Elf-shot

When cattle sickened or a heifer lay struck down, it was said that the fairies had shot her with their arrows headed with flint, and the flints themselves, often found in the ground, were called elf-shots. Collins wrote of the elf-shot arrows of the Highlands, and a survey of the south of Ireland described one as a thin triangular flint less than half an inch across. A beast thought to be elf-shot was touched with one of the stones, or made to drink water in which one had been dipped. Brand took them for the flint arrowheads and tools of people who lived before iron was known.