Turning the Stones

“As I wrenched the last stone in the direction of the devil, didn’t it seem to me that it let out a groan––whether of horror or of sorrow I could not say. But I will tell you that it frightened me to hear that cry. Impossible it was to know if the stone was in sympathy with my loss or if it lamented being brought to its vindictive work.” Turning the Stones.

IRISH CURSING STONES

A cursing stone tends to be found in a distinctive cup-shaped hollow, called a bullaun, in the bed of a larger stone––which is known as a bullaun stone. Stones accommodated in a bullaun can be turned like a pestle in a mortar in order to do their work of cursing or curing.

St Brigid’s Stone, above, is at Killinagh, County Cavan. Each of the bullauns in the main stone holds a turning stone. These particular bullauns measure from 15 to 30 centimetres in diameter. The photo, and the those below of turn stones in Killery, Sligo and Feaghna, Kerry come from the Megalithomania website.

The stones are turned clockwise to make a cure or anti-clockwise to put a spell or a curse on someone. The original purpose of bullaun stones has never been established, although archaeologists have suggested that they may have been used for grinding grains or crushing iron ore. But a ritual/religious interpretation of the stones has in general held sway, even if unproved.

They were likely sites of pagan nature worship at one time as were other celebrated stones in Ireland such as standing stones, dolmens, kissing stones, wishing stones, rocking stones and speaking stones. Supernatural powers––even sentience––have been ascribed to many of the stones. These powers are usually accessed by uttering charms and undertaking a ritual performance such as circling the stone or turning the stone or crawling through a hole in it.

Whatever the class of stone, it was an entity that commanded respect. A curse on a stone was not to be undertaken lightly. It was said to rebound on the curser if there were no just cause for it.

There don’t seem to have been any forgiveness stones.

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My approach to the supernatural in Turning the Stones…

I love a good ghost story, and I’m always fascinated by occasions of mind over matter, but in this book I was more interested in the psychology behind my characters’ experience of the supernatural rather than have them wrangle with actual wraiths and weird entities.

We are all wired to look for meaning in the world and that’s an impulse that can encourage some extreme ideas when you’re under intense emotional stress. It’s possible to have the experience of anomalistic things happening without anything paranormal necessarily taking place––it’s called magical thinking––and that’s a state of mind I played with in Turning the Stones.

There are characters in my book who respond to trauma by seeing things that aren’t really there and by attributing a pattern to events that are in fact brutally arbitrary. Personal investment in ritual objects like wishing wells and cursing stones, which are the kind of stones referred to in the title of my book, is an extension of this need to give ourselves the illusion of control. We all do this to some degree when we automatically say things like ‘Fingers crossed’ or ‘Knock on wood’ as if these little invocations could actually influence the operations of the world. It’s very human to want to believe that there is a moral order at work in the universe, instead of having to face the reality that bad things can happen randomly to good people.

Ghost stories present phenomena that are generally regarded as impossible, whereas I tried in Turning the Stones to place my supernatural elements in a context in which they could be plausible. Hidden memories, for example, triggered by a sense perception such as a smell or a voice––or visions and other intense perceptual experiences that could arise from hunger or exhaustion or mental disorder.

I saw the supernatural elements in my book as expressions of the subconscious mind as well as indicators of the mysteries of the mind. As my heroine Em says, Perhaps you might think as I do that there is more to the world than meets the eye. I will even go so far as to say that the human mind has a capacity for communication that has not yet been entirely revealed to us. That possibility excites me.

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BELOW: The terrible room in which I wrote Turning the Stones.

Northgate Row, Chester early 1800s.

From Turning the Stones:

We stared down at the map. The banks of the Dee were shaded by thousands of tiny dots that gave the impression of mould. They represented the creeping silt that would shrink the river until it was reduced to little more than a trickle. Eliza cried, ‘What will happen to us and to Papa’s granary when the Dee bungs up Parkgate?’ Miss Broadbent spoke softly. ‘I dare say we will be stranded and no ship shall be able to reach us at all.’

Below: The parade at Parkgate on the Wirral Peninsula in Cheshire looking out on the river Dee as it once was.