172 REPORTS. 



all their sufferings were immediately ascribed to witchcraft 

 and they resorted to the old spell of burning a powder — with 

 various incantations — at night, in the hope of discovering the 

 witch ; for the theory is that, should anyone knock at the 

 door while the powder is burning he or she must be the 

 enchanter, irresistably attracted to their victims' residence by 

 this means. 



Apparently, however, this remedy was of no avail, for the 

 family have now gone over to England just to cross 

 running water, knowing that no witchcraft is powerful enough 

 to resist snch a potent counter spell. 



But I am pleased to chronicle one of the most interesting 

 survivals of a belief which is undoubtedly as old as the Stone 

 Age, and was probably taught in the congregations by the 

 priests of that time — that is, the sacrilege and consequent 

 misfortune of interfering with dolmens, menhirs, and such like 

 '• pierres saintes." As we know, by the human bones and 

 skulls found in excavating these remains, they were used, if 

 not designed, as tombs and memorials of the dead. What 

 dread curses of consecration were employed in their erection 

 we may never know, but the belief is world-wide that who- 

 ever meddles with an untouched tomb — the home of a disem- 

 bodied spirit — be it dolmen, sarcophagus, or pyramid, is 

 visited by the wrath of its powerful occupant. Sir Edgar 

 MacCulloch in his "Guernsey Folklore" has recorded the 

 vengeance that fell on the destroyer who used the stone of 

 that enormous dolmen " La Roche qui Sonne " to build his 

 house, Belval, in the Vale Parish In 1912, when the dolmen 

 at L'Islet was discovered and opened, the Star of December 

 5th, 1912, had an article on the state of alarm prevalent in 

 the Northern parishes, owing to a series of robberies and 

 assaults, culminating in the murder of Mr. Robert at Les 

 Canus, which were then occurring at St. Sampson and the 

 Vale. In this article we read that " the superstitions 

 had a theory" — which to my own knowledge was widely 

 held — " that not only the death of the Reverend George Lee, 

 who had taken so much interest in the discovery and explora- 

 tion of the dolmen, on November 5th, 1912, but the subse- 

 quent outrages on the peaceful inhabitants of the neighbour- 

 hood were due to the evil spirit that had escaped from its 

 imprisonment in the tomb." 



Now we remember that last summer a hitherto unrecorded 

 dolmen was found at Delancey Park and has been partially 

 excavated. This has been sufficient to revive the dormant 

 superstition, and the death of the unfortunate old woman who 



