The magic of the rocks

Logan stones

A Logan stone is a rock which rests on a point, such that it can, with minimal effort, be swung rhythmically. The magic of each stone varies. Some test character, so that they can only be rocked by the true of heart, being immobile to cowards, or the dishonest, or to traitors, or bastards, or drunkards. Many are believed to cure children rocked on it, at certain times, of grave diseases.  Logan stones are scattered about Cornwall.

Where the stones came from is not important

The Cornish in Mythic Europe attribute a lot of their odd stones to druids.  A modern archaeologist from our world might disagree, but there aren’t many of them around to tell the Mythic Peasantry that they are wrong. There is some recognition that cromlechs were once tombs, but many stones are just sacred because that’s their nature.  Stones which are considered special are called, in Cornish “ambers” or “main ambers”. As far as I can tell this bears not relationship to the semiprecious stone of the same name. People don’t know why, or how, the stones became that way, just that some are immovable, and others will move back if you manage to shift them.

Many stones are attributed to ancient giants or the Devil. These tend to be in the west of Cornwall. Those in the East are often attributed to King Arthur. For Hunt it’s a bit of a running gag that some antiquaries see Druidic ceremonial bowls scopped out of every rock in Cornwall. That being said, water collected in such a bowl is a good way of expressing vis sources.  The dew that collects into the cups carved into  Arthur’s Seat  at Tintagel, for example, has Rego vis. Some Logan rocks must produce Creo, Intelligo or Corpus vis.

The stones which move back to their ancient spots if moved sound like disturbed earth elementals returning to their aura.  Many stones move back overnight, so they seem to reappear at their own spot first thing in the morning: that seems like a more fae or demonic timetable.  Hunt also mentions a few stones which revolve three times at cock-crow. There seems to be no reason for this, and none sought, but they’d similarly tie into faerie or infernal haunts.

Holed rocks and crick stones

There are many holed stones in Cornwall reputed to have magical powers. The most famous is the Men An Tol, or “holed stone” near Penzance. If scrofulous children are passed through the stone naked, then drawn on the grass three times against the sun, they are cured. This may seem like an odd thing, but curing scrofula by touch is the purview of kings. Some adults have likewise claimed benefit for skin conditions and, strangest of all, people with spinal injuries have been cured by being slid through.

There’s a forked stone in Morva which has the same tendency to heal injured backs, but even the people who live nearby say the holed stone is better: it’s just less convenient to get to when you have a sore back. There are many other little tunnels, caused by falling rocks, which are said to be good for rheunmatism or back pain. Sometimes you need to crawl through them nine times for the charm to work. The stones seems to be able to cure certain types of Aging Crisis.

The Men An Tol also has oracular powers  If you balance two brass pins on the edge, and ask a question, they will move to indicate the answer.

Plot hook: The tunnel

Hunt says that there’s a cave tunnel which connects Piper’s Hole, on St Mary’s in the Scilly Islands, with a similar cave near Tresco. People who try to take the tunnel often disappear. Dogs lost from one place sometimes turn up at the other with most of their hair missing, and locals seem to insist on having sex in the caves, for reasons Hunt does not seem to fathom, and might be mystical in Mythic Europe.

