348 TYNEDALE ESCARPMENT?; 



It is almost unnecessary to remind the reader that natural 

 impressions upon rocks and stones have, all oyer the world, be- 

 come invested with sanctity as the imprints of supernatural 

 beings. It remains a belief among the Bedawin and others to 

 this day, that holy personages have the power of lea^-ing their 

 prints on rock;* and the former prevalence of similar beliefs 

 nearer home is shown by the well-known fact that there are 

 few Druid monuments or curious stones in the country that do 

 not bear upon them the sign-manual of giant, devil, or witch. 



Traditions of this sort appear to be connected with that former 

 practice of stone-worship, which was so " earnestly forbid," (to 

 quote from Canute's decree on the subject,) by the ordinances of 

 the early church in Britain, and which has not yet even died out 

 in the world. Stone-worship has been explained as arising from 

 the respect paid to boundary-or memorial-stones. Sir John Lub- 

 bock prefers to describe it as " merely a form of that indiscrimi- 

 nate nature-worship which characterises the human mind in a 

 particular phase,"! which would leave it still to be asked, how 

 the worship first began. It seems to me impossible to separate 

 between the stones and the supernatural markings upon them, 

 and it might well be that the former were consecrated simply 

 because the latter were revered. "What more natural than the 

 worship of objects bearing upon them as it were the very hand- 

 writing of deities. 



That pot-holes were not less the objects of supernaturalism 

 than any other markings on stones may be inferred fiom the 

 number of legends attaching to them. In Scandinavia the gi- 

 gantic kettles that so puzzle the geologist, still bear the name of 

 tlie legendary giants ; the smaller pot-holes are explained as the 

 prints of Troll's fingers made "when the rock was soft." In 

 the bod of the Nerbudda pot-hole-like cavities are still venerated 

 by the pilgrim as footprints of Indra's celestiid elephant, — 

 relics of the time when the great rain-god cleft open the marble 

 gorge. Here in Nortliuraberland they are the hoof-marks of a 



* ruliucr'a Desert of tlic Exodnn. 

 t OriKin of Civillxailon, |) til. 



