Spirit of the game
QUESTION Is it true that Waddingtons toy company made a ouija board for children?
AFTER the advent of modern spiritualism in 1848, various means were attempted for contacting the afterlife, such as table tipping and automatic writing.
The first ouija board featuring a planchette and lettered board was patented by Elijah J. Bond of Baltimore in 1891. Bond was assigned the original ouija patent (No. 446,054) registered on February 10, 1891, to his friend William H. A. Maupin and Charles W. Kennard of the Kennard Novelty Company.
Bond had given the new board the name Ouija (an ‘arbitrary or fanciful word’ according to its US trademarks specification of February 3, 1891).
Kennard was removed from his company in late 1891. By 1892 it had been taken over by an opportunistic employee called William Fuld and renamed The Ouija Novelty Company. Fuld took out his own patents and passed the invention off as his own.
He claimed he had invented the word ouija, a fusion of the French and German words for ‘yes’. Fuld was an excellent marketing man and his numerous publicity stunts made the talking board a success, claiming in 1920 that it had made him more than $1million. He also sued anyone who infringed his copyright.
After Fuld’s death his family continued the business until 1966 when the patents and assets were bought up by Parker Brothers, who brought out a ouija board called the William Fuld Talking Board Set, which featured a cowled figure on the front and the tagline ‘Mystifying Oracle’.
Waddingtons had a close relationship with Parker Brothers. The UK firm had been given the rights to produce a British version of Parker’s Monopoly in 1935 and had reciprocated by giving Parker Brothers the rights to publish Cluedo in 1949.
Waddingtons produced its version of the Mystifying Oracle in 1968. Waddington Magazine, February 1968, states: ‘The principal new attraction from Waddingtons in 1968 will be the reintroduction of the ouija board so popular in this country in Victorian times.
‘This board contains the words yes, no and goodbye, and set out in three lines are the letters of the alphabet and the numbers 0-9. It is operated by two people, who place their fingers on a heart-shaped stand, which in the centre has a round glass window. Together the two people can explore the mysteries of telepathy and seek the advice of those in another world.’
The board’s release caused an up often roar, especially among church groups, and by 1972 it had been withdrawn from sale. Pat Simonds, Southampton.
QUESTIONHave precious stones ever been mined in Ireland?
IRELAND has a surprisingly high amount of precious stones and they have been recovered, some by mining, since prehistoric times.
Gems such as amethyst, emerald, sapphire and topaz have often been discovered in Ireland, together with other gems, such as garnet.
In prehistoric times, these gems were often used for personal ornament, or else they were used by artists in ornamental work. These gems were often mentioned in ancient writings.
Co. Kerry was renowned for its ‘diamonds’, and Kerry ‘diamonds’ were mined for hundreds of years just outside Tralee. But they weren’t real diamonds; just quartz crystals which often had colours, such as black, green and pink, running through them. Quartz was mined in other Co. Kerry sites, including near Ballybunion, in the north of the county, and on Ross Island in Lough Leane, near Killarney.
During the 19th Century, quartz was mined at nearly 40 locations, mostly in west Co. Cork, although there were a few other sites, such as those in Co. Kerry, of course, and in counties Clare and Tipperary.
Usually, quartz was dug out in mines where other minerals had also been recovered, but sometimes, quartz was recovered during quarrying operations.
Two typical Victorian mines in west Co. Cork where quartz was excavated were on the Sheep’s Head peninsula and the Mizen Head peninsula. At Gortavallig on Sheep’s Head, quartz was one of four minerals – including the very lucrative metal of copper – mined there. At the Crookhaven mine on Mizen, quartz was one of three minerals mined.
But mines weren’t the only source of precious stones. Pearls were cultivated in mussels.
Several Irish rivers, especially in the southwest and west, were renowned for their pearls. That’s not the case these days, although in some rivers, mussels still survive.
It’s often said that the most popular kind of precious stone, diamond, has never been found in Ireland, but that’s not quite true.
In the early 19th Century, a white diamond was found in a river in Co. Kerry and it was subsequently presented to Queen Victoria, who had it included in a crown that still exists.
In 1816, the journal of the Royal Geological Society of Ireland reported that what became known as the Brookeborough diamond had been found in the Colebrook River in Co. Fermanagh. The stone was presented to Lady Brookeborough, wife of a local landowner. She had the gemstone examined by several leading jewellers in Dublin and they all came to the same conclusion: that it was indeed a real diamond and not the Kerry variety.
The hunt for Irish diamonds goes on, although so far, it hasn’t yielded any results.
In 1995, the British Geological Survey said that the potential for a diamond discovery in the North of Ireland was ‘good’.
Between 1996 and 2000, a Canadian exploration company explored large tracts of land in Fermanagh and Tyrone, looking for diamonds. It didn’t have any luck, but it did turn up some garnet stones, one of the varieties of precious stones that have been discovered in Ireland from time to time.
Co. Donegal’s Inishowen peninsula has also been the subject of exploratory work in a bid to find diamonds. In 1996, a geological expedition on the peninsula didn’t find any diamonds, but it did find micro and macro examples of rubies and sapphires.
A couple of years later, another exploration company, Cambridge Mineral Resources, also investigated the possibility of diamonds being found on Inishowen, but their quest proved unsuccessful.
While mineral recovery has become big business in Ireland, modern-day mining for precious stones has yet to take off.
Despite the positive indications in the north and the northwest, no mining for diamonds or other gems has been carried out. A. Hughes, Cork city.