148 THUNDERBOLTS 



shape, which has now mostly degenerated from the barb 

 to the conventional heart, and been mistakenly associated 

 with the idea of love. This is the secret, too, of all the 

 rings, lamps, gems, and boxes, possession of which gives 

 a man power over fairies, spirits, gnomes, and genii. All 

 magic proceeds upon the prime belief that you must 

 possess something belonging to the person you wish to 

 control, constrain, or injure. And, failing anything else, 

 you must at least have a wax image of him, which you 

 call by his name, and use as his substitute in your incanta- 

 tions. 



On this primitive principle, possession of a thunderbolt 

 gives you some sort of hold, as it were, over the thunder- 

 god himself in person. If you keep a thunderbolt in your 

 house it will never be struck by lightning. In Shetland, 

 stone axes are religiously preserved in every cottage as a 

 cheap and simple substitute for lightning-rods. In Corn- 

 wall, the stone hatchets and arrowheads not only guard 

 the house from thunder, but also act as magical barometers, 

 changing colour with the changes of the weather, as if 

 in sympathy with the temper of the thunder-god. In 

 Germany, the house where a thunderbolt is kept is safe 

 from the storm ; and the bolt itself begins to sweat on the 

 approach of lightning-clouds. Nay, so potent is the pro- 

 tection afforded by a thunderbolt that where the lightning 

 has once struck it never strikes again ; the bolt already 

 buried in the soil seems to preserve the surrounding place 

 from the anger of the deity. Old and pagan in their 

 nature as are these beliefs, they yet survive so thoroughly 

 into Christian times that I have seen a stone hatchet built 

 into the steeple of a church to protect it from lightning. 

 Indeed, steeples have always of course attracted the 

 electric discharge to a singular degree by their height and 

 tapering form, especially before the introduction of light- 