Minor charms – minor Virtues

Most Cornish charms are specific to a particular illness. Virtually all of them are Christian prayers, so they are arguably guaranteed miracles. That’s theologically troublesome in period, but that doesn’t seem to stop anyone. Players should just say what one illness they want their character to cure, how the cure looks in game. It costs a fatigue level per person cured.
Serious illnesses may require props or special times. For example, the fonts in Cornwall have locks on them, because people keep stealing the water from after christenings. They call it “holy water” and use it in folk charms. There’s also a belief you can put your warts in a bottle or bag, by touching them with pins or pebbles. As the warts will go to any other person if they touch the bag, some people try to sneak them into newly dug graves.  These warts might be a Corpus vis source, or a plague of tiny demons.
Some charmers charge for cures, others refuse on principle. This isn’t an infallible way of sorting the virtuous ones from the vicious, but it makes a fine first sieve. The power runs in families.
The Charmers of Zennor can cure a variety of illnesses, but their most famous charm is the stopping of blood. It can keep alive someone who has been deeply injured, much as Hermetic spells to bind wounds do, save that the person seems to heal while the charm is in place. The Zennor charmers are unusual in that they can stop blood merely by thinking their charm: most people need to say it. The charms are passed down within each gender. It’s not clear what happens if this prohibition is broken.
The Charmer of St Colomb used to convince people he had magical powers by putting patterns of candles in his fields. He claimed it counteracted, and protected him from, the spells of witches. He would send away evil spirits by banging on wooden furniture, walls, and shutters with his walking stick, and telling the spirits to go away to the Red Sea. He also spoke nonsense words, which are called “gibberish” in Cornish. After a place was exorcised, he would order it cleaned and the walls and ceiling limewashed. This may be a substance inimical to local faeries or demons.  The charmer could also show the face of a thief in a tub of water, and made money selling powder to throw over bewitched cattle. Either as a conman or as a folk magician, he’s a useful character available to the covenant.

Public Charms as Boons in Covenant Designs

There are some charms so widely known that in a saga they are modelled in the covenant’s design, rather than each individual character’s.  For example, Hunt records a lady begging for pennies on the porch of a church. When she has thirty, she goes inside and the priest changes them for a silver coin. The lady painfully hobbles around the altar three times, and then goes off to have her coin made into a ring, which cures her arthritis. Everyone involved knows how the charm works. This is an Environmental Boon, which allows the characters to treat Ageing crises.
The Garrick Zans (“Holy Rock”) in Ecols is used for minor judicial magic. If something has been stolen, a large fire is lit on the rock and each person takes a burning faggot out. They spit on their stick and if it sizzles they are innocent. Hunt says its because guilty people have dry mouths, but in Mythic Europe, it’s likely something mystical.
There’s a tradition that if people light a bonfire and form a dancing ring about it, if they can stamp it out with their feet before breaking hands, no-one in the circle will die within a year. Ill luck to whomever broke the circle first, otherwise. Hunt notes that you can lead beasts over fire, or have humans jump over fire, to break curses.
The Celtic arrowheads which elsewhere are considered the remanants of elfshot are, in Cornwall, believed to be produced by thunder. They fall from the clouds, and change colour to predict the weather.  Water in which they have been soaked also cures diseases. So, an Auram vis source with a secondary use?

Herbal charms

Magical herbs are perfect as Covenant vis sources. I’ll quote the herb charms directly from Hunt. Troupes should negotiate if the covenant needs to pay for both the vis source and the environmental boon. Most herbal charms use the non-virtuous versions of the plant, and in that case both need to be paid for, but if vis must be sacrificed to use the charm, then it’s not an environmental Boon, and may be a Contested Vis Source. Local folk magicians try to steal the vis away before the servants of the covenant can collect it.
Club moss: IF this moss is properly gathered, it is ” good against all diseases of the eyes.”

The gathering is regarded as a mystery not to be lightly told ; and if any man ventures to write the secret, the virtues of the moss avail him no more. I hope, therefore, my readers will fully value the sacrifice I make in giving them the formula by which they may be guided.

On the third day of the moon when the thin crescent is seen for the first time show it the knife with which the moss is to be cut, and repeat, ” As Christ heal’d the issue of blood, Do thou cut, what thou cuttest, for good ! “

At sun-down, having carefully washed the hands, the club-moss is to be cut kneeling. It is to be carefully wrapped in a white cloth, and subsequently boiled in some water taken from the spring nearest to its place of growth. This may be used as a fomentation. Or the club-moss may be made into an ointment, with butter made from the milk of a new cow.

The sea poppy is tangled up, in Hunt, as quotes within quotes, so I’ll quote him again.

“This root, so much valued for removing all pains in the breast, stomach, and intestines, is good also for disordered lungs, and is so much better here than in other places, that the apothecaries of Cornwall send hither for it; and some people plant them in their gardens in Cornwall, and will not part with them under sixpence a root.

