Schamir. It's an old testament myth, stemming from Hebrew prohibitions against building holy things with tools of iron. Iron, according to the Mischna, is used to shorten life, but the altars and temples of the Lord stand for the compact of peace between God and man. So when Moses built to God an altar, he built it of unhewn stone, and had he lifted up a tool of iron against it he would have polluted it. And when Solomon came to build his temple, he built it of stones made ready before they were brought to the building site, so there was neither hammer nor axe, nor any tool of iron, heard in the Lord's house while it was being raised. No iron was used in the making of the temple. A miracle. And yet . . .

Was it Soloman's master-craft that took unhewn stones, rough from their quarries in many far places, brought them together and fitted them so well, one into the other, that the temple stood stronger than any other building, without visible crack or flaw?

When Solomon came to build his temple, his attention turned to the stones of his high priest's breastplate, which had been cut and polished by something harder than themselves. He asked, and found it was the schamir, which could cut where iron would not bite. He inquired after the nature of the schamir itself, what it was, where it could be obtained. It was, the demons he commanded told him, merely a worm, no more than the size of a barleycorn and yet so powerful that the hardest stone was conquered by it.

So the king asked further, and was directed to seek the moor-hen, which had taken an oath of fidelity to the king of the sea; it was permitted to carry the schamir to the summits of mountains, whereupon the worm split the rocks and the moor-hen dropped seeds which sprouting, covered the peaks. Because of this, the bird was called Naggar Tura, the mountain-carver. Solomon, well-advised, found the nest of the moor-hen and covered it with a piece of glass, and the hen came running and pecked all about in distress. Then it flew off, returning with a worm in its beak, and when it laid the worm upon the glass, a servant of Solomon's (who had been waiting patiently) started from hiding and took away the worm. With this worm schamir, the lowliest of crawling things, Solomon built his great temple and made it a wonder of the world.

Or: Solomon inquired of the demons he had chained and made his slaves. They said, "Seek the stone that bites stone better than iron, and where it is we do not know, but the raven can fetch it. Place over the raven's nest a sheet of crystal, and you shall see how the mother can break it." Solomon did, and the raven brought a stone and shattered the crystal. So the king questioned the raven, who said what she had brought was the stone Samur, and it came from the desert of the uttermost east. Then Solomon commanded giants to follow the raven's flight, and they went to this desert and brought back enough stones of Samur to build the whole temple.

Or: the bird was an eagle, and schamir was the eagle-stone, the Stone of Wisdom.

According to early rabbinical fable, the schamir was made on the second day of creation, along with the well by which Jacob met Rebecca, the manna of the desert, the rod of Moses which worked wonder, and the ass which spoke to Balaam. It was not a worm, and not a stone either, but a creature as big as a barleycorn, created in the hexameron, and it conquered all. It was preserved by being wrapped in a wisp of wool, and kept in a lead box full of small grain like barley-meal. After the building of Solomon's temple, the purpose for which God made it, it vanished from the earth.

In Greek legend, the birds involved are the hoopoe--which, according to Aelian, builds its nests in old walls, and if you plaster over the mouth of the nest, it will bring a plant and apply it, bursting it asunder--or the woodpecker--which according to Pliny, brings up its young in holes and if you block up the mouth of the hole never so tight, the mother bird will still burst it open--or the ostrich, according to the British 'Gesta Romanorum'. Which was the bird most fond of its young of all birds in the world, and the emperor Diocletian proved it by stealing the ostrich's eggs away in a glass vessel, whereupon the mother bird fetched a worm called thumare to shatter the glass.

Vincent of Beauvais in his 'Historical Mirror' and Gervase of Tilbury picked up the fable and retold it. Gervase called the worm thamir, and wrote that Solomon sprinkled the blood of it on marble, making it easy to split; Solomon obtained the worm by stealing an ostrich-chick and sealing it in a glass bottle; "and in our time, in the reign of Pope Alexander III, when I was a boy, there was found at Rome, a vial full of milky liquid, which, when sprinkled on any kinds of stone, made them receive such sculpture as the hand of the graver was wont to execute. It was a vial discovered in a most ancient palace, the matter and art of which was a subject of wonder to the Roman people."

Albertus Magnus wrote that the magic object was a plant and it could burst any kind of chain, and it was obtained by plugging the mouth of a woodpecker's nest.

