On the moor west of Penzance, beyond the village of Lanyon, a path runs across a furzy down. Beside it stand three stones. Two are rough upright pillars, about four feet high. Between them stands a thin, flat stone with a great round hole through its middle, big enough for a grown person to crawl through. In Cornish it is the Men-an-Tol, the holed stone. The country people had their own name for it: the Crick-stone.
In the year 1749 the antiquary William Borlase, rector of Ludgvan, visited the stones. A sensible farmer from the neighbourhood told him that he had known many people creep through the hole to be cured of pains in their back and limbs. And at certain times of the year, he said, parents would bring their small children and draw them through the stone, to cure them of the rickets.
Then the farmer showed Borlase something more. On the top edge of the holed stone, two pins had been carefully laid, one across the other. This, he explained, was how the curious asked the stone about love and fortune. They would leave the pins and come back later. If the pins still lay as they had been left, or had turned, or had vanished altogether, that was the stone's answer, and they made up their minds accordingly.
More than a hundred years later the stone had lost none of its power, or so people believed. Robert Hunt was told that children with scrofula were passed naked through the hole three times, and then drawn three times across the grass against the sun. Grown men and women with bad backs were drawn through as well, and everyone agreed that the stone was as good as ever. Lay two brass pins crossed on its top, Hunt heard, and ask your question, and the pins would stir and give the answer.
William Bottrell, who grew up in the far west of Cornwall, knew the custom too. To cure lumbago, sciatica and every other crick and pain in the back, you must crawl on all fours through the hole nine times, going against the course of the sun. The old word for this was “crameing”. Little children were put through as well, so that they would grow up strong and healthy.
Why against the sun? Because, people said, going against the sun drives a sickness back. For anything else, you should always go the way the sun goes.
