SACRED WELLS AND TREES.
{175}
In the light of the results thus obtained by an examination of
certain of the methods of witchcraft and folk-medicine, we next
approach a group of rites known in one form or other from shore to
shore of the Old World, and the principle of which has regulated
religious observances alike in North and South America. These rites
are very numerous in the British islands; and it will be convenient to
start from some of the most modern forms found in Great Britain.
Professor Rhys, in a paper read a year or two ago before a joint
meeting of the Cymmrodorion and Folklore Societies, quotes a
correspondent as saying of Ffynnon Cae Moch, about half-way between
Coychurch and Bridgend, in Glamorganshire: “People suffering from
rheumatism go there. They bathe the part affected with water, and
afterwards tie a piece of rag to the tree which overhangs the well.
The rag is not put in the water at all, but is only put on the tree
for luck. It is a stunted but very old tree, and is simply _covered_
with rags.” In another case, that of Ffynnon Eilian (Elian’s Well),
near Abergele in Denbighshire, of which Professor Rhys was informed by
Mrs. Evans, the late wife of Canon Silvan Evans, some bushes near the
well had once been covered with bits of {176} rags left by those who
frequented it. The rags used to be tied to the bushes by means of
wool--not woollen yarn, but wool in its natural state. Corks with pins
stuck in them were floating in the well when Mrs. Evans visited it,
though the rags had apparently disappeared from the bushes. The well
in question, it is noted, had once been in great repute as “a well to
which people resorted for the kindly purpose of bewitching those whom
they hated.” The Ffynnon Cefn Lleithfan, or Well of the Lleithfan
Ridge, on the eastern slope of Mynydd y Rhiw, in the parish of
Bryncroes, in the west of Carnarvonshire, is a resort for the cure of
warts. The sacred character of the well may be inferred from the
silence in which it is necessary to go and come, and from the
prohibition to turn or look back. The wart is to be bathed at the well
with a rag or clout, which has grease on it. The clout must then be
carefully concealed beneath the stone at the mouth of the well. The
Professor, repeating this account of the well, given him by a Welsh
collector of folk-lore, says: “This brings to my mind the fact that I
have, more than once, years ago, noticed rags underneath stones in the
water flowing from wells in Wales, and sometimes thrust into holes in
the walls of wells, but I had no notion how they came there.” The Rev.
Elias Owen, writing on the Holy Wells of North Wales, relates that the
patients who came to the Ffynnon Awen, or Muses’ Well, in the upper
part of Llanrhaiadr, near Denbigh, buried under a stone close to or in
the well the pieces of wool they had used in washing their
wounds.[176.1]
Professor Rhys, in the paper just cited, mentions several {177} wells
wherein it was usual to drop pins; but the most detailed account was
afterwards furnished by Mr. T. E. Morris, from a correspondent who
supplied him with the following information relating to Ffynnon Faglan
(St Baglan’s Well) in the parish of Llanfaglan, Carnarvonshire: “The
old people who would be likely to know anything about Ffynnon Faglan
have all died. The two oldest inhabitants, who have always lived in
this parish (Llanfaglan), remember the well being used for healing
purposes. One told me his mother used to take him to it when he was a
child, for sore eyes, bathe them with the water, and then drop in a
pin. The other man, when he was young, bathed in it for rheumatism,
and until quite lately people used to fetch away the water for
medicinal purposes. The latter, who lives near the well at
Tan-y-graig, said that he remembered it being cleared out about fifty
years ago, when two basins-full of pins were taken out, but no coin of
any kind. The pins were all bent, and I conclude the intention was to
exorcise the evil spirit supposed to afflict the person who dropped
them in, or, as the Welsh say, _dadwitsio_. No doubt some ominous
words were also used. The well is at present nearly dry, the field
where it lies having been drained some years ago, and the water in
consequence withdrawn from it. It was much used for the cure of warts.
The wart was washed, then pricked with a pin, which, after being bent,
was thrown into the well.”[177.1]
In England the custom is well known of throwing pins into the water or
hanging rags torn from the devotee’s {178} clothing upon the
neighbouring bushes and trees.[178.1] But without pausing on English
examples we pass at once to Ireland. There sacred wells and other
places of pilgrimage are numerous and interesting. Mr. W. C. Borlase,
quoting from the manuscripts of the late Mr. Windele of Cork, mentions
the cromlech of Maul na holtora, in Kerry, as reputed to contain a
well to which a legend of a sacred fish attached. It was a place of
pilgrimage every Saturday. “The brambles are tied with rags, and there
is a deposit of pins as offerings.” The ritual prescribed at this and
similar places of pilgrimage is the performance of a circuit from
point to point, right-hand-wise, or in the direction of the sun, the
recital of a certain number of paternosters and aves, just as at the
stations of the Cross in a Roman Catholic church, and finally the
deposit of the offering of a rag or pins. A well at Finmagh, in
Roscommon, in which a Druid was said to be buried, was regarded as a
deity. Here, however, the offerings, thrust through a hole or cleft in
the roof, were of gold and silver.[178.2] This is a rare case. Quite
recently Professor Haddon and Dr. Browne found, in the Aran Islands,
Galway, rags attached to sprays of the bramble or ivy at most of the
holy wells. Buttons, fish-hooks, iron nails, shells, pieces of
crockery and other things are deposited in the holy well at
Tempulan-Cheathruir-aluinn, or the Church of the Four Comely
Ones.[178.3] Turish Lyn, a pool in the stream a little below Kilgort
Bridge, in County Derry, is still resorted to for the cure of various
diseases. Among the offerings left on a {179} bush beside the stream
are enumerated a piece of cloth, a lock of hair and three stones
picked up from the pool.[179.1] A number of other instances are cited
by Mr. Gomme from various authorities.[179.2] What seems an analogous
custom is declared by Sir Ralph Payne-Gallwey to be practised at the
Large Skellig, off the coast of Kerry. This island contains the ruin
of an ancient monastery, and is accounted a holy place. When workmen
from the mainland have been employed on the buildings on the Skellig
and are bidding farewell to the island, “they invariably cast some
well-worn article of clothing, oftener than not a pair of shoes, at a
solitary rock, known as the Blue Man, which stands abruptly out of the
ocean.”[179.3]
In the Isle of Man there is a well called Chibber Unjin, or Ash-tree
Well, which I mention for the sake of calling attention to an
interesting detail of the rite. A patient visiting the well had to
take a mouthful of water, retaining it in his mouth until he had made
the circuit of the well, and then empty it upon a rag of his own
clothing, which he afterwards tied on the hawthorn growing
there.[179.4]