A very simple notion they have with regard to this root, which falls not much short of the Druids’ superstition in gathering and preparing their selago and samolus. This root, you must know, is accounted very good both as an emetic and cathartic. If, therefore, they design that it shall operate as the former, their constant opinion is that it should be scraped and sliced upwards that is, beginning from the root, the knife is to ascend towards the leaf; but if that it is intended to operate as a cathartic, they must scrape the root downwards. The scnecio also, or groundsel, they strip upwards for an emetic and downwards for a cathartic. In Cornwall they have several such groundless opinions with regard to plants, and they gather all the medicinal ones when the moon is just such an age ; which, with many other such whims, must be considered as the reliques of the Druid superstition.”

They, the Druids, likewise used great ceremonies in gathering an herb called samolus, marsh-wort, or fen-berries, which consisted in a previous fast, in not looking back during the time of their plucking it, and, lastly, in using their left hand only ; from this last ceremony, perhaps, the herb took the name of samol, which, in the Phoenician tongue, means the left hand. This herb was considered to be particularly efficacious in curing the diseases incident to swine and cattle. (C. S. Gilbert.}”

Plot hook: the research project 

A vis source that changes from and indeterminate state while alive, to either Creo or Perdo depending on the way you cut it fascinates a Bonisagus maga, who sets up a covenant for Original Research. Covenants which try to prevent her access to the vis source earn the ire of her House.

Serpent Charms

Do charms scale?

Hunt notes that “The body of a dead serpent, bruised on the wound…is said to be an infallible remedy for its bite” My question is: does this scale? Can you mice up a dragon and turn it into poultices to cure the people made sick by its vapours?

Similarly, Hunt later says: “When an adder or snake is seen, a circle is to be rapidly drawn around it, and the sign of the cross made within it, while the two first verses of the 68th Psalm are repeated : “Let God arise, let his enemies be scattered; let them also that hate him flee before him. As smoke is driven away, so drive them away ; as wax melteth before the fire, so let the wicked perish at the presence of God.” Likewise, does this work with dragons? Is it a faerie ward? What do you do once you’ve caught a dragon in a magic circle?

Milpreves

The downs of Cornwall, particularly near Land’s End, are thick with adders at certain times of year, and the best way to protect yourself is to carry an adder stone, or “milpreve”. One source also calls them “milprers”, meaning “thousand worms”. These are created when many adders get together. Hunt, rational explanation at the ready, suggests these are madrepore corals which have washed up on the shore. Let us temporise by saying that milpreves look a lot like coralline limestone, even if they are made of young, petrified snakes. These are a vis source.

Time for a quote “Camden asserts that one of the prevailing superstitions concerning them was that, about midsummer-eve, they all met together in companies, and, joining their heads, began a general hiss, which they continued until a kind of bubble was formed, which immediately hardened, and gave to the finder prosperity in all his undertakings.” If it gives general luck, then the vis source’s secondary power seems to be that it grants a minor Virtue.  Perhaps it gives a reroll or a Confidence point?

Later, Hunt mentions another source which indicates there is a charm which creates milpreves. The folk magician finds a sleeping snake, says a charm and then strikes it with a hazel wand in the centre of its “spirae.”. This means “coils” but it is included because Spira is a name for a maga. This transforms the snake into an adder stone, presumably to the delight of nearby magi.

Folk magicians use the stone to make an antivenin. This is Carew in Hunt. “The country people retaine a conceite, that the snakes, by their breathing upon a hazel-wand, doe make a stone ring of blew colour, in which there appeareth the yellow figure of a snake, and that beasts which are stung, being given to drink of the water wherein this stone hath bene socked, will there-through recover.”  Hunt notes the same things are called “Druid stones” or “Druid glass” in various other Celtic countries.

Concerted action

Adders in Cornwall come to each other’s aid when one is trapped or attacked. Do they have a communication system, a group mind, or are they the servants of a faerie? Are they like the bees of a hive, serving a great dragon beneath the earth? In the story given by Hunt, a man traps an adder with a pail of milk, and then thousands of others come to aid it. All of the man’s neighbours, anticipating this, make a furze (bracken) pile over them and incinerate the lot. Can a Bjornaer magus, or a magus with an adder familiar, use their communication system?

A childhood familiar?

