~ The
Legend Of The Fairy Cross or Fairy Stone ~
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The legend of the Fairy Cross. It is an old Cherokee legend handed
down through almost 2,000 years. Herein contains some of the
legend. If you ask a Cherokee about it, he will show you a tiny
cross to prove his story. The Cherokee had no temples, no shrines,
no idols. The Sun and the Moon and the Stars were the trinity. The
lightning and the wind, the thunder and the rain provoked both
reverence and fear. For these were the only messages of God. Here
is the story.
"When the world was young there lived in these mountains a race of
little people. They were spirit people. Like the fairies you read
about. One day when these little people had gathered to dance and
sing around a deep pool deep in the woods, a spirit messenger
arrived from a strange city far away in the Land of the Dawn. Soon
the dancing and singing stopped, for the messenger brought them sad
tidings. The messenger told them Christ was dead. The little people
were silent and sad. And as they listened to the story of how
Christ had died on the Cross, they wept and their tears fell upon
the earth and turned into small stones. The stones were not round
or square. Each was in the form of a beautiful little cross.
Hundreds of tears fell to earth and turned into tiny stone crosses,
but the little people were so dazed and heart broken, they did not
notice what was happening. So, with the joy gone from their hearts,
they wandered away into the forest into their homes. But around the
spot where they had been dancing and singing, where they had
stopped to shed their tears, the ground was covered with these
symbols of the death of Christ. What happened to the little people?
No one knows for sure what happened to them. The old men of the
tribes said that after that day, the little people were never seen
again. But they say on still nights you could hear them whispering
along the river and that when there is a gentle breeze their sighs
could be heard in the tall trees."
There is a belief among the Cherokee that the crosses had the power
to render the owner invisible at will. Some say the stones are a
reward for goodness and kindesss to all people. The Nunnehi, were
immortals who dwelled in the fastness of the mountains. They had
their townhouses under the Cherokee mounds and under the hills.
They were the spirit people who could make themselves invisible at
will after they had come into possession of the tiny fairy crosses.
In some instances, the tiny crosses were supposed to give the owner
the power of diving into the ground and coming up again among the
enemy to scalp and kill with sudden terror and destruction.
The crosses have found their way into rare collections of gems and
artifacts. In some instances, they have been polished and ground to
beautiful symmetry and mounted in gold and used as good luck
emblems.
The crosses are actually made of staurolite. This has been
designated the official state mineral. They form a perfect cross at
a certain temperature. They are usually less than an inch in
length.