I select a few examples out of a large number from Scotland. Saint
Wallach’s Well and Bath in the parish of Glass, Aberdeenshire, are
famous for their healing qualities. {180} The former is now dry, save
in rainy weather; but it was frequented by persons with sore eyes,
“and every one who went to it left a pin in a hole which had been cut
either by nature or by art in a stone beside the well.” The bath is a
cavity in the rock, supplied by a spring which flows into it and
overflows into the river Deveron. Children who did not thrive were
brought and dipped in it, “a rag, an old shirt, or a bib from the
child’s body being hung on a tree beside the bath, or thrown into
it.”[180.1] “There is a big rugged rock,” says the Rev. Walter Gregor,
“on the top of Ben Newe in Strathdon, Aberdeenshire. On the north side
of this rock, under a projection, there is a small circular-shaped
hollow which always contains water. Every one that goes to the top of
the hill must put some small object into it, and then take a draught
of water off it. Unless this is done the traveller will not reach in
life the foot of the hill. I climbed the hill in June of 1890, and saw
in the well several pins, a small bone, a pill-box, a piece of a
flower, and a few other objects.”[180.2] Saint John’s Well, at
Balmano, in the parish of Marykirk, Kincardineshire, was reputed to
heal sore eyes and rickety children. The “oblations” left here were
generally pins, needles and rags taken from the pilgrim’s clothes. In
the island of St. Kilda is a consecrated well called Tobir-minbuadh,
or Well of diverse Virtues. The votaries laid their offerings on an
“altar” (probably a rock, or perhaps a rude stone monument) that stood
near; and Macaulay in his _History of St. Kilda_ sarcastically
remarks: “The devotees were abundantly frugal.… Shells and pebbles,
rags of linen or stuffs worn out, pins, needles or rusty nails were
generally all the tribute that was paid; and sometimes, though {181}
rarely enough, copper coins of the smallest value.” Of Loch-siant Well
in the island of Skye we read that the sick people who made a
pilgrimage to it, after drinking “move thrice round the well,
proceeding sun-ways,” and it was “a never-failing custom to leave some
small offering on the stone which covers the well. There is a small
coppice near it, of which none of the natives dare venture to cut the
least branch, for fear of some signal judgment to follow upon
it.”[181.1] And Mr. David MacRitchie, recording similar offerings at
Grew’s Well, Stormont, Perthshire, made on the first Sunday of May
(Old Style), and speaking from the information of an old woman on the
spot, says: “No good whatever was expected to result from the bathing
if no offering was left.”[181.2] It is rarely that an offering of
value is recorded at these wells. A spring is, however, mentioned by
Mr. Gregor, called Tobar-fuarmor, in Aberdeenshire, where no cure was
effected unless gold was presented.[181.3] The well and tree on the
island of Maelrubha in Loch Maree are dedicated to Saint Maree, or
Mourie. We need not concern ourselves whether this holy man ever
existed in the flesh. It is clear that he succeeded to the divinity of
an ancient heathen god, and wielded all, and perhaps more than all,
his predecessor’s powers. Whether the mediæval church ever struggled
against the deeply-rooted cult we do not know. Since the Reformation
the Dingwall presbytery has in vain striven to destroy it, though at
last it seems to be dying before the blasts of modern disbelief. {182}
Miss Godden, who visited the shrine in the summer of 1893, describes
the tree--an oak--“as a slight white trunk--bare, branchless,
leafless, with spreading foot, and jagged and broken top. The cracks
and clefts in the stem are studded with coins, nails, screws, and
rusty iron fragments. No sign of leaf or shoot remains to give the
gaunt shaft any touch of common vegetation. It stands alone and
inviolate--a Sacred Tree. In the damp ground at the tree’s foot is a
small dark hole, the sides of which are roughly formed by stones
overhung with moss and grass. A cover of unwrought stone lies beside
it, and it is filled up with dead leaves. This is the healing well of
power unspeakable in cases of lunacy.… The tree,” she adds, “is now a
Wishing Tree, and the driving in of a bit of metal is the only
necessary act.” The well, in fact, long so famous, is now disused, and
the ritual of the shrine is in the last stage of decay. Formerly, when
an afflicted person was brought thither for the cure of insanity, a
portion of his clothing was attached to a nail, which was driven on
his behalf into the tree. Sir Arthur Mitchell in the year 1860 found
two bone buttons and two buckles nailed to the tree, and a faded
ribbon fluttering from another nail. The tree, now dead as the
superstition which hallowed it, was then living. Countless pennies and
halfpennies had been driven edgewise into it, and the bark was closing
over many of them, while it was believed to have covered many
others.[182.1]
We turn to the continent of Europe. Close parallels to the practices
at the shrine at Maelrubha are found in Germany and Belgium. Such is
the ceremony prescribed for hernia in Mecklenburgh. A cross is made
over the affected part {183} with a nail on a Friday; and the nail is
then driven, in unbroken silence, into a young beech or oak. The
operation is repeated on the two Fridays following. A variant
prescription directs the part to be touched with a coffin-nail, which
is then to be driven over its head into the tree by the sufferer,
barefoot and silent. As the nail is overgrown by the bark, the hernia
will be healed.[183.1] In this case the rite does not seem to be
attached to any specially hallowed tree. I cited some similar
instances in the last chapter, and others will be mentioned presently.
We must first consider, however, some cases where the sacred character
of the object, whether well or tree, is unquestionable.
In Belgium, halfway between Braine l’Alleud and the wood of Le Foriet,
two hollow, and therefore doubtless very ancient, roads cross one
another. Two aged pine-trees are planted at the top of the bank at one
of the corners; and formerly there stood between them a cross, which
has disappeared for some thirty years. It was a very ancient custom to
bury in the pines, and even in the cross, pins or nails, in order to
obtain the cure of persons attacked by fevers of various kinds. The
pins and nails thus employed must have been previously in contact with
the patient or his clothes. If any one took out one of these pins or
nails from the pines or the cross, and carried it home, it was
believed that the disease would certainly have been communicated to
some member of his family. The custom is said to have fallen out of
use. Yet M. Schepers, who visited the place in September 1891, and to
whose article on the subject in _Wallonia_, a periodical published at
Liège, I am indebted for these particulars, found not {184} only
rusty nails in the pines, but also pins quite recently planted. He was
told that it was equally customary to roll round the pines, or the
arms of the cross, some band of cloth or other stuff which had touched
the sufferer. As soon as the nail or pin had been driven in, or the
ribbon fastened, the operator used to run away as hard as he could.
