XLVII Phallic Superstitions in France and Other Parts of Europe
Among the peasantry of Ireland there are in use certain prehistoric arrow-heads, believed by them to be fairy darts. “When an illness is supposed to be due to the influence of the fairies,... this ‘fairy dart’... is put into a tumbler and covered with water, which the patient then drinks, and if the fairies are responsible for his sickness, he at once recovers.”—(“Medical Mythology of Ireland,” Mooney, Amer. Phil. Soc., 1887.)
And in like manner,—as has already been shown of the sacred character attaching, among the people of the far East, to water, wine, or milk which had been poured over the lingam,—the women of France solaced themselves with the hope that children would come to those who drank an infusion containing scrapings from the phalli, existing until the outbreak of the French revolution, at Puy en Velay, in the church of Saint Foutin, in the shrine of Saint Guerlichon, near Bruges, in the shrine of Guignolles, near Brest; and in that of an ancient statue of Priapus, at Antwerp.86