According to Conrad von Megenburg, the bird was called merops in Latin, but in German it was bomheckel or baunhacker, and it nested in high trees. The plant it brought was a herb called herba meropis, or woodpecker-plant, and in magical books it was called chora.

In Normandy, those who know the proper legend will put out the eyes of the swallow's young, and the mother bird will fly to the beach and pick out the one magic pebble which restores sight to the blind. Then spread a scarlet cloth below the nest, and the bird will mistake it for fire and flee, dropping the pebble; otherwise, there's no getting it.

In Iceland, the raven knows how to find the stone, but the stone itself can make its holder invisible, fetch fish by the boatload and brandy by the barrel, raise the dead, cure all ills, and break bolts and bars. To get it, hard-boil a wild raven's egg and replace it in the nest, and the mother bird will fetch a black pebble to bring the egg back to life.

During the middle ages, birds and weasels were the ones who knew how to find the magic substance, and it brought the dead back to life. Avicenna in his eighth book 'Of Animals' called it a herb, lactua agrestis. In one French fable, it was a root with a red flower never before seen in any wood or field; in another, it is the yellow marigold, which when touched on a certain morning by the bare foot of one who has a pure heart, grants understanding of the language of birds.

In Germany the plant is called springwort or luckflower, both being keyflowers with the power to make hidden doors and locks fly open, leading their possessors to concealed treasure hoards. The luckflower legend usually follows this pattern: some shepherd or mountain wanderer discovers a beautiful flower (usually blue) and fastens it to his hat or walking-stick, after which he sees a door opening and is led to a cave full of treasure deep in the heart of the mountain. Its guardian is a white lady who tells him, "Take what you will," so he fills his pockets, his hands, his boots, but the guardian of the treasure warns him, "Do not forget the best!" What he forgets is the luckflower itself, left abandoned on the cavern floor, and on his way out, the door slams shut and cuts off his heel (or sometimes him right in half) and the way into the treasure is never found again. Because of this legend, the forget-me-not got its name.

The springwort is the woodpecker herb; locks fly open at its touch. In Swabia, the springwort is gained from the hoopoe instead. Either way, one must plug the hole of the bird's nest and spread a red cloth underneath. The bird will drop the herb onto the cloth, believing the red is fire and the springwort will burn and be lost. If you can get hold of the plant and bury it at the peak of a mountain, it will divide storms and draw all the lightning to itself.

Various kinds of plants are identified with the springwort. One is Euphorbia lathyris, which is called in Italy the sferracavallo, because it acts so strongly on metals that when horses tread on it, they lose their shoes. One species of euphorbia is called, in Sanscrit, thunderbolt-thorn; several others are called thunderbolt-wood in that language: vajrakantaka, vajradru, vajradruma.

In Switzerland, the mistletoe is called donnerbesen, 'thunder besom'. In Celtic tradition it was a magic plant, a remedy for disease and a safeguard against poison - Pliny wrote they named it omnia sanantem, heal-all. It was brewed into a draught to make cattle fruitful. In Sweden of latter days, a knife with a mistletoe handle warded off the falling sickness; for other complaints, a piece of mistletoe was hung round the sufferer's neck, or a mistletoe-wood ring was worn on the finger. It was described as a form of springwort.

In Isaiah, there is a plant smiris which breaks stone, and in Latin this is translated 'saxifraga'. (The word smiris passed through the Greek and was handed down as the German 'Smirgel' and the English 'emery'?)

The 'hand of glory' also has many of the properties of the schamir. It is the hand of a hung man, and this is how to prepare it. Cut the hang off a criminal who has been hung and wrap it in a winding-sheet, drawing it tight and squeezing out any blood that might remain. Then pickle it in an earthenware vessel, with saltpetre, salt and long pepper reduced to a powder; pickle it a full fortnight till it is well-dried, and expose it to the sun during the dog-days. Do this till it is completely parched. If the sun is not enough to parch it, dry it in an oven heated with vervain and fern. Make a candle from the fat of a hung man, virgin-wax, and Lapland sesame; the hand of glory is used to hold the candle, and if all is done well, when the candle is lit, the hand will command many powers. It unlocks all locks, doors, bars and fetters, and brings sleep to lull any watchman. It is the tool of a thief, and makes him wealthy and fat.

Sources: S. Baring-Gould, Curious Myths of the Middle Ages (1967) and Walter Kelly, Curiosities of Indo-European Tradition and Folk-lore (1863).

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Posted August 27th, 2005.