and the one in question having come for that purpose, its owner,
in his eagerness to secure the jewel, mistook it for the King Frog, and
gave it a rap on the head that killed it on the spot.
STONES.
In addition to jewels found in animals, superstition made use of stones
of various forms, spherical and pointed, plain and ornamented, of unknown
origin, but bearing evidence of having been reduced to form by human art.
These were carefully preserved in families as heirlooms, and are found
in tumuli, graves, and road-cuttings, dredged from rivers, and turned up
by the plough. They are undoubted relics of a remote past, and have been
referred by antiquaries to a prehistoric age and savages who lived before
iron was invented. The ingenuity of those who advocate this view of their
origin is sufficiently tested in finding a practical use for the stones
as weapons of war or the chase, as employed in games of chance, or as
articles of domestic use, corn-crushers, hatchets, or personal ornaments.
No doubt many of them were originally intended for such purposes; but
the uselessness of others and the absence of fitness for any known or
conceivable purpose of utility, indicate a different origin. It is not
easy, for instance, to assign any ordinary use to such a stone-ball as
that pictured in Wilson’s _Prehistoric Annals of Scotland_, i., 195, and
to many others of still more curious appearance and with more elaborate
ornaments. The incised ornaments forbid the idea of their being of
ordinary service, and the prevalence of witchcraft, with its armoury of
curiously-shaped stones and mysterious natural productions, among all
savage tribes, makes it highly probable they were the implements of the
prehistoric conjurer’s craft, and were from the first associated with
strange virtues. As a lethal weapon the first stone picked up from the
ground was as serviceable. They have been associated with the popular
superstitions of very modern times. It is not unlikely that from the
beginning they were so associated.
FAIRY ARROW.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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