# Hagstone

*Holed stone; hag-stone*

**Known today as.** A stone with a natural hole worn through it.

Kind: Amulet

## What was it used for?

Hung in stables to stop witches riding horses by night, over the bed against the nightmare, and tied to the stable key.

## What does modern science say?

George Ewart Evans, as June Swann quotes him, called a pierced pebble “the kind which in Suffolk is hung by beds or outside the stable door to ward off the evil eye.”

## What lore surrounds it?

Pliny tells of the “serpents’ eggs” made from the slime and foam of snakes, which the Druids said the serpents tossed into the air by their hissing, held “in high estimation among the Druids”; his translators Bostock and Riley took them for the “Adder gem” of the Druids, believed in Cornwall and Wales.

## What did the older authorities say?

**Reginald Scot.** In *The Discoverie of Witchcraft* (1584), which holds the nightmare a bodily disease, lists among the “magicall cures” for it: “hang a stone over the afflicted persons bed, which stone hath naturallie such a hole in it, as wherein a string may be put through it, and so be hanged over the diseased or bewitched partie; be it man, woman, or horsse.”

**John Aubrey.** Records in his *Miscellanies* that “to hinder the night mare, they hang in a string, a flint with a hole in it (naturally) by the manger,” to stop “the hag from riding their horses, who will sometimes sweat all night.”

**The Catholic Encyclopedia.** The Catholic Encyclopedia lists among the superstitions “most in vogue at different periods of history” the amulets, “things worn as a remedy or preservative against evils or mischief, such as diseases or witchcraft,” and “lucky and unlucky days, numbers, persons, things, actions,” noting that “the number thirteen continues to strike terror into the breasts of men who profess not to fear God.” Pliny tells of a stone that “conceives, it is said; a fact which it admits when shaken.”

## Sources

- Scot, R. (1584). *The Discoverie of Witchcraft*, IV.11.
- Pliny, *Natural History* XXIX.52.
- *The Catholic Encyclopedia* (New York, 1907–1914), “Superstition.” newadvent.org/cathen/14339a.htm
- Pliny the Elder, *Natural History* 37.59, trans. J. Bostock & H. T. Riley (1855), Perseus Digital Library.
- Aubrey, J. *Miscellanies upon Various Subjects*, 4th ed. (1857). London: John Russell Smith.
- Swann, J. (1996). Shoes concealed in buildings. *Costume* 30: 56–69.

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*Hagstone.* In *Materia Medica*, edited by B. C. P. Statema. Version 1, revised 2026-10-03. The Thinking Press. https://thethinkingpress.org/materia-medica/hagstone

Historical description, not medical advice.