The spot was called _À l’crwe Saint Zè_, St. Etto’s Cross, or _Aux
deux Sapins_, The two Pine-trees. Saint Etto, it seems, was an Irish
missionary to these parts in the seventh century.[184.1] Nor is this
by any means the only instance in Belgium. Two old lime-trees on
either side of a Calvary, near the convent of Soleilmont at Gilly, in
Hainaut, are covered with nails; and a similar tree is found behind a
chapel between Trazegnies and Chapelle-lez-Herlaimont in the same
province. At Chastrés, near Walcourt, a chapel of Our Lady is shown
with pins thrown in through the interstices of the gate by devotees on
reciting their prayers. Numbers of pins have also been taken from the
beds of the Meuse and the Sambre at ancient fords, though whether they
were put into the water for any superstitious purpose is
uncertain.[184.2]
At Croisic, in Upper Brittany, there is a well, called the Well of
Saint Goustan, into which pins are thrown by those who wish to be
married during the year. If the wish be granted, the pin will fall
straight to the bottom. Similar practices are said to be performed in
Lower Brittany, and in Poitou and Elsass.[184.3] Girls used to resort
to the little {185} shrine of Saint Guirec, which stands on an
isolated rock below high-water mark on the beach at Perros Guirec in
Lower Brittany, to pray for husbands. The worshipper, her prayer
concluded, stuck a pin into the wooden statue of the saint; and when I
saw the shrine, in the year 1889, the figure was riddled from top to
toe with pinholes. It was said that the prayer for a husband would
infallibly be granted within a year. On the other side of Brittany, in
the Morbihan, there is a chapel dedicated to Saint Uférier, credited
with a similar reputation. The saint’s foot, if I may be guilty of a
bull, is almost entirely composed of holes. It is, however, necessary
here that the pin should be a new one and quite straight; not that the
prayer will not be granted otherwise, but the husband will be crooked,
humpbacked, and lame. In Upper Brittany, at St. Lawrence’s Chapel near
Quintin and elsewhere, the condition is that the pin be planted at the
first blow; the marriage will then take place within the year.[185.1]
To avoid either the disfigurement or the desecration of this practice
the authorities of the churches of Saint Peter at Louvain and of
Bon-Secours at Brussels thoughtfully provide pincushions to receive
the proofs of the worshippers’ pious enthusiasm;[185.2] but in
Brittany the good priests are less fastidious.
Where the statue is of stone, it is of course impossible to plant the
pins. They are then simply laid upon it, or thrust into cracks or
hollows in the surface. At Loscouët young children are taken to the
Virgin of Menès near the mill of Meu, in order that they may soon
walk. The Virgin in question is nothing but the battered remains of a
mullion {186} from a window in the ruined château of Menès, formerly
the residence of the lords of Loscouët before the signory passed to
the abbé of Saint Méen. This mullion the simple peasants take for a
statue. The children are held by the armpits, and made to walk thrice
round the Virgin, and pins are then placed upon her arms. At Penvenan
the chapel of Notre Dame du Port-Blanc is resorted to for the same
object. The parents exercise themselves in throwing small coins from
the nave into the choir at the statues of the Virgin, and of Saint
Yves of the Poor, and afterwards at those of Dives and Lazarus. The
children are then put to pick the coins up and drop them into the
Virgin’s coffer. Lastly, they are marched round the pavement outside
the chapel; and within a fortnight they will certainly walk.[186.1]
All over France the like practices exist, or have died out only within
comparatively recent years. In the Protestant villages of
Montbéliard, between the Vosges and the Jura, at the moment of
celebration of a wedding a nail was planted in the gallery (or, in
some places, in the floor) of the church, to “nail” or fasten the
marriage. In various parts of the country there are stone or iron
crosses which have doubtless replaced wooden ones. In the case of
these new crosses, votaries must content themselves with depositing
pins upon the arms or the pedestal, or in the joints.[186.2] In the
valley of Lunain there is a menhir called the Pierre Frite, in almost
every hole or fissure of which may be found a pin or a nail, placed
there by the youth of the neighbourhood in the belief that this action
will bring a {187} speedy marriage.[187.1] The well of Moniés in the
department of Tarn had, at the beginning of the present century, a
great renown for the cure of various diseases. The rags which had been
used in bathing with the sacred water the diseased members, were left
stretched out on the neighbouring bushes.[187.2] An instance where the
honour and glory, not to say the substantial gains attendant on the
superstition, were early annexed by the Church is that of St.
Michel-la-Rivière in the diocese of Bordeaux. Both the honour and the
gains were considerable in the seventeenth century, as appears from
quarrels between the curé and the fabriqueur of the church decided by
the Archbishop of Bordeaux, and other orders made by him. The sick man
was required to pass through a hole called a _veyrine_ at the end of
the apse; and the patients left offerings not merely of linen, but
also of money, wax, and other things.[187.3] Nor was this case at all
singular; for similar practices obtained wherever in the diocese was a
church dedicated to St. Michael. In a North German example the object
of veneration was an oak-tree; and the pilgrim, after creeping through
the hole in the prescribed manner, completed the performance by
burying a piece of money under the roots. As many as a hundred
patients a day are said to have visited it.[187.4] Here the Church had
neglected her opportunities.
We have already dealt with the custom of creeping {188} through trees.
Our concern at present is with the offerings. Passing the Pyrenees,
let us note that in the seventeenth century it was usual to stick
needles or pins in a certain tree belonging to the church of Saint
Christopher, situated on a high mountain near the city of
Pampeluna.[188.1] At Naples it used to be the custom to lead a sick
horse round the church of Saint Elias, and afterwards to fasten one of
his shoes on the church-door.[188.2] One who suffers from intermittent
fever will go and hang a small pebble on the inside of the door of
Saint Giles’ church in the Abruzzian commune of Lanciano.[188.3]
A rite hitherto unexplained was practised from very early times at
Rome. From the date of the erection of the temple of Jupiter
Capitolinus it was the custom on the festival of the dedication, the
Ides of September, for the highest person of the state to drive a nail
into the right wall of the _Cella Jovis_. This was usually done by the
consuls or prætor; but in case of the appointment of a dictator the
latter performed the ceremony. After it was dropped as an annual
performance, recourse was occasionally had to it for the staying of a
pestilence, or as an atonement for crime. More ancient still was the
corresponding Etruscan practice of sticking a nail every year into the
temple of Nortia, the fate-goddess.[188.4] Curious parallels to this
custom are found in modern Europe. Near Angers was an oak which bore
the singular name of _Lapalud_. It was regarded as of the same
antiquity as the town, and was covered with nails to the height of ten
feet or thereabouts. From {189} time immemorial every journeyman
carpenter, joiner, or mason who passed it, used to stick a nail in it.
