d over it by the tail, the head cut off, and the blood allowed to drop
into the plate. Three moles were sacrificed one after the other, but
without effect. Next they tried the effect of a bit of the skull of a
suicide, and sent for this treasure a distance of from sixty to one hundred
miles. This bit of the skull was scraped to dust into a cup of water,
which the lad had to swallow, not knowing the contents. This I heard
from a sister of the lad's. There was a 'strong-minded' old woman at
Strathpeffer, Ross-shire whose daughter told me that the neighbours had
come to condole with the mother after she had fallen down in a fit of some
kind. They strongly advised her to bury a living cock in the very place
where she had fallen, to prevent a return of the ailment. A woman in
Sutherlandshire told me that she knew a young man, ill of consumption,
who was made to drink his own blood after it had been drawn from his arm.
This same woman was ill with a pain in her chest, which she could get
nothing to relieve; so her father sent off for 'a knowing man,' who, when
he saw the girl, repeated some words under his breath, then touched the
floor and her shoulder three times alternately, and with alleged success."]

[Footnote 224: In the first chapter of Adamnan's work, the miracle is
again alluded to as follows:--"He took a white stone (_lapidem
candidum_) from the river's bed, and blessed it for the cure of certain
diseases; and that stone, contrary to the law of nature, floats like an
apple when placed in the water."]

[Footnote 225: For other instances of waters rendered medicinal by being
brought in contact with saint's bones--such as St. Marnan's head, with
St. Conval's chariot, etc. etc., see Dalyell's _Superstitions of
Scotland_, p. 151, etc. Sibbald's _Memoirs of the Edinburgh College of
Physicians_, p. 39.]

[Footnote 226: See _Philosophical Transactions_ for the year 1713, p.
98. For instances of curing-stones in the Hebrides, see Martin's
_Western Isles_, p. 134, 166, etc.]

[Footnote 227: I was lately told by the farmer at Nemphlar, in the
neighbourhood of Lee, that in his younger days no byre was considered
safe which had not a bottle of water from the Lee Penny suspended from
its rafters. Even this remnant of superstition seems to have died out
during the present generation.]

[Footnote 228: I state this on the high numismatic authority of my
friend, Mr. Sim. Sir Walter Scott describes the coin as a groat of
Edward