holey stones

For a couple of years now I have been compelled to look for hag stones whenever I am surrounded by pebbles. It all started on a trip to Black Isle, where I first learnt about the Brahan Seer and how he used to see the future by holding a hag stone to his blind eye. On that trip I spent a frustrating few hours scouring the beach, while J seemed to trip over them again and again. It would turn out in the coming months that he had a knack for finding them, whereas I did not. It wasn't until the following year that I really started to have better luck, after what might not unfairly be called a temper tantrum in which I addressed myself to the universe at large, asking if this was some kind of test of faith (in what? I'm not sure). Minutes after this little outburst I had found two fine examples, one of which is as big as a cob loaf and now sits on our doorstep, protecting the threshold.

Because hag stones have protective qualities, as well as prophetic ones. In the witchcraft museum in Boscastle we learnt that witches themselves use hag stones (or adder stones) for protection, but folk also use them for protection against witches, so I suppose you can conclude the stones themselves are indifferent about whose side they're on. In fact, there are all kinds of uses for hag stones: they can stop your bad dreams, keep rheumatism at bay, and ward off the evil eye and West Country piskies alike.

There is some debate over what qualifies a 'proper' hag stone. Some say it has to be flint, and some say that holes made by piddocks don't count, still others are strict that only river pebbles are legitimate. Personally, I think a hag stone is largely in the eye of the beholder, although there are undoubtedly some that just feel better than others. I have my favourites among our collection. The more you find the more you start to feel that some have hag stone powers and others are just holey pebbles.

What I haven't been able to fathom so far is why exactly a hole makes a stone more important. There's something to be said for relative rarity, like a four-leafed clover, but I feel that it must be something more than that. I think it all comes down to apertures and openings and portals, but what 'it' is I'm not sure yet. Why does something with a hole in it call us to immediately put it in front of our eye and peer through? What do we expect to see?

It's not just small stones. Big holes in big stones call to us too, and have the same kinds of properties. The standing stone in the field above has a hole through which you can see the mountains in one direction and out to sea in the other. There is also the Crow Stone in Wigtown and the Ballymeanoch holed stone, both of which are said to have been used in marriage ceremonies. Men-an-Tol also famously promotes fertility if passed through nine times on a full moon. But then, it's easy to see where the fertility rites come from...

Down in Dartmoor there is also the Tolmen Stone, meaning... holey stone stone. I am impressed as always at the consistency of lore across the Celtic fringes, so that a stone with a hole has the same significance in the far north-east as it does hundreds of miles away in the toe of the country.

Although I have no supporting evidence for this idea, my own instinct tells me that holes in stone are special because they create a passage through something that feels solid and impassable, like a window through the world itself. If even stone can be permeated, perhaps everything is much less firm than it seems.

Postscript
It just so happens, as these synchronicities often do, that after I started writing this post about holes and stones last week I also started reading The Thing in the Gap-Stone Stile by Alice Oswald, in which I came across this in the poem 'Mountains':

Look through a holey stone. Now put it down.
Something is twice as different. Something gone
accumulates a queerness. Be alone.
Something is side by side with anyone.