Near the cathedral at Vienna was the stock of an old tree, called the
_Stock im Eisen_, said to be the last remnant of an ancient forest
which once covered the neighbourhood. Every workman who passed through
Vienna was expected to fasten a nail in it; and it was in fact
invested with a complete coat of mail, consisting entirely of the
heads of the nails it had thus received.[189.1] These two examples
existed almost down to the present day; elsewhere the rite appears to
be still in full force. At Evessen stands a lime-tree on a barrow
wherein a golden coffin is believed to have been buried. In the trunk
(which is seven mètres in girth at the height of one mètre from the
soil) are driven numbers of nails, some of them recently fixed. This
is often done by travelling apprentices.[189.2]
At Athens, mothers bring their sick children to the little church of
Santa Marina, under the Observatory Hill, and there undress them,
leaving the old clothes behind. There is a dripping well near
Kotzanes, in Macedonia, “said to issue from the Nereids’ breasts, and
to cure all human ills. Those who would drink of it must enter the
cave with a torch or lamp in one hand and pitcher in the other, which
they must fill with the water, and, leaving some scrap of their
clothing behind them, must turn round without being scared by the
noises they may hear within, and quit the cave without ever looking
back.”[189.3] Among the inscriptions discovered at Epidauros,
recording the miraculous cures attributed to Asklepios, is the record
of what happened to {190} Pandaros, a Thessalian who was afflicted
with certain unsightly marks upon his forehead. The god appeared to
him in a dream, pressing a bandage on the spots and directing him when
he left the chamber to take off the bandage and deposit it as an
offering in the temple. When the patient untied the bandage in the
morning, the marks were transferred to it, leaving his forehead free;
and he left the bandage in the temple, with this proof of his
recovery,[190.1] just as crutches are left in modern times at Roman
Catholic shrines by persons who believe themselves healed by the
presiding saint. It is clear from a reference by Aristophanes that the
Greeks were in the habit on certain occasions of hanging articles of
their clothing on, or even nailing them to, sacred trees as an
offering to the god.[190.2] Indeed, allusions to the practice are not
uncommon in Greek poetry. Among the Romans, Pompey is compared by
Lucan to a lofty oak, hung with old clothes and other votive
offerings; and Vergil describes an olive-tree whereon the vests and
votive tablets of mariners who had escaped shipwreck were
suspended.[190.3] To-day in Lesbos sick women vow to walk before Our
Lady, or one of the saints, with bare feet, flowing hair, and their
hands tied behind their backs with a handkerchief which they
subsequently leave suspended on the image. In one of their tied hands
they must contrive to carry a large lighted taper. Lofty sacred trees
are still numerous, frequently growing in {191} the vicinity of some
chapel. The sick suspend on the branches their shirts or their
girdles, in the hope, we are told, of leaving their ailments there.
Feverish patients hang their clothes on a tree near the chapel of
Saint John.[191.1]
In the Baltic Provinces of the Russian Empire stands a great sacred
aspen near the village of Röiks, which, up to the year 1845 at all
events, was hung with wreaths and many-coloured ribbons to win the
favour of the tree-spirit for sick cattle. Near Pallifer stood in the
seventeenth century two holy elms, which are reported to have been
hung and bound with ribbons, this time for the healing of human
ailments and to obtain good luck. An old lime-tree near the chapel of
Keppo is also held sacred. Passers-by tear off ribbons and rags from
their clothing and nail them upon it. The trees of the sacred woods on
the island of Oesel are hung with rags by the Esthonian inhabitants of
the island.[191.2] In the district of Vynnytzia, government of Podolia
in Ukrainia, there is a mineral spring much resorted to. The sick,
after bathing, hang to the branches of the trees their shirts,
handkerchiefs, and other articles, “as a mark,” says M. Volkov, who
reports the case, “that their diseases are left there.”[191.3]
In the last chapter I mentioned a practice of the Masurs in Eastern
Prussia of taking off the patient’s shirt after an attack of fever,
carrying it to a cross-road and suspending it on a signpost. It is
probable that the signpost represents a sacred tree, or perhaps a
cross. In Hungary there are two fountains resorted to for the cure of
ailing limbs; but it is essential to wait until the water-spirit is in
a good humour and to leave behind as an offering articles of {192}
clothing and hair from the head. These are put upon the trees that
stand around. Both in Hungary and in Transylvania ill-luck is like to
befall one when his name-day happens on a Friday. To avoid the
threatening evil, a rag is torn off the clothing, and hung, in
Transylvania, on a tree before sunrise. The Magyar puts some of his
blood and saliva on the rag and then burns it.[192.1]
Leaving the real meaning of these ceremonies to be considered
hereafter, we go on for the present with the search for parallel
superstitions in other parts of the world. In Hindustan, a festival
called Melá is held at the beginning of the month of Mágha (about
the middle of January) at the island of Ságar, at the mouth of the
Hugli. A temple of Kapila, who is held to be an incarnation of Vishnu,
stands on the island, and in front of it is (or was) a Bur-tree,
beneath which were images of Ráma and Hanumán, while an image of
Kapila, nearly of life-size, was within the temple. The pilgrims who
crowd thither at the festival commonly write their names on the walls,
with a short prayer to Kapila, or suspend a piece of earth or brick
from a bough of the tree, offering at the same time a prayer and a
promise, if the prayer be granted, to make a gift to some
divinity.[192.2] Shreds of clothing and feathers may be seen flying
from the posts erected on the roofs of the Toda temple-huts in the
Neilgherry Hills. The Korwas hang rags on the tree which constitutes
the shrine of their village gods. The Patáris, when attacked by
fever, tie round a pípal-tree a cotton string that has never touched
water, and suspend rags from the branches. Elsewhere in India, as well
as in Arabia and Persia, strips of cloth are {193} suspended from
shrubs and trees, which, for some reason or other, are venerated; and,
in Persia at all events, not only are rags, amulets, and other votive
offerings found upon the trees, but the trees are also covered with
nails.[193.1] At the source of the Jordan, as I am informed by Dr.
Robert Munro, there is a tree hung with rags; and indeed such trees
are not uncommon throughout Asiatic Turkey. Mohammed is said to have
made a pilgrimage to a similar one. At Tyana, in Cappadocia, was a
pillar to which persons used to go to nail their fevers.[193.2] With
this last may be compared an Athenian legend of Saint John, who is
declared to have been a physician especially skilled in the treatment
of fevers. Before his death he set up a column and bound under its
foundations with silken threads all manner of diseases; fevers with a
yellow thread, measles with a red one, and so forth. And he said:
“When I die, let whosoever is sick come and tie to this column a
silken thread with three knots of the colour that his sickness takes,
and say, ‘Dear Saint John, I bind my sickness to the column, and do by
thy favour loose it from me,’ and then he will be healed.”[193.3]
Neither of these is an ordinary case of transference, however it may
look like it at first sight. It falls rather into the category of rags
used to bathe a wounded limb and left in the holy well or on the
bushes adjacent.
