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Meteorites, or Celestial Stones: Welsh

This Welsh fancy that meteors or "falling-stars" turned to a jelly when they struck the earth appears to have been quite general in Great Britain, and the jelly-like substance was variously named "star-slough," "star-shoot," "star-gelly" or "jelly," "star-fall'n." The Welsh pwdre ser literally means "star-rot." As early as 1641 Sir John Suckling (1609-1642) wrote the following lines which well describe the way in which these gelatinous substances came to be regarded as the remains of a "fallen star":

As he whose quicker eye doth trace A false star shot to a mark'd place Do's run apace, And, thinking it to catch, A jelly up do snatch. Sir Walter Scott also, whose familiarity with superstitions was very great, has not failed to note this one in his "Talisman," where the hermit says: "Seek a fallen star and thou shalt only light on some foul jelly, which in shooting through the horizon has assumed an appearance of splendour." Here the star itself is supposed to have had this gelatinous form. An early writer, noting this curious belief that "a white and gelatinous substance" was all that remained of a fallen star, declares that he had clearly demonstrated to the Royal Society that the mass was composed of the intestines of frogs, and had been vomited by crows, adding that his opinion had been confirmed by the testimony of other scientific men. Huxley, from a description, conjectured that the substance was nostoc, a gelatinous vegetable mass, but this seems to be somewhat doubtful. In 1744 Robert Boyle states that some of this "star-shoot" was given to a physician of his acquaintance, who "digested it in a well-stopt glass for a long time," and then sold the liquor for a specific in the removal of wens.

A jelly-like mass believed by him to be the remains of a "fallen star" was found by Mr. Rufus Graves at Amherst, Mass., on August 14, 1819, and duly reported in the American Journal of Science. As this gentleman was at one time lecturer on chemistry at Dartmouth College, his testimony is worth heeding, but there can be no doubt that while he accurately describes what he found, he was altogether mistaken in supposing that the meteor fell precisely on the spot where he discovered the gelatinous substance. As we have noted, it has recently been suggested that these "jellies" are plasmodia of forms of Myxomycetes which do not appear to have any connection with the spot whereon they rest, but seem to have fallen from the air.

Falling stars are explained by the natives of Labrador and of Baffin's Bay as being souls of the departed bound on an excursion to Hades in order to see what is going on there, while the phenomena of thunder and lightning are caused by a party of old women, who quarrel so violently over the possession of a seal that they bring the house down over their heads and shatter the lamps. These "old women" must, of course, be spirits of the upper air, not human beings.

In some Australian tribes the sorcerers, or "medicine-men," taking advantage of the superstitious dread of falling stars common among the aborigines, pretend to have marked the spot where such a star has fallen and to have dug it up and preserved it in their medicine-bag. These supposititious "fallen stars" are sometimes quartz pebbles, and in one instance the curiosity of a European investigator was satisfied by the display of a piece of thick glass, which the sorcerer strictly maintained he had dug out of the ground wherein the star had fallen.

Arrow-heads encased in silver were looked upon as the solid contents of the lightning flash, and were not only thought to protect the house in which they were kept from being struck by lightning, but their protective power was believed to extend to seven houses in the immediate neighborhood. An interesting example is a neolithic silex arrowhead figured by Bellucci. This has been elegantly set in silver in modern times, and comes from Pesca Costanzo, in the province of Aquila, Italy.

The Italians are convinced that if the arrow-head, or similar object, come in contact with a piece of iron, the "essence of the lightning" departs from it, revealing itself in a spark; hence they wrap it up, carefully, in skin, cloth, or paper so as to guard it from harm. Sometimes these objects are anointed with oil, a survival of the custom of making propitiatory offerings of oil. This usage in the case of sacred stones is very general, and is met with in places as remote from each other as Sweden, India and the Society Islands. In an Iroquois myth and legend, He-no, the god of thunder, is an object of great veneration because of the powerful aid he renders to those whom he favors. He is believed to direct the rain which shall fertilize the seed in the earth, and also to give aid to the harvesters when the fruits of the earth have ripened. While traversing the celestial vault, in his journeyings hither and thither above the surface of the globe, he bears with him an enormous basket filled with huge boulders of chert rock. These he casts at any evil spirit he may encounter, and when on occasion a spirit succeeds in avoiding such a boulder, it will fall down to the earth surrounded by fire. We have here another version of the almost universal myth of thunder-stones. In treating of the flint arrow-heads of the American Indians, Adair notes that in form and material they closely resembled the "elf-stones" with which European peasants were wont to rub any of their cattle believed to have been "shot" by fairies or elves. A village in which one of these magic objects existed was considered to be particularly favored by fortune, as they not only served to protect the cattle from bewitchment but were equally efficacious in preserving human beings from the spells of witches.

In East Prussia, when cows are believed to have been bewitched so that their milk is under a spell, resort is had to the powers of a perforated "thunder-stone." Such stones were ancient stone hammers with a central perforation for a handle. The stone is held beneath the cow at milking-time, and the milk is allowed to pass through the perforation. By this means the spell is broken and the milk becomes harmless.

Such perforated stones are also used to protect a house from being struck by lightning. When a storm approaches nearer and nearer, the owner of one of these magic stones will thrust his finger through the hole, twirl the stone around three times, and then hurl it against the door of the room. When this has been done, the house is believed to be proof against lightning. In Westphalia the stone is laid upon a table alongside of a consecrated candle, the shrewd peasants thus assuring for their houses the protection of the church as well as that of the ancient God of Thunder. Another phase of the superstition in regard to the stone axes known in many different parts of the world as thunder-stones, because they are believed to have fallen during a thunder-storm, is given by Dr. Lund in a letter written from Logoa Santa in Brazil. He states that the inhabitants rather look askance at these stones, believing that wherever they are found the lightning is apt to strike, "in order to seek its brother!"