Legend explains that the small cross-shaped rocks (see picture), called a “fairy cross,” are found in several places in Clay County. Arsene Thompson, an early traveling Cherokee Christian preacher from the area, told a story to settlers about how the fairy cross came to be:
“When the world was young, there lived in these mountains a race of little people. They were spirit people, like fairies. One day when these little people had gathered to dance and sing around a pool deep in the woods, a spirit messenger arrived from a strange city far, far away in the Land of the Dawn. Soon the dancing and singing stopped, for the messenger had brought sad tidings: ‘Christ was dead.’ The little people were silent; and, as they listened to the story of how Jesus had died on the Cross, they wept. But in the midst of sadness, a miracle was happening! The hundreds of tears falling to earth turned to stones, neither round nor square, but shaped like a cross.” … Many people have picked them up, polished and mounted them in gold as watch charms or good luck emblems. The crosses are about the size of the (beads) on a rosary (Bill Sharpe, A New Geography of North Carolina, 1961).
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