{194}
In Tibet there are numerous heaps of stones erected by wayfarers, to
which every one who passes adds, and where he prays. Lamas who come by
set up stakes, fastening thereon a bit of silk or other stuff, so that
they resemble flags. At the tops of the passes in the mountains
between Siam and Burmah are found heaps of stones. Passengers, besides
stones, lay down on them flowers and leaves. Among the Mongols heaps
of this kind are called _obo_; and they are said to be all consecrated
by Buddhist lamas. Pousselgue describes one on a difficult pass
between Urga and Kiachta. A rude image of Buddha was formed of two
roughly chiselled blocks. By it stood a large granite urn for the
burning of incense; and all around were numbers of stakes covered with
offerings of clouts, pieces of paper, prayer-wheels, and even purses
and objects of precious metal. Pousselgue’s guide bowed down before
the obo and offered up a bit of his fur-robe.[194.1] Nobody who has
read Mr. Cooper’s amusing account of his marriage unawares to a girl
in Eastern Tibet will forget how, when he got up to the top of a high
hill, a little later in the day, with his bride, the lady contributed
her quota of stones and prayers at the inevitable cairn, and then
insisted, first, that in order to secure their connubial happiness the
baggage must be unpacked and a couple of Khatah cloths taken out and
fastened by her unwilling bridegroom to the flag-staves, and then that
he must prostrate himself in prayer with her. “And there, on the
summit of a Tibetan mountain, kneeling before a heap of stones, my
hand wet with the tears of a daughter of the country, I muttered
curses on the fate that had placed me in such a position.”[194.2]
Similarly an English traveller in Ladákh was compelled to gratify the
spirits of {195} a certain pass with an offering of the leg of a
worn-out pair of nankin trousers.[195.1] Nor is the custom confined to
Buddhists. Among the Mrús of the Chittagong Hills every one on
reaching the crest of a hill which he is crossing “plucks a fresh
young shoot of grass, and places it on a pile of the withered
offerings of former journeyers who have gone before.”[195.2]
The Karakasses, too, of Eastern Siberia make to the mountains and
rivers which they pass offerings of tobacco, a branch of a tree, a
strip of a pelisse or some other trifle. The Kamtchadales and Teleouts
offer pine-branches, pieces of meat, fish or cheese, packets of hair
or horsehair, little furs or ribbons of cloth. The offerings dedicated
to a mountain are suspended from a tree on some hill or other
conspicuous place. The Tunguz call these trees Nalaktits.[195.3]
Erman, the German traveller in Siberia, records having seen in the
woods between Churopchinsk and Aruilákhinsk trees, at different
points along the road, hung thick with horse-hair. It was an ancient
custom of the nomadic Yakuts, he was told, to put tufts of their
horses’ hair on these trees, and many of the tufts “had so
weather-beaten an appearance, that there could be no doubt of their
antiquity.” Every horseman who passed added to them, and the custom
was called by a name signifying propitiation for the Spirit of the
Woods.[195.4] In the Alazeï Mountains, on the road from Kolymsk to
Verkhoiansk, is the tomb of a famous Tchuktchi sorceress. All who pass
deposit offerings: on the cross they hang strips of cloth and
horsehair; at its foot they lay pieces of meat and fish. {196} He who
forgets this act of homage is always punished. The devils cause him to
lose his way, his horse breaks a limb, or his sledge is
shattered.[196.1] The Kirghiz honour a solitary poplar, said to be the
only tree standing between Fort Orsk on the Ural river and the Sea of
Aral. It is covered with shreds torn from the clothing of the
tribesmen who have worshipped at it. A certain wild plum-tree is also
reverenced in the same way. The number of rags and pieces of
sheep-skin attached to it is constantly increasing.[196.2] Every
traveller from Marco Polo downward speaks of the practice as rife in
Central Asia. Many of the Tartars are Mohammedans; and the shrine of
every Mohammedan saint is adorned with rams’ horns and with long bits
of dirty rag, a pious gift no pilgrim would omit to tie on some
adjacent stick or tree.[196.3]
Sacred trees covered with clouts hung by votaries, as well as piles of
stones cast from the hands of wayfarers, are to be seen everywhere in
Corea.[196.4] We are told that “devils”--probably, as in the Tchuktchi
superstition, a generic term for spirits--“are supposed to inhabit
certain withered trees; and the natives are careful never to pass a
devil-tree without throwing a stone at it, or tying a piece of cloth
to one of its branches. If they omit to do this, evil, they believe,
is sure to come to them and their families.”[196.5] Mr. J. F. Campbell
records having found in Japan “strips of cloth, bits of rope, slips of
paper, writings, bamboo strings, flags, tags, and prayers hanging from
every temple,” and small piles of stones at the foot of every image
{197} and memorial-stone, and on every altar by the wayside; and he
draws attention to the similarity of the practices implied to those of
his native country.[197.1] Another traveller in Japan states that
women who desire children go to a certain sacred stone on the holy
hill of Nikko, and throw pebbles at it. If they succeed in hitting it
their wish is granted. They seem very clever at the game, he says
maliciously. Further, the same writer speaks of a seated statue of
Buddha in the park of Uyeno at Tokio, on whose knees women flung
stones with the same object. Describing a temple elsewhere, he records
that the grotesque figures placed at the door were covered--or, as he
more accurately puts it, constellated--with pellets of chewed paper
shot through the railing that surrounded them by persons who had some
wish to be fulfilled. A successful shot implied the probability of the
attainment of the shooter’s desire.[197.2] Japanese pilgrims also
paste up their cards containing name and address on the doors or
pillars of the shrines they visit.[197.3]
{198}
In another Asiatic island, Borneo, a tree hung with countless rags is
often seen at the cross-ways, and every passenger tears off a piece of
his clothing and fastens it on the tree. The natives who practise it
can give no other account of the custom than that they fear for their
health if they omit it. Dr. Ten Kate lately found twice in the island
of Great Bastard under the branches of a large tree a heap of stones
whereon fishermen were wont to place rags of red, green or
many-coloured calico. In the same way an old tree-trunk, or a stake
propped upright with stones, is found here and there in the Egyptian
desert adorned with shreds and tatters of clothing; for every pilgrim
as he passes adds a rag. Such a tree is a certain ancient
tamarisk-tree, called “the Mother of Clouts,” between Dar-el-beida and
Suez. In the Mohammedan districts of North Africa trees of this kind
are known as Marabout-trees; and it is thought that by tying on one of
them a screed from one’s clothing all evil and sickness passes over to
the tree, which is generally a crippled, miserable specimen.[198.1]
But the custom is not confined in Africa any more than in Asia to
Mohammedan districts. The Shilluk on the White Nile derive their
origin from an ancestor whom they call Niekam; and from his sacred
tree they suspend glass beads and pieces of stuff.[198.2] On the
western side of the continent, Mungo Park found a tree in the kingdom
of Woolli decorated with innumerable rags or scraps of cloth {199}
tied upon its branches at different times by travellers. He
conjectures that it was at first intended as an indication that water
was to be found not far off; but of this there is no evidence. The
custom was, as he says, so greatly sanctioned by time that nobody
presumed to pass without hanging up something; and the intrepid
explorer himself followed the example. A pool was, in fact, found not
far off, as his Negroes predicted.[199.1] A French traveller in the
region of the Congo relates with astonishment concerning the
_n’doké_--which he portrays as “fetishes important enough to occupy a
special hut, and confided to the care of a sort of priests, who alone
are reputed to have the means of making them speak”--that when it is
desired to invoke the fetish, one or more pieces of native cloth, and
the like, are offered to it or to the fetish-priest; and the
worshipper is then admitted to plant a nail in the statue, the priest
meanwhile, or the worshipper himself, formulating his prayer or his
desires.[199.2] Another French traveller in the watershed of the upper
Niger reports the custom of sacrificing animals under sacred trees.
