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94 Symbolism of the East and West
None of the natives of whom he made enquiries seemed to
understand or to be able to explain their use ;
they
seemed
rather to regard them as wonderful, mysterious, and ev^en
holy— in fact, with the same feeling that they look upon
anything old and rare,— ^just as of certain beads which they
occasionally find in Oudh after the rains. The people say,
" We did not make them, God made them."
Where turned up deep out of the earth by the plough, the
celt is supposed by them to be a thunderbolt fallen from
heaven. The finder usually places it under the village pipal
tree {/lens religiosd), sometimes sanctifying it with a daub of
red paint, and thus converting it into one of the emblems of
Siva.
Curious to relate, the older people in the island of Guernsey,
when they find a celt, also look upon it as a thunderbolt. It
is said that the younger generation is becoming more en-
lightened, and that this superstition is by degrees dying out.
On Plate XIV are figured celts found in Guernsey, for com-
parison with those of India. A friend of the writer's (now
deceased), when formerly residing on the island of Sark, was
given a small celt by a farmer, which this man and his wife
firmly believed was a thunderbolt. It came to light in the
following manner :— During a heavy thunderstorm, one of the
farmer's cows, which was grazing in a field, was struck on the
shoulder b)- the lightning, and killed instantaneously. The
animal was afterwards found sunk on its knees, stiff and
rigid. Its owner's immediate impulse was to dig into the
earth round about the spot in order to find the thunderbolt
which had caused the cow's death. Strange to say, the celt,
a very small green one, was found near the head of the