ANGUINUM OVUM, or SERPENT'S EGG, a. crystal ball or egg of an oval shape, which being enchased in gold, was worn by the Druids about their neck, and, according to Pliny, was the insignia or badge of dis tinction of their office. " I have seen," says Pliny, (Hist. Nat. xxix. c. 3,) "that egg; it is about the big ness of a moderate apple ; its shell is a cartilaginous incrustation, full of little cavities, such as are on the legs of the polypus:" The account he received of the formation of this extraordinary egg, was, that it was produced by the joint saliva of a cluster of snakes, in terwoven and twined together; and when it was found, it was raised up in the air by the hissing of these ser pents; and was to be caught in a clean white cloth be fore it fell to the ground. The person who caught it was obliged to mount a swift horse, and to ride away at full speed, to escape from the serpents, who pursued him with great rage, until they were stopped by some river. The method of ascertaining the genuineness of this egg was no less extraordinary. It was to be en chased in gold; and if it was genuine it would swim against the stream. In the following account of the serpent's egg, in the part of a Druid, in Mason's Carac tacus, the author has followed the above account taken from Pliny : Among other wonderful virtues which Pliny enume rated as a charm and a medicine ascribed to this egg, it was represented as particularly efficacious, for ren dering those who carried it about with them, superior to their adversaries in all disputes, and for procuring the favour and friendship of great men.
Considerable traces of the sank superstitious reve rence which the ancient Britons paid to the serpent's egg, are still discoverable in Cornwall, Wales, and the Highlands of Scotland. With respect to the implement itself, it appears to have been nothing more than a bead of glass. They are of a very rich blue colour, some plain, others streaked.
The great antiquarian Llhuyd, in his letter to Row land, 1701, informs us, that the Cornish retain a variety of charms, and have still, towards the Land's-end, the amulets, which, in the Welch language, are called Glain Neider, or the serpents of glass, which they call a Mel prey, and have a charm for the snake to make it, when they have found one asleep, and stuck a hazel wand in the centre of her spirx. And in a subsequent letter to
him, he says, that " the Druid doctrine about the Clain Xeider, obtains very much through all Scotland, as well the lowlands as highlands." Camden also tells us, that " in most parts of Wales, and throughout all Scotland and Cornwall, it is an opinion of the vulgar, that about Midsummer eve (though in the time they do not all agree) the snakes meet in companies, and by joining heads together and hissing, a kind of bubble is formed, which the rest, by continual hissing, blow on till it passes quite through the body, when it immediately hardens and resembles a glass ring ; which, whoever finds, shall prosper in all his undertakings. The rings thus generated, are called Gleinu-nadroeth, or snake stones. They are small glass amulets, commonly about half as wide as our finger-rings, but much thicker, of a green colour usually, though sometimes blue, and waved with rcd and white." Carew, in his Survey of Corn wall, page 22, says, that "the country people in Corn wall have a persuasion, that the snakes, breathing upon a hazel-wand, produce a stone-ring of a blue colour, in which there appears the yellow figure of a snake ; and that cattle being bit and envenomed, and being given some water to drink, wherein this stone has been in fused, will perfectly recover of the poison." Mr Carew adds, that he had a stone-ring of this kind in his pos session, and the person who gave it him, avowed, that he himself saw a part of the stick sticking in it ;—but Mr Carew observes, " penes authorem sit fides." " Our modern Druidesses," says Mr Pennant, " have an opinion of the Ovum Anguinum, glain-neider, as the Welch call it, or the adder-gum, according to the mo dern philosophers, similar, though inferior, to that which the ancients entertained of it ; they merely apply it to assist in cutting children's teeth, to cure chin-cough, or to cure an ague :" And, no doubt, the same notions of its virtues have produced the well known " anodyne necklaces," sold for the easy cutting of children's teeth, and other such amulets.