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ON METEORITES, OR CELESTIAL STONES 107
being
struck by lightning, but their protective power was believed to extend
to seven houses in the immediate neighborhood. An interesting example
is a neolithic silex arrowhead figured by Bellucci. This has been
elegantly set in silver in modern times, and comes from Pesca Costanzo,
in the province of Aquila, Italy.
The
Italians are convinced that if the arrow-head, or similar object, come
in contact with a piece of iron, the "essence of the lightning" departs
from it, revealing itself in a spark ; hence they wrap it up,
carefully, in skin, cloth, or paper so as to guard it from harm.
Sometimes these objects are anointed with oil, a survival of the custom
of making propitiatory offerings of oil. This usage in the case of
sacred stones is very general, and is met with in places as remote from
each other as Sweden, India and the Society Islands.61
In
an Iroquois myth and legend, He-no, the god of thunder, is an object of
great veneration because of the powerful aid he renders to those whom
he favors. He is believed to direct the rain which shall fertilize the
seed in the earth, and also to give aid to the harvesters when the
fruits of the earth have ripened. While traversing the celestial vault,
in his journeyings hither and thither above the surface of the globe,
he bears with him an enormous basket filled with huge boulders of chert
rock. These he casts at any evil spirit he may encounter, and when on
occasion a spirit succeeds in avoiding such a boulder, it will fall
down to the earth surrounded by fire. We have here another version of
the almost universal myth of thunder-stones.88
In treating of the flint arrow-heads of the American Indians, Adair notes that in form and material they closely
" Bellucci, " Il feticismo in Italia," Perugia, 1907, pp. 17 sqq.
"Harriet
Maxwell Converse, "Myths and Legends of the N. Y. State Iroquois,"
edited and annotated by Arthur Caswell Parker (Ga-wa-so-wa-neh), New
York State Museum Bulletin, No. 125, Albany, 1908, p. 40.
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