That time a farmer in County Cork showed me a 'fairy stone' that turned out to be a Bronze Age scraper

I was doing a surface survey in Ireland about two years back, just walking fields and looking for anything out of place. An older farmer named Seamus saw me poking around and came over, not looking too happy at first. He pulled this smooth, dark stone from his pocket and said, 'My boy found this. Calls it a fairy stone. You lot would just put it in a museum.' I asked to see it, and the second I held it, I felt the worked edge. It was a perfect little thumbnail scraper, probably for cleaning hides. I told him what it was and his whole face changed. He said, 'So it's not magic, it's just old work.' That moment, seeing him connect with a tool his own ancestors might have used, felt better than any big museum find. Anyone else have a small find that meant a lot to a local person?

2 comments

2 Comments

david82123d ago

Wait, but isn't that still a kind of magic? Old work like that is amazing!

jordan65323d ago

My grandpa used to restore old pocket watches. He'd spend hours cleaning tiny gears by hand under a magnifying glass. Seeing all those parts move together after he was done, that felt like the real magic to me. What's the oldest piece of tech you've seen working?