284 THE swallow’s stone. 
the allusion which Longfellow has made to it in his poem 
of “Evangeline” would seem to confirm this impression, 
inasmuch as we may assume that the tradition found its 
way into Acadia through the French colonists who were 
the first to settle there. 
Longfellow, in his “ Evangeline,” says,— 
“ Oft in the barns they climbed to the populous nests in 
the rafters, 
Seeking with eager eyes that wondrous stone which the 
swallow 
Brings from the shore of the sea to restore the sight of 
its fledglings ; 
Lucky was he who found that stone in the nest of the 
swallow! ” 
The connection between the stone and the herb is, 
that both were said to be brought to the nest by the 
swallow, and both were deemed remedies for defective 
sight. There is this difference, however, between the cur¬ 
rent opinion in Brittany and the popular notion in Acadia, 
that in the former case it is the finder of the stone who 
is thereby benefited, in the latter it is the sight of the 
fledglings which is thereby restored. 
A friend has suggested that the tradition may have 
originated with the Chinese, to whom the edible swallows’ 
bird! “In ventre hirundinum pullus lapilli candido aut rubenti colore, qui 
‘ chelidonii ’ vocantur, magicis narrati artibus reperiuntur. ” 
