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| By Darkone CC BY-SA 2.0 |
The first time I ever heard of Hag-stones was this year. They are more commonly known as Adder stones and described on wikipedia as follows:
"An adder stone is a type of stone, usually glassy, with a naturally occurring hole through it. Such stones have been discovered by archaeologists in both Britain and Egypt."
In Britain they are also called hag stones,[1] witch stones, serpent's eggs, snake's eggs, or Glain Neidr in Wales, milpreve in Cornwall, adderstanes in the south of Scotland and Gloine nan Druidh ("Druids' glass" in Scottish Gaelic) in the north. In Germany they are called Hühnergötter ("chicken gods"). In Egypt they are called aggry or aggri.
Adder stones were believed to have magical powers such as protection against eye diseases or evil charms, preventing nightmares, curing whooping cough, the ability to see through fairy or witch disguises and traps if looked at through the middle of the stone, and recovery from snakebite. According to popular conception, a true adder stone will float in water.
Three traditions exist as to the origins of adder stones. One holds that the stones are the hardened saliva of large numbers of serpents massing together, the perforations being caused by their tongues. The second claims that an adder stone comes from the head of a serpent or is made by the sting of an adder. The third is more modern (and much easier to attain). It details that the stone can be any rock with a hole bored through the middle by water. Human intervention (i.e., direction of water or placement of the stone) is not allowed.[2]"
Increasingly I noted on the popular facebook group "Irish Stones" that they were being mentioned in an Irish context and out of curiosity I asked some of the people that mentioned them was there any written references to the them in Irish folklore. I'm from an inland part of Ireland and hag-stones you would imagine would be related to coastal folklore.
The main written reference in an irish context seems to come from a book by James Bonwick in 1894 titled 'Irish Druids and Old Irish Religions'.
It states
"In spite of the Lectures of the learned O'Curry, declaring the story to be "nothing but the most vague and general assertions," Irish tradition supports the opinion of Pliny that, as to magic, there were those in the British Isles "capable of instructing even the Persians themselves in these arts." But O'Curry admits that "the European Druidical system was but the offspring of the eastern augurs"; and the Tuaths came from the East. They wrote or repeated charms, as the Hawasjilars of Turkey still write Nushas. Adder-stones were used to repel evil spirits, not less than to cure diseases. One, writing in 1699, speaks of seeing a stone suspended from the neck of a child as a remedy for whooping-cough. Monuments ascribed to the Tuatha are to be seen near the Boyne, and at Drogheda, Dowth, Knowth, &c."
Bonwick was an Englishman living in Australia without first hand knowledge or experience of irish folklore. A very good indication of local folklore as it was recorded in the 1930s is on Duchas.ie. This online archive of the Irish Folklore Commissions schools manuscripts shows that there are no records of hag stones or adder stones. For a comparable example a search for the dobhar cu, a relatively obscure irish folklore story, gives 3 stories and 22 transcripts or the Goban Saor 201 stories and 175 transcripts.
Other references to date seem to be from recent local oral folklore and possibly from the North-west of Ireland.
Ireland doesn't / didn't have any adders or snakes from which the name is likely to originate. There is a suggestion that a stone anchor or stone weight in Irish is known as a Cailleach, which is also the Irish for a witch or hag. However again turning to duchas.ie, there is no mention of stones with holes in them in the stories recorded relating to the Cailleach in the Schools Manuscripts that I can see.
One concern that we should all have about Irish folklore is the introduction of imported concepts into the irish body of folklore. You can clearly see this with all the fairy doors and fairy walks that abound in the country. If you look at the whole folklore around fairies, they were not the kind of beings that you wanted your children to be hanging out with!
I'm concerned that hag-stones in an irish context are similar, perhaps introduced in a neo-pagan context to explain the Irish name for a stone anchor. If it is authentic historic Irish folklore then it is of interest and it would be great if someone could do a proper study of its origins and distribution around the island.
I think adder-stones and hag-stones are slightly different things, since adder-stones are supposed to have rather mysterious origins (but it's been suggested they're actually discarded spindle-whorls) while hag-stones are typically any kind of stone with a naturally occurring hole in it.
ReplyDeleteI've not found much on either of them from any reliable Irish sources, but there are a lot of nineteenth century (and earlier) sources that discuss both of these things in a Scottish context. If they ever made their way to Ireland (outside of a neopagan influence) then I would it's possible it happened through contact with Scottish immigrants or something like that. If it helps, I collated some links and references for further reading in a post: https://tairis-cr.blogspot.com/2012/07/mare-stanes-adder-stones-frog-stones-oh.html
Just noticed this Seren, thanks for your post. I'll have a read of it. There are also some references to witch stones in an Ulster context which Anna Harper documents here
ReplyDeletehttps://filicodown.wixsite.com/innerlandscapes/post/the-folklore-of-hagstones
"In his article 'The Witchstone in Ulster and England' (published in 1964), J.G. Dent covers the topic in some depth.
'Names for this amulet vary from district to district but all are descriptive of its appearance or purpose: holeystone, hagstone, and luckystone are common, but witchstone is here preferred as best indicating its primary function.'
'The emphasis placed on loss of fertility by Innocent VIII* is reflected in the Ulster Practice of keeping a witchstone to protect cattle and their milk. In the Glens of Antrim witchstones were hung on the wall inside the byres to protect the cattle from 'blinking'. The Ulster Folk Museum has a holed flint from Ballyvester which was hung around the neck of a calving cow, and the County Museum Armagh has several witchstones from the counties of Armagh and Tyrone, all of which hung in byres to prevent the stealing of milk by witchcraft. In the Wellcome Historical Medical Museum, London, are two witchstones from Co. Antrim, both of which are said to have been tied to cows' horns for the same purpose, and in the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford, is a large rough flint from Ballyrashane through the hole in which the first strains of milk from a new-calved cow were drawn to safeguard the future supply. From evidence elsewhere it seems that the stealing of milk refers to the drawing away of the goodness or virtue, rather than the literal taking of the milk itself. It was thought that, under the influence of a spell, the milk of the bewitched cattle would be thin and watery, its richness going to augment the quality of yield from the witch's own cows'"
is there there any historic cultural authenticity to the "An Cloc Cosanta" ? Someone gave me a gift of one from Connemara and it is charming, but aside from the packaging, i can find no information on it, as a genuine ancient concept. As such, i assume it is a concept with modern roots, or possibly a folley aimed at cashing in on tourist momento money.
ReplyDeleteI also am curious if they have any correlation to Hag Stones, Adder Stones, etc.