HAGSTONES

'The hag stone tells the more human side of this history perhaps. Of fear, suspicion, disease and its healing, of countering dark magic, of minding the gap between the living and the dead, natural and supernatural. Its very form is a negotiation between the visible and the invisible, a combination of stone and air, presence and absence, at home in this transient place where land and sea meet, a place of limbo and secret, slow transformations ...' Alex Woodcock, In the Eye of the Hagstone
Much of the information that has been collected for Hagstones is of a repetitive nature but this is, in itself, an endorsement of the strong beliefs that were still prevalent in the early part of the 20th-century up and down the country. In fact, the oddity of hag-stones has long made them a focus of folk magic - where they've been used for everything from wishing spells to hedge-riding and protection - and serious academic study. The names for these perforated rocks vary by region, but hag-stones have been viewed as magical across the world and, are also said to be bringers of high psychic powers and heightened intuition.