SNAKES AVOID THE ASH-TREE.
IT is said that no kind of snake is ever found near the ” ashen- tree,” and that a branch of the ash-tree will prevent a snake from coming near a person. A child who was in the habit of receiving its portion of bread and milk at the cottage door, was found to be in the habit of sharing its food with one of the poisonous adders. The reptile came regularly every morning, and the child, pleased with the beauty of his companion, encouraged the visits. The babe and adder were close friends.

Eventually this became known to the mother, and, finding it to be a matter of difficulty to keep the snake from the child whenever it was left alone, and she was frequently, being a labourer in the fields, compelled to leave her child to shift for itself, she adopted the precaution of binding an ” ashen-twig ” about its body.

The adder no longer came near the child ; but from that day forward the child pined, and eventually died, as all around said, through grief at having lost the companion by whom it had been fascinated.

So, that’s an origin story for an apprentice, and a Traditional Ward for local snake faeries.

 

Ill luck

It is unlucky to kill a robin or a wren, and the curse persists all the days of a person’s life, hence a local ditty “Those who kill a robin or a wran, will never propser, boy or man.” This is useful for Bonisagus magi of those types.

It’s unlucky to be born in May, and kittens born in that month are put to death.  Except if cat familiars have anything to say about it. That’s terrible. It shouldn’t be allowed.

Hens that crow at night are killed, which hardly seems fair, because cocks that crow at night don’t actually cause the angel of death to come.  They are just mentioning his passing.

A person who does not kill the first butterfly they see for the season will have ill luck the whole year. You’d need a faerie to be behind that to make an adventure of it.

Whistling

“To whistle by night is one of the unpardonable sins amongst the fishermen of St Ives. My correspondent says, ” I would no more dare go among a party of fishermen at night whistling a popular air than into a den of untamed tigers.”…No miner will allow of whistling underground. I could never learn from the miners whether they regarded it as unlucky or not. 

 

Vis sources

This section will hopefully be consumed in other parts of the book in the final draft

Mucus

Sorry, I’m just going to quote this one. I’ve heard it before and I love it. It’s a Muto vis source, clearly, but it’s bad news for a Bjornaer magus of this type, who spends winter in a bucket or down a well.

Migratory birds

“I FIND a belief still prevalent amongst the people in the out- lying districts of Cornwall, that such birds as the cuckoo and the swallow remain through the winter in deep caves, cracks in the earth, and in hollow trees ; and instances have been cited of these birds having been found in a torpid state in the mines, and in hollow pieces of wood. This belief appears to be of some antiquity, for Carew writes in his ” Survey of Cornwall ” as follows : ” In the west parts of Cornwall, during the winter season, swallows are found sitting in old deep tynne-works, and holes in the sea cliffes ; but touching their lurking-places, Olaus Magmts maketh a far stranger report. For he saith that in the north parts of the world, as summer weareth out, they clap mouth to mouth, wing to wing, and legge to legge, and so, after a sweet singing, fall downe into certain lakes or pools amongst the caves, from whence at the next spring they receive a new resurrection ; and he
addeth, for proofe thereof, that the fishermen who make holes in the ice, to dig up such fish in their nets as resort thither for breathing, doe sometimes light on these swallows congealed in clods, of a slymie substance, and that, carrying them home to their stoves, the warmth restored them to life and flight.”

A man employed in the granite quarries near Penryn, informed me that he found such a “slymie substance” in one of the pools in the quarry where he was working, that he took it home, warmth proved it to be a bird, but when it began to move it was seized by the cat, who ran out on the downs and devoured it.

The stuff of shooting stars

There’s a glowing slime found in the quarries of Penryn at night, which folklore says is caused by shooting stars, and may contain some of their substance. Hunt says that it is frogs’ eggs, thrown up by crows, but I see no reason that should be so in Mythic Europe. At minimum it is Auram vis: at best it is stuff from beyond the lunar sphere that has antimagical properties because of its extraordinary origin.

Danewort

At Trewithan there’s a battlefield, called the Swordfield, where the blood of the fallen Danes sprouted as “Dane’s-wort” or dwarf elder. Writers from England claim that the Danes planted this tree on the graves of their dead. Either way, its a beacon for necromancers.