Sir, - By a strange coincidence, on the day before you published Hugo Duffy's letter (January 18th) I read the following story of HMS Wasp and its demise off Tory Island as told by Austin Clarke in his memoirs, A Penny in the Clouds.
"I set out for the Cursing Stone. This is a great boulder balanced on the edge of a precipice about 700 feet above the sea, half in, half out. In the old days, Lord Leitrim sent out a gun-boat, The Wasp, to collect rents that had never been paid, but an old woman went up to the stone and turned it leftways against the sun. The war-ship sank in the calm waters in sight of the anxious islanders. That was the last attempt to extract tribute: the islanders rule themselves and their laws, mainly about fishing, are intricate. The tide brought the drowned crew back to Ireland and their wide grave may be seen in the little Protestant churchyard at Killult. Later I stayed for a month within a stone's throw of the tomb, in a little cottage where Aodh de Blacam, the novelist, lived."
Clarke points out that the stone when rightly used, presumably by turning it clockwise with the sun, is also a Wishing Stone. He tried it, and though it seemed unlikely then, he got his wish. - Yours, etc.,
Glenbower Park, Churchtown, Dublin 14.