Sidney Oldall Addy

“ During the repairing of a house in that village, on removing the hearth-stone of one of the rooms, a bottle containing upwards of two hundred pins was discovered, every pin being bent, and some of them much curved. On a bystander expressing his astonishment at this discovery, the workmen told him that they often found such things, and that they were deposited under the hearth-stone at the building of a house to insure its safety from witchcraft. ”

“ It is difficult to separate the personal from the mythological name, but Wads-ley seems to be derived either from the name of a chief or founder of a clan, or from a mythological being like Chaucer's Wade. ”

“ It seems then that these offerings of pins and needles on the mantle-tree, or mantle-piece, of the chief's house at Wadsley, were originally offerings made to the household god, or, in other words, to the spirit of that dead ancestor from whom the chief and the whole clan or community claimed descent. [3] "The primitive religion," says Dr. Hearn, "was domestic. This domestic religion was composed of two closely-related parts ; the worship of deceased ancestors, and the worship of the hearth. ”