MAGIC STONES AND ELECTRIC GEMS 43
A
rock in Ardmore Bay, Ireland, is known as the St. Declan Stone, after
the first bishop of Ardmore, who came to Ireland even before the
arrival of the great St. Patrick. This rock is believed by the peasants
to be endowed with great and occult powers, and the legend tells that
it was carried through the air from Rome to its present resting place
in the bay, at the time St. Declan was erecting his church at Ardmore.
The fact that the stone rests upon a number of smaller ones renders it
possible for people to squeeze their way under it at low tide,
and those who pass beneath it three times are believed to have earned
the special favor of St. Declan.70
A
mass of calcareous stone in a village called Piada de Roland, situated
in the commune of Toufailles (dept. Tarn-et-Graronne), France, shares
with some other similar stones in this region the curious name of
Roland's Foot (Piada de Roland). The one preserved in Toufailles
measures 70 cm. X 47 cm. χ 50 cm., and bears a natural imprint having
the form of a foot. Legend accounts for this by the tale that the hero
Roland once jumped from this stone to another at Sept Albres and in
taking this tremendous leap thrust his foot down so strongly upon its
support as to leave an imprint on the solid rock. For a time the "Piada
de Roland" was kept in a cow-house—not a remarkably honorable place of
deposit—but after the death of one of the cows a sorcerer advised the
stone should be broken and removed, as a precautionary measure; this is
said to have happened but thirty years ago, showing how deeply rooted
such superstitious ideas are among the peasantry in out-of-the-way parts of France.71
Another rock-imprint, this time simulating that made
"Walsh, "Curiosities of Popular Customs," Philadelphia, 1911, p. 325.
n
Armand Viré, " Pierree à gravures et Pierres à légendes dans le Lot et
la Tarn et Garonne " ; in Compte Rendu of the Ninth Session of the
Congrès Préhistorique de France, Paris, 1914, p. 349.
