A stone engraved with the figure of a hare was believed to be valuable in exorcising the devil.  That of a dog preserved the owner from “dropsy or pestilence;” a versatile ring indeed!  An old French book speaks of an engraved stone with the image of Pegasus being particularly healthful for warriors; it was said to give them “boldness and swiftness in flight.”  These two virtues sound a trifle incompatible!

The turquoise was supposed to be especially sympathetic.  According to Dr. Donne: 

   “A compassionate turquoise, that cloth tell
    By looking pale, the owner is not well,”

must have been a very sensitive stone.

There was a physician in the fourth century who was famous for his cures of colic and biliousness by means of an iron ring engraved with an exorcism requesting the bile to go and take possession of a bird!  There was also a superstition that fits could be cured by a ring made of “sacrament money.”  The sufferer was obliged to stand at the church door, begging a penny from every unmarried man who passed in or out; this was given to a silversmith, who exchanged it at the cathedral for “sacrament money,” out of which he made a ring.  If this ring was worn by the afflicted person, the seizures were said to cease.

The superstition concerning the jewel in the toad’s head was a strangely persistent one:  it is difficult to imagine what real foundation there could ever have been for the idea.  An old writer gives directions for getting this stone, which the toad in his life time seems to have guarded most carefully.  “A rare good way to get the stone out of a toad,” he says, “is to put a... toad... into an earthen pot:  put the same into an ant’s hillocke, and cover the same with earth, which toad... the ants will eat, so that the bones... and stone will be left in the pot.”  Boethius once stayed up all night watching a toad in the hope that it might relinquish its treasure; but he complained that nothing resulted “to gratify the great pangs of his whole night’s restlessness.”

An old Irish legend says that “the stone Adamant in the land of India grows no colder in any wind or snow or ice; there is no heat in it under burning sods” (this is such an Hibernian touch!  The peat fuel was the Celtic idea of a heating system), “nothing is broken from it by striking of axes and hammers; there is one thing only breaks that stone, the blood of the Lamb at the Mass; and every king that has taken that stone in his right hand before going into battle, has always gained the victory.”  There is also a superstition regarding the stone Hibien, which is said to flame like a fiery candle in the darkness, “it spills out poison before it in a vessel; every snake that comes near to it or crosses it dies on the moment.”  Another stone revered in Irish legend is the Stone of Istien, which is found “in the brains of dragons after their deaths,” and a still more capable jewel seems to be the Stone