St Cuthbert’s Beads

Northumbrian fishermen said that on stormy nights the spirit of St Cuthbert sat on a rock on the shore of Lindisfarne, hammering out beads on another rock for an anvil. The clang could be heard in the lulls of the wind, and after the storm the beach was found strewn with the beads he had made. Chambers explains them as the small stem joints of fossil crinoids, washed out of the shale, which have a hole through the middle and can be strung like a rosary.