Switzerland, Algeria, America—if messages they be, there seems to be no escape from attributing one origin to them—then, if messages they be, I accept one external origin, to which the whole surface of this earth was accessible, for them.
Something else that we emphasize:
That rows of cup marks have often been likened to foot prints.
But, in this similitude, their uni-linear arrangement must be disregarded—of course often they're mixed up in every way, but arrangement in single lines is very common. It is odd that they should so often be likened to footprints: I suppose there are exceptional cases, but unless it's something that hops on one foot, or a cat going along a narrow fence-top, I don't think of anything that makes footprints one directly ahead of another—Cop, in a station house, walking a chalk line, perhaps.
Upon the Witch's Stone, near Ratho, Scotland, there are twenty-four cups, varying in size from one and a half to three inches in diameter, arranged in approximately straight lines. Locally it is explained that these are tracks of dogs' feet (Proc. Soc. Antiq. Scotland, 2-4-79). Similar marks are scattered bewilderingly all around the Witch's Stone—like a frenzy of telegraphing, or like messages repeating and repeating, trying to localize differently.
In Inverness-shire, cup marks are called "fairies' footmarks." At Valna's church, Norway, and St. Peter's, Ambleteuse, there are such marks, said to be horses' hoofprints. The rocks of Clare, Ireland, are marked with prints supposed to have been made by a mythical cow ("Folklore," 21-184).
We now have such a ghost of a thing that I'd not like to be interpreted as offering it as a datum: it simply illustrates what I mean by the notion of symbols, like cups, or like footprints, which, if like those of horses or cows, are the reverse of, or the negatives of, cups—of symbols that are regularly received somewhere upon this earth—steep, conical hill, somewhere, I think—but that have often alighted in wrong places—considerably to the mystification of persons waking up some morning to find them upon formerly blank spaces.
An ancient record—still worse, an ancient Chinese record—of a courtyard of a palace—dwellers of the palace waking up one morning, finding the courtyard marked with tracks like the foot-prints of an ox—supposed that the devil did it. (Notes and Queries, 9-6-225.)