The animal when slain is eaten; its head is placed under the tree, or
suspended from one of the branches, or laid in a fork. Pottery of
various kinds, handles of old agricultural implements, old clothes and
calabashes, cow-tails, and so forth, lie around the fetish-tree; and
under one such tree he saw a piece of {200} hollow wood propped on
forks and filled with grass and other plants.[200.1]
In the New World the practice does not seem so common. Darwin,
however, notes one instance. On the sandstone plain from which the
valley of the Rio Negro has been carved, not far from the town of
Patagones, is a solitary tree reverenced by the aborigines as a god by
the name of Walleechu. The traveller found it leafless, being
winter-time; but from numberless threads were suspended on the
branches cigars, bread, meat, pieces of cloth and other things. “Poor
Indians,” he says, “not having anything better, only pull a thread out
of their ponchos, and fasten it to the tree. Richer Indians are
accustomed to pour spirits and _maté_ into a certain hole, and
likewise to smoke upwards, thinking thus to afford all possible
gratification to Walleechu. To complete the scene, the tree was
surrounded by the bleached bones of horses which had been slaughtered
as sacrifices. All Indians of every age and sex make their offerings;
they then think that their horses will not tire, and that they
themselves shall be prosperous.”[200.2]
To sum up:--We find widely spread in Europe the practice of throwing
pins into sacred wells, or sticking pins or nails into sacred images
or trees, or into the wall of a temple, or floor of a church,
and--sometimes accompanying this, more usually alone--a practice of
tying rags or leaving portions of clothing upon a sacred tree or bush,
or a tree or bush overhanging, or adjacent to, a sacred well, or of
depositing them in or about the well. The object of this rite is
generally the attainment of some wish, or the granting {201} of some
prayer, as for a husband, or for recovery from sickness. In the Roman
instance it was a solemn religious act, to which (in historical times
at least) no definite meaning seems to have been attached; and the
last semblance of a religious character has vanished from the
analogous performances at Angers and Vienna. In Asia we have the
corresponding customs of writing the name on the walls of a temple,
suspending some apparently trivial article upon the boughs of a sacred
tree, flinging pellets of chewed paper or stones at sacred images, and
attaching rags, writings, and other things to the temples, and to
trees. Trees are adorned in the same way with rags and other useless
things in Africa--a practice not unknown, though rare, in America. On
the Congo a nail is driven into an idol in the Breton manner. It
cannot be doubted that the purpose and origin of all these customs are
identical, and that an explanation of one will explain all.
The most usual explanations are, first, that the articles left are
offerings to the god or presiding spirit, and, secondly, that they
contain the disease of which one desires to be rid, and transfer it to
any one who touches or removes them. These two explanations appear to
be mutually exclusive, though Professor Rhys suggests that a
distinction is to be drawn between the pins and the rags. The pins, he
thinks, may be offerings; and it is noteworthy that in some cases they
are replaced by buttons or small coins. The rags, on the other hand,
may be, in his view, the vehicles of the disease. If this opinion were
correct, one would expect to find both ceremonies performed by the
same patient at the same well: he would throw in the pin and also
place the rag on the bush, or wherever its proper place might be. The
performance of _both_ ceremonies {202} is, however, I think,
exceptional. Where the pin or button is dropped into the well, the
patient does not trouble about the rag, and _vice versâ_. Professor
Rhys only cites one case to the contrary. There the visit to the well
was prescribed as a remedy for warts. Each wart was to be pricked with
a pin, and the pin bent and thrown into the well. The warts were then
to be rubbed with tufts of wool collected on the way to the well, and
the wool was to be put on the first whitethorn the patient could find.
As the wind scattered the wool the warts would disappear. Upon this
one or two observations may be made. Either the act of affixing the
wool bears the meaning assigned in the last chapter to similar
practices, or the rite only survives in a degraded form, and
originally some definite sacred tree was its object. If the latter,
then the rite is here duplicated. For if the pins were really
offerings, to be distinguished in character from the deposits of wool,
the prescription to touch the warts with them would be meaningless.
But we must surely deem that whatever value attached to the rubbing of
the warts with wool would equally attach to their pricking with the
pins.
Moreover, the curious detail mentioned by Mrs. Evans in reference to
the rags tied on the bushes at Elian’s Well--namely, that they must be
tied on with wool--points further to a degradation of the rite in the
case we are now examining. Probably at one time rags were used, and
simply tied to the sacred tree with wool. What may have been the
reason for using wool remains to be discovered. But it is easy to see
how, if the reason were lost, the wool might be looked upon as the
essential condition of the due performance of the ceremony, and so
continue after the disuse of the rags.
{203}
Nor can we stop here. From all we know of the process of ceremonial
decay, we may be tolerably sure that the rags represent entire
articles of clothing, which were at an earlier period deposited. There
is no need to discuss here the principle of substitution and
representation, so familiar to all students of folklore. It is
sufficient to point out that, since the rite is almost everywhere in a
state of decay, the presumption is in favour of entire garments having
been originally deposited; and that, in fact, we do find this original
form of the rite in the ancient and several of the modern examples I
have cited on the continent of Europe and elsewhere. Entire articles
of clothing seem also to have been usually left at several Scottish
wells in quite recent times. Such was a chalybeate spring in the
parish of Kennethmont, Aberdeenshire. As its virtue was invoked not
only for human beings but for cattle, the tribute consisted of “part
of the clothes of the sick and diseased, and harness of the
cattle.”[203.1] If we may trust the slovenly compilation of Mr. R. C.
Hope on the holy wells of Scotland, a traveller in 1798, from whom he
professes to quote, but whom he neither names nor identifies, relates
of the Holy Pool of Strathfillan in Perthshire, that “each person
gathers up nine stones in the pool, and after bathing, walks to a hill
near the water, where there are three cairns, round each of which he
performs three turns, at each turn depositing a stone; and if it is
for any bodily pain, fractured limb, or sore, that they are bathing,
they throw upon one of those cairns that part of their clothing which
covered the part affected; also, if they have at home any beast that
is diseased, they have only to bring some of the meal which it feeds
upon, and make it into paste with {204} these waters, and afterwards
give it to him to eat, which will prove an infallible cure; but they
must likewise throw upon the cairn the rope or halter with which he
was led. Consequently the cairns are covered with old halters, gloves,
shoes, bonnets, night-caps, rags of all sorts, kilts, petticoats,
garters and smocks. Sometimes they go as far as to throw away their
halfpence.”[204.1] From this account it appears that stones from the
pool, rags, garments which had covered the diseased parts of the
devotees, and halfpence, had all the same value. The stones could not
have been offerings, and it was evidently not usual to throw away
halfpence. The gifts of rags and articles of clothing are ambiguous.
