Legends About the Toad Stone

The Toad-stone was supposed to possess virtues which found firm believers in many ages. Philosophers taught that "the toad, ugly and venomous, wears yet a precious jewel in his head."

Leonardus Camillus mentions this stone as being found in the brain of a newly-killed toad. There were, it was pretended, two kinds of these miraculous stones, of which the white was the best. Tennant, writing of the Roman fables respecting the toad-stone, says it was a principal ingredient in the incantations of nocturnal hags:--

"Toad that under the cold stone

Days and nights has thirty-one,

Sweltered venom, sleeping got,

Boil thou first i' the charmed pot."

Lupton, in his "Book of Notable Things," instructs his readers how to procure the toad-stone: "You shall knowe whether the tode stone be the ryghte or perfect stone or not. Holde the stone before a tode so that he may see it, and if it be a ryght and true stone, the tode will leape towarde it, and make as though he would snatch it. He envieth so much that none should have that stone."

If swallowed, it was a certain antidote against poison, probably on the homoeopathic principle, and it was usual to take it as a precautionary pill (rather a hard one) before eating. Erasmus, in his "Perigrinatio Religionis ergo," describes a famous toad-stone set at the feet of "Our Lady of Walsingham," as a gem "to which no name has been given by the Greeks and Romans, but the French have named it after the toad, inasmuch as it represents the figure so exactly that no art of man could do as well. And the wonder is so much the greater that the stone is very small. The figure of the toad does not project from the surface, but shines through, as if enclosed in the stone itself. And some--no mean authorities--add, that if the stone be put into vinegar the toad will swim therein and move its legs."

This account would almost induce the belief that the stone in question was a lump of amber, enclosing some large insect. It is painful to think of the number of toads which must have been sacrificed in by-gone days, in hopes of finding the mysterious precious stone it was supposed to possess by treasure-seekers, "midnight hags," and others.