Confessions of a Hedge Witch

I found one couple about my (middle) age who had me in to tea before bringing me to the stone (my memory having faded a bit after more than 30 years). They repeated the lore about Finn having thrown the stone from the mountain, and that it was called “fingerstone” because the marks of his fingers are on the stone (there is some spalling that would qualify, I note). Then they said it had fallen! Alas. The farmer who owns the field customarily got his giant rolls of hay well on to the prongs of his tractor by backing them against the stone and pressing them on. One day, the stone just gave way. “Finn MacCool threw it down,” laughed the informant, “and Sean Smith [name changed] knocked it down!”

I should also report some ambivalence toward Finn in this family, who related that (they grew up on the hill) the locals often called him, “Finn MacFool,” and perhaps eager school teachers and other forms of government admins. drumming in reverence for tradition in school kids growing up in the 1960s helped reduce the tradition unconsciously?

The fieldname will no doubt continue a while the tradition: it is locally named “cloghmor.”

So ancient ritual has transitioned from the target ritual of the Iron Age, probably the folkloric re-use/re-interpretation in the medieval times, and of course again as time passed until this Swiss Army Knife of a multifunctional stone ended by getting practical agrarian work done. We went to see it, where it now is sinking into the mud in this very rainy season. I could wish it would be preserved somehow, but another part of me sees it as a good long life-cycle.

…..I wept.