If we must choose between regarding them as offerings and as vehicles
of disease, the analogy of the gifts at the shrine of Saint
Michel-la-Rivière favours the former. Under ecclesiastical patronage,
however, the rite had doubtless been manipulated to the benefit of the
officials; and we can use the instance no further than as proof that
the deposit of garments was ambiguous enough to develop sometimes into
pious gifts, if it developed at other times into devices for the
shuffling of disease off the patient on another person.[204.2]
Cairns have already been mentioned as occurring in {205} Buddhist
lands, where we found an apparent equality in the offerings of stones
and of other things at these sacred places, just as at Strathfillan.
But the custom of erecting piles of stones is so ancient and
widespread, that it may be worth while looking at it a little more
closely before proceeding with our inquiry. Dr. Andree, whose
ethnographical collections have furnished me with many examples for
the present chapter, has brought together a large number of instances
of cairns from all quarters of the globe. They resolve themselves, on
examination, into three classes.
First are those to which no additions are made and where no rites are
performed. Of such it may be said broadly that they only exist where
the original purpose of the cairn has been forgotten, and probably the
race that erected it has passed away. Of this kind was the cairn at
Gilead, said to have been erected by Jacob and Laban on the scene of
their final reconciliation and parting.[205.1] It is hardly necessary
to say that there is nothing worthy of being called evidence in favour
of the tradition preserved in Genesis. We may conjecture that it was a
place held sacred by the predecessors of the conquering Hebrews. If
the Batoka were not in the habit of adding to the pile {206} mentioned
by Livingstone, that pile must be set down as belonging to the same
class. They declared it was made by their forefathers by way of
protest against the wrong done them by another tribe not named, as an
alternative to fighting.[206.1] The omission of the name of the
offending tribe is an index to their forgetfulness of the real object
of the cairn. Such, too, were the small heaps of stones found by
Darwin on the summit of the Sierra de las Animas in Uruguay. The
Indians are extirpated from the district, and nobody knows the purpose
for which the heaps were erected.[206.2]
Another kind of cairn is that which is piled over the place where
death, especially a violent death, has been suffered. To this every
wayfarer makes his contribution; and doubtless originally the dead
body lay beneath the mass. The most familiar instances are the cairns
raised over Achan and Absalom.[206.3] The custom, however, is by no
means confined to the Hebrews, or to the Semitic race; and in
districts where stones are few, branches and pieces of wood are piled.
Thus, near Leipzig is a heap of boughs to which every passenger adds
three. Elsewhere in Germany, in Italy, Switzerland, Brittany, Lesbos,
Armenia, the upper valley of the Nile, the Philippine Islands, Hawaii,
Wisconsin, South Carolina, Venezuela, the valley of the Plate, and
Patagonia, similar piles are recorded, as well as among the Bushmen
and Amakosa of South Africa. The Bushmen are reported to declare that
the Devil is buried under these heaps; and every Bushman throws a
stone as he passes, that Satan may not rise again. In case of
sickness, pilgrimages are made to them and prayers for help {207}
offered.[207.1] The various graves of Heitsi-eibib, or Tsuni-ǁgoam,
the ancestor-god of the Khoi-khoi, are marked by cairns on which every
one who passes by flings a stone or twig. Sometimes the offering is a
piece of the wayfarer’s clothes, flowers or zebra-dung. A prayer for
success is muttered if the wayfarer be hunting; and occasionally even
honey and honey-beer are offered.[207.2] These graves are, in fact,
shrines of worship. And it is noteworthy that the gifts to the
divinity are in general of no value in themselves, and that prominent
among them are the stones and branches which are thrown, in other
parts of the world, upon grave-cairns to which no other act of worship
is now offered.
The third class of cairns consists of such as are erected on spots
which for any reason are recognised as sacred. To this class belong
the obo of Tibet. In Buddhist lands cairns are to be seen on the top
of every pass and almost of every mountain. Frequently they are
adorned with prayer-streamers and bones of sheep; and flat stones
inscribed with the formula _Om mani padme hum_ are laid upon them by
worshippers. Passengers constantly add to the pile rough stones which
they have picked up in climbing the ascent. In India cairns,
especially cairns of _Kankar_, or calcareous limestone, to which every
one adds, are not uncommon. Such is the shrine of Anktaha Bir, the
hero of the Kankar-heap, in the village of Niámatpur.[207.3] {208}
Among the Dyaks of Batang Lupar the heaps are said to be erected in
memory of great liars. Stones and branches are thrown upon them; and
after the liar’s name has been long forgotten the heap remains. In the
Caucasus the mountain-tops are sacred to the prophet Elijah (who,
there is little reason to doubt, has succeeded to an ancient
thunder-god) or to some other saint. Perilous places and places struck
by lightning are marked by cairns. At the latter a pole is stuck up
from which a black goat-skin flies. Around a certain rock in the
Sinaitic peninsula Professor Palmer found small heaps of stones, said
to have been first erected by the Israelites in memory of the water
obtained from that very rock by Moses. The Arabs retain the practice
in hopes of propitiating the great lawgiver. If any of them have a
sick friend, he throws a stone in his name, and in the expectation of
his speedy recovery. In Arabia, indeed, heaps of this kind are often
to be seen, some of them of enormous size. In South America the passes
of the Cordilleras are marked by cairns originally built before the
Conquest. To this day the Indians fling stones upon them, or lay there
a little offering of fresh coca-leaves, or spit upon them the
coca-quids they have been chewing. Sometimes they stand and pull out a
few of their eyebrow-hairs, blowing them in the direction of the
sun--an ancient rite recorded by the Spanish conquerors among their
observations of the Peruvian cult. In North America piles of stones
are often mentioned, to which every traveller is accustomed to add.
