38 THE MAGIC OF JEWELS AND CHARMS
popular
legend in a variety of ways. Sometimes it was declared that the Virgin
or a saint, while bearing an enormous stone through the air to be used
in the construction of a church, had learned on the way that the church
was completed and the stone no longer needed, and immediately let it
drop to the earth.60
A
stone having the rude form of a chair or seat, and known as Canna's
Stone, enjoyed repute in Wales for its curative powers. It was in a
field in close proximity to the church of Llangan, Carmarthenshire,
which owed its foundation to St. Canna. Near this stone is a well
called Flynon Canna, the waters of which were believed to be a cure for
ague. To make the cure effective, however, the patient, after imbibing
the sacred water, had to sit for a time in Canna's Stone, and if he
dozed while sitting there this was considered to promise a speedy
recovery. The combined treatment by well and stone was often repeated
for several successive days and was occasionally prolonged for two or
three weeks.61
That
a child could be cured of disease by being passed through an aperture
in one of the sacred stones that had formed part of a dolmen is shown
in the case of a stone of this kind preserved in the church of
Villers-Saint-Sépulcre, dept. Oise, France. There is another such stone
in the same department, at Trie, used in a like way for the cure of
feeble children or those suffering from rachitis. This reveals in a
striking way the persistence of superstitious beliefs which were
already condemned in 567 a.d. by
the council of Tours, which prescribed that the eucharist should be
refused to those who venerated these so-called sacred stones, and at a
*· Renel, " Lee religions de la Gaule avant le Christianisme," Parie, 1906, p. 887.
»Wirt Sikes, "British Goblins; Welsh Folk-Lore, Fairy Myths, Legends and Traditions," London, 1880, p. 362.
