The same virtues which belong
to the buried stone are in some other places claimed for meteoric iron,
small pieces of which are worn as charms, specially useful in protecting
the wearer against thunder, lightning, and evil incantations. In many
cases miraculous images have been hewn out of the stones that have
fallen from heaven; and in others the meteorite itself is carefully
preserved or worshipped as the actual representative of god or goddess,
saint or madonna. The image that fell down from Jupiter may itself have
been a mass of meteoric iron.
Both meteorites and stone hatchets, as well as all other forms of
thunderbolt, are in excellent repute as amulets, not only against
lightning, but against the evil eye generally. In Italy they protect the
owner from thunder, epidemics, and cattle disease, the last two of which
are well known to be caused by witchcraft; while Prospero in the
'Tempest' is a surviving proof how thunderstorms, too, can be magically
produced. The tongues of sheep-bells ought to be made of meteoric iron
or of elf-bolts, in order to insure the animals against foot-and-mouth
disease or death by storm. Built into walls or placed on the threshold
of stables, thunderbolts are capital preventives of fire or other
damage, though not perhaps in this respect quite equal to a rusty
horseshoe from a prehistoric battlefield. Thrown into a well they purify
the water; and boiled in the drink of diseased sheep they render a cure
positively certain.
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