a very largo one,[1] and it is believed to have been cursed by St. Patrick on account of the pagan worship there; or, more correctly speaking, the stones of Usnech—for there were more than one—became so accursed owing to that saint's malediction, that they never failed to prove the ruin of any structure into which they happened to be built: in fact, a bad stone in a building was proverbially said to be one of the stones of Usnech cursed by St. Patrick.[2] This I mention by the way: what I wish to call your attention to, is, the reason Merlin is represented giving, for fetching those stones from so far, namely, that they were endowed with various virtue's, especially for healing: the giants of old had, he said, ordained that bodily ailments might be healed by bathing the patient in the water in which the stones had first been bathed, or by the application of herbs dipped in the same holy bath. This would seem to point in particular to those of the Stonehenge stones which geologists have hitherto failed to recognize as belonging to the rocks of the district; and the idea of washing them, and the virtues thereby imparted by them to the water, presumably implies that the stones were regarded as divine or as the seats of divine power: compare the story[3] of St. David splitting the capstone of the Maen Ketti cromlech in Gower, in order, as we are told, to
- ↑ See Cambrensis Eversus (Dublin, 1848), editor's note, i. 416.
- ↑ Acta Sanctorum, March 17, Vol. ij. p. 561.
- ↑ Iolo MSS. pp. 83, 473.
Kildarensi planitie, non procul a castro Nasensi, where one might see it in his day. To me, however, the two stories appear to have been originally one, the error having arisen from the place-names Killare and Kildare.
