152 THUNDERBOLTS 



respectable manner. The man who sees this parlous 

 monster come whizzing through the clouds from planetary 

 space, making a fiery track like a great dragon as it moves 

 rapidly across the sky, and finally ploughing its way into 

 the earth in his own back garden, may well be excused for 

 regarding it as a fine specimen of the true antique thunder- 

 bolt. The same virtues which belong to the buried stone 

 are in some other places claimed for meteoric iron, small 

 pieces of which are worn as charms, specially useful in 

 protecting the wearer against thunder, lightning, and 

 evil incantations. In many cases miraculous images have 

 been hewn out of the stones that have fallen from heaven ; 

 and in others the meteorite itself is carefully preserved or 

 worshipped as the actual representative of god or goddess, 

 saint or madonna. The image that fell down from Jupiter 

 may itself have been a mass of meteoric iron. 



Both meteorites and stone hatchets, as well as all other 

 forms of thunderbolt, are in excellent repute as amulets, 

 not only against lightning, but against the evil eye gene- 

 rally. In Italy they protect the owner from thunder, 

 epidemics, and cattle disease, the last two of which are 

 well known to be caused by witchcraft ; while Prospero in 

 the ' Tempest ' is a surviving proof how thunderstorms, 

 too, can be magically produced. The tongues of sheep- 

 bells ought to be made of meteoric iron or of elf-bolts, in 

 order to insure the animals against foot-and-mouth disease 

 or death by storm. Built into walls or placed on the 

 threshold of stables, thunderbolts are capital preventives 

 of fire or other damage, though not perhaps in this respect 

 quite equal to a rusty horseshoe from a prehistoric battle- 

 field. Thrown into a well they purify the water; and 

 boiled in the drink of diseased sheep they render a cure 

 positively certain. In Cornwall thunderbolts are a sove- 

 reign remedy for rheumatism ; and in the popular pharma- 



