Chapter 772

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The rocking, or “logan,” stones bear various names; such as the clacha-brath of the Celt, the “destiny or judgment-stone”; the divining-stone, or “stone of the ordeal,” and the oracle-stone; the moving or animated stone of the Phœnicians; the rumbling stone of the Irish. Brittany has its “pierres branlantes” at Huelgoat. They are found in the Old and the New Worlds; in the British Islands, France, Spain, Italy, Russia, Germany, etc., as also in North America. (See Hodson’s Letters from North America, vol. ii. p. 440.) Pliny speaks of several in Asia (Hist. Nat., i. 96); and Apollonius Rhodius expatiates on the rocking stones, and says that they are “stones placed on the apex of a tumulus, and so sensitive as to be movable by the mind” (Ackerman’s Arth. Index, p. 34), referring no doubt to the ancient priests who moved such stones by will-power from a distance.