Impatience from the Rev. Edward Daniel Clarke, who probably believed all sorts of unlikely things himself.
The superstition of the inhabitants, not only of Mull, but of the neighbouring islands, is beyond belief. Stones of any singular form.. have each a peculiar characteristic virtue. They are handed with veneration from father to son, and esteemed as a remedy for every species of disease incident to the human or animal race. As there is not in the whole island of Mull a single surgeon or apothecary, it is well for the natives they can have recourse to a mode of relief so universal and so efficacious.
.. It was with much difficulty I could prevail upon these credulous quacks to part with any specimen of their potent charms. I succeeded, however, in purchasing two, during the time I remained in Mull. One of these, a hard and polished stone, evidently appears to have been once used as an axe, or hatchet, and bears a strong resemblance to the specimens of similar instruments brought by circumnavigators from the South Sea islands. The other is of the same nature with the first, with respect to the use for which it was originally fabricated, although it differs in its composition; it was probably once an instrument of war.
By holding the former over the head of any diseased cattle, and pouring water upon it, letting the water at the same time fall on the animal, the beast is said to recover without fail. The latter is a sovereign remedy against barrenness in cows, if it be used in the same way. If either of them be dipped in water, the water cures all pains of the head or teeth, it also removes the rheumatism or sprains in the joints, with a variety of other virtues, too numerous to mention.
Several others which I saw, possessed virtues as various as their forms. Some of these were fossil shells; others like the flint of a gun, called Fairy speds*; and again, others, mere oblong pebbles, which they distinguished by the appellation of 'Cockaroo-hoo-pan', a sovereign antidote for barrenness in the female sex.
* I guess these could have been flint arrowheads. 'Sped' means 'discharged or let go' which sounds like what a fairy might do to an arrow? Also, if anyone's got an axe I'd like to try it on my sciatica please.
From p229 of 'The Life and Remains of the Rev. Edward Daniel Clarke' (professor of mineralogy at Cambridge) by William Otter (1824) - viewable on Google Books.
By the shore of Loch Scridain in Ardmeanach is Dun Bhuirg (the name combines the Gaelic and Norse words for fort). Like other prehistoric forts, it was thought to be inhabited by fairies. One day a woman living nearby was at her weaving and exclaimed, 'it is about time the people of the hill were coming along to give me a hand.' Suddenly she was overrun with fairies from the dun who swiftly turned all the wool into cloth. When they asked for payment for their work, she shouted, 'Dun Bhuirg is on fire!' The fairies rushed off and were not seen again, but surprisingly did not punish her for the mean trick she had played on them.
This story from P.A. McNab's Isle of Mull (1970) is a variant on an earlier tale repeated all over the Highlands, set in similar places with similar names. In around 1860, John MacLean of Tarbert in Argyllshire supplied John Francis Campbell with a version very like the one above, although the Argyllshire woman is not trying to avoid paying but is overwhelmed by the fairies' eagerness for work, like wizard at Creag Mhor and Creag Bheag (Northern Highlands). macLean adds a verse spoken by the fairies while at their work and another when they depart in haste, mourning their possessions lost in the supposed fire, the latter translated by Campbell as:
My mould of cheese, my hammer, and anvil,
My wife and my child, and my butter crock;
My cow and my goat, and my little meal kist;
Och, och ochone, how wretched am I!
A slightly different tale was told of the hill of Dunvuilg in Craignish, Argyllshire, where the call of fire is given by an envious neighbour of the woman whom the fairies are helping, and Campbell heard yet another version in Lewis 'from a medical gentleman, who got it from an old woman, who told it as a fact, with some curious variations unfit for printing'. these unprintable details may possibly have concerned throwing urine at the fairies, a technique adopted, for instance, at Dunvegan Castle.
The Lore Of Scotland - A Guide To Scottish Legends