Finding a hag stone
Finding a hag stone means pocketing a pebble with a natural hole, the kind English farmers once tied to stable keys to keep witches off their horses. It is a stone kept for its damage, not despite it.
What it may mean
On a pebble beach you can walk past ten thousand smooth, whole stones and stop for the one with a hole in it. The hole is damage. A piddock, a small rock-boring clam, drilled it, or a soft lump of fossil sponge weathered out of the flint and left a tunnel. Yet that is the stone people pocket, string on a cord or hang by the door. Northern English farmers called such stones holy stones and hung them in stables, and the antiquary Grose explained the other name, hag stone: hung at the head of a bed, it kept off the nightmare, pictured as a hag sitting on the sleeper. People often treat their own dents the other way around, hiding the gap that others find most interesting about them: a career detour, an accent, a year that went wrong. Nobody keeps a hag stone in spite of its hole.
Depending on how you saw it
A stone with a white ring
Beachcombers also prize dark stones circled by an unbroken white band, often called wishing stones. A 1903 encyclopedia called such a stone fortunate, but warned that letting anybody touch it after you found it broke the charm. What do you keep to yourself because sharing it seems to spoil it?
Hung on the stable key
Farmers once tied holed stones to the key of the stable door, so that witches could not ride the horses at night; in Cumberland one was hung in the cowshed. What in your home stands guard over something you would hate to lose?
Holes made by piddocks
On some shores you can find the culprit: a piddock clam still sitting in its burrow, grinding slowly with a ridged shell. In Portessie, in Scotland, a stone bored by one was counted very fortunate. What slow, patient force has been shaping you without your noticing?
Why it happens in nature
Most holes in beach stones are made by piddocks, clams that bore into soft rock, or by sponges and worms. In chalk country, flints often hold the remains of fossil sponges that weather out and leave a natural tunnel. Waves and grit then smooth the edges, which is why hag stones turn up on pebble beaches and in riverbeds.
What folk beliefs say
England (north)
Brand records that hollow stones were hung up in stables to prevent the nightmare and were called holy stones in the north of England; Aubrey wrote of a flint with a natural hole hung by the manger so that the hag could not ride the horses.
Source: John Brand; Henry Ellis (ed.), Observations on the Popular Antiquities of Great Britain, vol. 3 (1849), vol. 3, p. 279. View the page
England
Grose, quoted by Brand, wrote that a stone with a hole in it hung at the bed's head prevents the nightmare and is therefore called a hag stone; it was also tied to a stable key to keep witches from riding the horses.
Source: John Brand; Henry Ellis (ed.), Observations on the Popular Antiquities of Great Britain, vol. 3 (1849), vol. 3, p. 280. View the page
Scotland; Cumberland, England
At Portessie, in Scotland, a stone perforated by a piddock was considered very fortunate, and in Cumberland a perforated stone was hung in the cow-byre to protect the cattle from being bewitched.
Source: Cora Linn Daniels; C. M. Stevans (eds.), Encyclopaedia of Superstitions, Folklore, and the Occult Sciences of the World, vol. 2 (1903), vol. 2, p. 751. View the page
England (Lancashire)
In Lancashire, a perforated flint was hung over a farmer's bed to give him restful sleep.
Source: Cora Linn Daniels; C. M. Stevans (eds.), Encyclopaedia of Superstitions, Folklore, and the Occult Sciences of the World, vol. 2 (1903), vol. 2, p. 731. View the page
To reflect on
Which dent in your own story do you hide that others might find the most interesting thing about you?