Andrew Lang

Custom and Myth Andrew Lang

After the heavy rain of a thunderstorm has washed the soil, it sometimes happensthat a child, or a rustic, finds a wedge-shaped piece of metal or a few triangularflints in a field or near a road. There was no such piece of metal, there were no suchflints, lying there yesterday, and the finder is puzzled about the origin of the objectson which he has lighted. He carries them home, and the village wisdom determinesthat the wedge-shaped piece of metal is a 'thunderbolt, ' or that the bits of flint are'elf-shots, ' the heads of fairy arrows. Such things are still treasured in remote nooksof England, and the 'thunderbolt' is applied to cure certain maladies by its touch. As for the fairy arrows, we know that even in ancient Etruria they were looked onas magical, for we sometimes see their points set, as amulets, in the gold ofEtruscan necklaces. In Perugia the arrowheads are still sold as charms. All educatedpeople, of course, have long been aware that the metal wedge is a celt, or ancientbronze axe-head, and that it was not fairies, but the forgotten peoples of this islandwho used the arrows with the tips of flint. Thunder is only so far connected withthem that the heavy rains loosen the surface soil, and lay bare its long hiddensecret