BOOK OF THE DAMNED 205 



Switzerland, Algeria, America if messages they be, there seems to 

 be no escape from attributing one origin to them then, if messages 

 they be, I accept one external origin, to which the whole surface 

 of this earth was accessible, for them. 



Something else that we emphasize: 



That rows of cup marks have often been likened to foot prints. 



But, in this similitude, their uni-linear arrangement must be 

 disregarded of course often they're mixed up in every way, but 

 arrangement in single lines is very common. It is odd that they 

 should so often be likened to footprints: I suppose there are excep- 

 tional cases, but unless it's something that hops on one foot, or a 

 cat going along a narrow fence-top, I don't think of anything that 

 makes footprints one directly ahead of another Cop, in a station 

 house, walking a chalk line, perhaps. 



Upon the Witch's Stone, near Ratho, Scotland, there are twenty- 

 four cups, varying in size from one and a half to three inches in 

 diameter, arranged in approximately straight lines. Locally it is 

 explained that these are tracks of dogs' feet (Proc. Soc. Antiq. 

 Scotland, 2-4-79). Similar marks are scattered bewilderingly all 

 around the Witch's Stone like a frenzy of telegraphing, or like 

 messages repeating and repeating, trying to localize differently. 



In Inverness-shire, cup marks are called "fairies' footmarks." At 

 Valna's church, Norway, and St. Peter's, Ambleteuse, there are 

 such marks, said to be horses' hoofprints. The rocks of Clare, 

 Ireland, are marked with prints supposed to have been made by a 

 mythical cow ("Folklore," 21-184). 



We now have such a ghost of a thing that I'd not like to be 

 interpreted as offering it as a datum: it simply illustrates what I 

 mean by the notion of symbols, like cups, or like footprints, which, 

 if like those of horses or cows, are the reverse of, or the negatives of, 

 cups of symbols that are regularly received somewhere upon this 

 earth steep, conical hill, somewhere, I think but that have often 

 alighted in wrong places considerably to the mystification of per- 

 sons waking up some morning to find them upon formerly blank 

 spaces. 



An ancient record still worse, an ancient Chinese record of a 

 courtyard of a palace dwellers of the palace waking up one 

 morning, finding the courtyard marked with tracks like the foot- 

 prints of an ox supposed that the devil did it. (Notes and 

 Queries, 9-6-225.) 



