Flint arrow-heads were for ages looked upon as elf-stones, and are to-day worn as charms against unseen evils. They also possess healing power in certain diseases. So, too, do the belemnites – a fossilized portion of an extinct cuttle-fish. These, in the hand of a skilled person, work wonders in the case of sore eyes and ringworm. Unfortunately, though belemnites are common enough, the skilled hands are rare, and so their virtue in thousands of instances lie dormant. The belemnites are supposed to fall from the clouds during a thunderstorm; the same is said of rounded pieces of quartz or flints, one and all being called thunder-bolts, or ‘thunner-steeans.‘
When I was a boy, I was an ardent archaeologist. I remember on one occasion having been told that chipped flints were to be found in a field near Blois Hall. Hurrying thither the first whole holiday, I was fortunate enough on that occasion to find a flint arrow-head – the only one I ever did find.
This I showed to an old fellow who was hedging; without hesitation he pronounced it to be an elf-stone, declaring that the elves were evil spirits, who in days past used to throw them at the kie – I had up to that time always been told they were shot at cattle – but my informant stuck to throwing.
I well remember that he also said the elves got them out of whirlpools, where they were originally made by the water spirits, but he could not say what the water spirits used them for, though he knew of several instances in which both cattle and horses had been injured by the elves throwing their elf-stones at them. He further informed me that when the elves got them from the whirlpools, they had much longer shanks than was on the one I had found: this was so that better aim might be taken with them.
‘But,’ said he, ‘tha’re nivver fund wi’ lang shanks on, acoz t’fairies awlus brak ‘em off, seea ez t’elves wadn’t be yabble ti potch ‘em at t’beasts neea mair;’ and he had been told that fairies often wore them as ornaments. Sore eyes could be cured by the touch from an elf-stone, if a fairy had ever worn it, and they were also a potent love-charm if worn so that they rested near the heart.
From ‘Wit, character, folklore and customs of the North Riding of Yorkshire’ by Richard Blakeborough (1898). I’m not really moaning but it is quite laborious typing out (let alone reading) the ‘humorous’ renditions of common folk’s accents from these books :)
