Folktales, customs, and anecdotes from the Lake District told in a collection of “yarns”.
See below to read the chapter ‘The Heart of Stone’ for slightly spooky short story this Halloween month.
THE HEART OF STONE
It isn’t often that one has a story of the weird commencing with ” Well, now, it’s there for anybody to see, a Heart of Stone, cut through with one mighty stab. And it hangs by a chain to a beam in the kitchen. It’s a proper heart, divided into chambers and with marks where the blood came in and out. Whose heart is it? Nobody knows.
They used to tell that old ack of the Fleets was a famous tighter and would shake the bull-ring at the Luke fair shouting, ‘ Nut yan, but twea on ye,’ but he wouldn’t touch that stone heart, either drunk or sober.
Nay, nay, I’s flayed of neither man nor the divvel nor any of his witches, but that might be the heart of a human angel? Forbye Jack, in his tantrums, would have had to fight hard if he had said that he was going to throw the stone heart on the floor. Old Mike Rossendal had six great lads as would have fought an army before that bit of stone should have been touched. For why?
Nay, I don’t know whether it’s the heart of an angel or a devil, and I don’t care. But when the rinder- pest crawled through our dales, not one cow belonging to the Blea died, nor did they get touched when the foot-and-mouth disease struck farms to right and to left of them and left not but a hirpling, bawling set of beasts on the land. It’s a ha’nt is that stone heart, and it’s my opinion it’s waiting hanging from the beam at the Blea while its own time comes to move. For they do say that that stone has been taken across the water, that it has been burned in a limekiln, that it’s been broken a hundred times in former days, but there isn’t a mark on it as I could see.
Touch it! Nay, not me. As long as it’s on the chain it’s safe both to me and the house.
What, Old Michael’s grandfather it was that had a chain made for it, so they say at the Blea, as the stone was every now and then getting lost and bad things coming on the house. It was kept in a shippon then, and not so much thought about it.
The last time it was lost the cows began to pick their calves, and then to die off like nits; the grass went brown, and the corn rotted and there wasn’t a bit of green about the spot. For a lot of butterflies swept down out of the sky, and for a bit the fields were white wi’ ’em. They were ranker than daisies.
Then in a bit there was millions of great green caterpillars as eat every blade up. The hay wasn’t worth getting, and the cows come home at noon because they couldn’t feed on the nasty things.
Then one day it struck Old Michael’s grandfather that the stone wasn’t to be seen. By gum, there would be a to-do, for the old chap thought a sight of the thing. The whole spot turned out to look for it, the muck midden was turned over and over again, the paving that had been put down a month afore was pulled up, and the beck course was gone over pretty near cobble by cobble. But never a sign of the Heart of Stone could they find. And things went from bad to worse, for the Scots come down in armies and took every horse and cart and all the hay they could carry off the farma thing which hadn’t happened for hundreds of years. But the old farmer was a pretty warm man, and that didn’t ruin him, and they kept on looking for the Heart of Stone. Some of the lads thought the schoolmaster, as was one of them wise men, had witched it away for some game of his own, but then he swore (and they laid the Bible open, face down, while he swore) that he hadn’t seen it at all. At last the Heart of Stone was found, near the school, where the lads were laking ducky (a North Country game with stones) with it. Old Michael’s grandfather was pleased, you may be sure and he was very certain this sort of thing would never happen again. He was as certain as sure that the witches it was that had taken the stone afore. So he. would take the Heart of Stone, put it on a chain, and hang it up in the kitchen where he could see it a dozen times every day. So he mounted his pony and rode down the middle of the beck to the smithy, so that the witches wouldn’t hear. He told nobody either where he was going. At the smithy he waited for the smith to come out and to step into the water before he spoke to him. And at midnight they stopped every clock at the Blea and the smithy and all the way round, and the priest came down and read from the Good Book while the smith and the farmer forged a chain without speaking a word. You see the witches and the Devil himself have to depend on clocks to tell them the time, but God knows every minute as it goes. They say that both the farmer and the smith were burnt with a great burst of sparks just as they were making the last link, and that Old Jack with his tongs threw the still hot metal right into the running beck just as the cock crew. And the same night, in the same way, they carried the chain up to the Blea and welded the ends together through the beam and through the hole in the Heart of Stone. So there, as the old priest said, it will bide as long as iron is iron and wood is wood, and then after these as long as the ivy grows green on the wall. What, didn’t it make a difference to the folk at the Blea, for the caterpillars went dead and the grass grew and the cows held their calves, and blest if the horses didn’t come wandering back from among the Scots what had been beaten in a fight about Penrith way, and had to leave their carts and wagons and run for their lives!” One listens to such recitals with interest, perhaps because there is a tinge of superstition not yet eradicated in every one- and one day, finding myself within measurable distance of the Blea, I walked thither. But alas and alas! the Heart of Stone divided into chambers with the places where the blood passed in and out, took on a conventional shape—it was but a stone hammer which some man in the Primitive Age had left in the meadows until some one had picked it up for a charm and a curio.
The markings were but the lines of softer clay in the smooth slatey stone. Had one known where the narrator of the story was living, an interview would have been acceptable, but he had disappeared from the district.
And as I rambled back home the ancient legendary lore of the pierced stone came back to my mind.
In Sweden, it is still customary to keep any ancient battle-axes of stone hung up in the cow-house.
” Lucky stones” of this variety are mentioned by Pennant in 1722 as being in use in Scotland: ” A farmer (in Liddlesdale) told me that a pebble naturally perforated was an infallible cure, hung over a horse that was hag-ridden, or troubled with nocturnal sweats.” In Suffolk, there was full faith at one time that such a stone, suspended in the house, would prevent the cattle being troubled by night-mare, and the labourers went further sometimes, carrying the ancient stones home so that they might have good rest at night. Small flat stones with holes through are also in Old Sweden still called elf-stones, and hung on to children’s necks as an antidote to fevers and other infantile complaints.
There are many other stone superstitions in our countryside: a Druidical Circle has become metamorphosed by story into a group of dancers who persisted in their amusement on Sundays, and even induced the priest to join in their unholy revels.
One night, however, the Wrath came down on them, and they were petrified in their places just beginning some dance. It is the great stone outside the circle which stands for the priest, who was also the best fiddler in seven parishes. On certain gloomy nights the stones come again to life, and until the cock crows they may be seen moving about the green sward in ponderous ” figures” and ” movements.”