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Ovum Anguinum, Druid's Bead

Ovum Anguinum, Druid's Bead Page of 453 Ovum Anguinum, Druid's Bead Text size:minus plus Restore normal size   Mail page  Print this page
280
OVUM ANGUINUM.
to death the Gallic gentleman who had come armed with one into Court, his cause apparently being tried before the Emperor himself : whence the peculiar heinousness of the offence.
The extraordinary appearance of these fossils, often filled up with gold-like pyrites, and inclosed in the heart of large masses of chalk, or lying deep in the solid clay, necessarily rendered them objects of wonder, and perhaps of religious awe, to their ignorant finders, in the days when geology was an unknown science. Even common pebbles, of a more than usual perfectly spherical form, seem to have been regarded by the Celts as holy things. It is said that some have been preserved on the chapel-altars (like the Salagrama of the Hindoos) in remote Irish dis­tricts from time immemorial, and the water in which they are steeped considered a specific for diseases of cattle. The head of a certain Highland clan also possesses, by descent from the remotest ages, a white sphere possessing similar virtues, in all probability come down to him from the Druidieal period.
This famous Gallic talisman bears a singular analogy, both in its name and properties, to the Ophites or " Serpent-stone " of the Asiatic Greeks; for Pliny's Ophites (xxxvi. 11) has no con­nexion with our subject, being only the green serpentine marble used in his time in decorative architecture. But Orpheus (355) styles it (the gift of Apollo to Helenus) " the vocal stone, the truth telling Sideritis, which some mortals prefer to call the Ophites, in which dwells a soul (βμψνχος), round, rough, black, hard. All over its circumference run sinews like unto wrinkles, deeply scored upon its surface." After keeping a fast, and per­fect chastity for thrice seven days, the seer bathed the stone in running water, clothed it in soft raiment like an infant, and setting it in an illuminated shrine, inspired the mass with life by means of certain mighty spells chanted over it. Then taking it in his arms he fondled it like as a mother does her babe, whilst he questioned the spirit within, and received true re­sponses to all his demands. By this means did he reveal to the Atridae how his native city Troy was capable of being captured. But Orpheus warns whoever prepares to consult the oracle, to arm himself with courage, lest, when he first hears the stone, growing instinct with life, utter a cry like that of a new-born
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