The old inhabitants of Nicaragua threw stones and grass upon them,
believing themselves thereby to be freed from hunger and fatigue. In
Europe, Saint Wolfgang’s chapel and well are renowned among the
shrines of the Salzkammergut. Up the steep {209} stony path on either
side pilgrims carry to the sacred spot heavy stones, which now lie
there in heaps. The story goes that when enough have been gathered,
the saint will build himself a new and larger church; but this is, of
course, a modern theory to account for the practice.[209.1] In the
Aran Islands, though we are not told of any such piles, “numerous
rounded pebbles are placed on the well and on the altar of St. Columb
Kill.”[209.2] On the island of Iniskill, off the coast of Donegal, on
the other hand, there is a place of pilgrimage where the last of the
“stations” performed by the pilgrims is a rough pile of stones,
formerly the altar of a now ruined church. On the top of the pile is
laid a flat stone, through which a circular hole about three inches in
diameter has been bored. In this hole Mr. Borlase found shreds of
coloured stuff (doubtless from their own clothes), rosaries and bronze
medals, put there by devotees.[209.3] Lastly, it may be mentioned
that, among the Basuto, heaps of stones are to be found by the wayside
near a village, to which every traveller adds a pebble, on which he
has first spit.[209.4]
Looking over this long list, it is obvious that the second and third
classes of cairns are practically the same. Burial-places {210} are
sacred all the world over. They are the residence of the dead, who
must always be propitiated--all the more if they have died in a manner
unusual or regarded with horror. And not only must they be
propitiated, but their powers, which are much dreaded, must be secured
in aid of the living. The Bushman’s fear that Satan may rise again is
a Christian interpretation. It means that he feared lest the spirit
which haunted the pile, whoever he might have been, should rise to
injure him. The fact of pilgrimages being made to the spot unites it
with holy places of the third class. Whatever, therefore, may be the
meaning of the offerings at the latter, it is the same as that of the
sticks and stones, and other things thrown upon grave-cairns. Now, no
valid distinction can be drawn between these offerings and those at
wells and trees and other shrines of the kind, enumerated in an
earlier part of the present chapter. Alike--and this is a point of
cardinal importance in the interpretation of all these practices--the
gifts are in the main of small intrinsic worth. It is rarely that we
read of gold or silver tribute. Occasionally, under favouring
ecclesiastical and other influences, the offerings develop into things
of value; but for the most part, whatever their significance may be,
it is derived from the giver. The stone is flung, the nail is fixed,
by his hand; the rag is torn from his clothes; the coca-quids are from
his mouth. The _Landnámabók_ mentions an early settler of Iceland
named Thorsteinn Red-nose. He worshipped a certain waterfall, and into
it all remnants had to be thrown.[210.1] This was not a mere paltry
economy of worship; for we are told {211} he was “a great blót-man,”
in other words, open-handed towards the gods. By casting his remnants
into the waterfall he expected to secure the favour of the divinity;
and in so doing he acted on the principle which animates the pilgrims
at sacred wells and trees, and the travellers who never pass by a
sacred cairn without contributing their quota to the pile.
With the practices at cairns in our mind, then, let us return to the
customs at wells and trees.
M. Monseur, fixing his attention on instances like those of the Croix
Saint Zè and Saint Guirec, in which pins or nails were stuck into the
cross, or tree, or figure of the saint, suggests that the aim was, by
causing pain or inconvenience to the object of worship, to keep in his
memory the worshipper’s prayer. And he refers, by way of illustration,
to the tortures inflicted on children at the beating of boundaries,
and to the flogging said to have been given to children in Lorraine on
the occasion of a capital punishment, the intention of which
incontestably was to preserve a recollection of the place or the
incident.[211.1] M. Gaidoz, dealing with similar cases, and similar
cases only, propounded years ago a theory somewhat different. In
replying recently to M. Monseur, he recalls his previous exposition,
and reiterates it in these words: “The idol is a god who always
appears somewhat stupid; it moves not, it speaks not, and,
peradventure, it does not hear very well. It must be made to
understand by a sign, and a sign which will be at the same time a
memento. In touching the idol, especially in touching the member
corresponding to that which suffers, its attention is directed to the
prayer. And more than that is done in leaving a nail or a pin in its
body, {212} for this is a material memento for the idol.” In putting
it in this way, the learned professor does not desire to exclude the
ideas of an offering and a transfer of disease, for he expressly adds
that both these ideas are mingled with that of a memento.[212.1]
Let us take stock of the conditions to be fulfilled in order to a
satisfactory solution of the problem. It must be equally applicable to
sacred images, crosses, trees, wells, cairns and temples. It must
account not merely for the pins in wells and the rags on trees, but
also for the nails in trees, the pins in images, the earth or bricks
hung on the sacred tree in India, the stones and twigs, flowers and
coca-quids thrown upon cairns, the pellets which constellate Japanese
idols, the strips of cloth and other articles which decorate Japanese
temples, the pilgrims’ names written on the walls of the temple of
Kapila on the banks of the Hugli, the nails fixed by the consuls in
the Cella Jovis at Rome, and those driven into the galleries or floors
of Protestant churches in Eastern France. These are the outcome of
equivalent practices, and the solution of their meaning, if a true
one, must fit them all. M. Gaidoz’ suggestion of a memento comes
nearer to this ideal than any other hitherto put forward. But does it
touch cases like those of the Lapalud, the Stock im Eisen, and the
Cella Jovis, where the rite was unaccompanied by any prayer? The two
former cases, indeed, if they stood alone, might be deemed worn and
degraded relics of a rite once gracious with adoration, prayer and
thanksgiving. But nothing of the sort accompanied the driving of a
nail into the wall of the temple of Jupiter, nor, so far as we can
learn, the yet older custom observed by the Etruscans at Vulsinii, of
{213} sticking a nail every year in the temple of Nortia, the
fate-goddess. On the contrary, in both these classical instances the
rite was so bare and so ill-understood, that it was looked upon merely
as an annual register or record. Almost as little does M. Gaidoz’
explanation seem to fit the throwing of pins into a well, the burial
of a coin, as in Mecklenburgh, under a tree, or the marriage-nails of
Montbéliard. Like M. Monseur’s theory, it is applicable in its full
significance only to examples of the rite as practised on statues; and
it assumes that trees and crosses and other rude forms are mere
makeshifts for the carven image, deteriorated survivals of idols
strictly so called.[213.1] But this is to put the cart before the
horse. There is no reason to suppose that the practices I have
described originated later than the carving of sacred images, and were
at first a peculiarity of their worship. There is every reason to
{214} suppose exactly the reverse. And in this connection it is
significant that neither at Rome nor at Vulsinii (the earliest
examples we have in point of time) were the nails fastened into the
image, but into the temple wall.
I believe that a profounder thought forms the common ground in which
all the customs under consideration--or, as I should prefer to say,
all the variations of a single custom--are rooted. They are simply
another application of the reasoning that underlies the practices of
witchcraft and folk-medicine discussed in previous chapters. If an
article of my clothing in a witch’s hands may cause me to suffer, the
same article in contact with a beneficent power may relieve my pain,
restore me to health, or promote my general prosperity. A pin that has
pricked my wart, even if not covered with my blood, has by its
contact, by the wound it has inflicted, acquired a peculiar bond with
the wart; the rag that has rubbed the wart has by that friction
acquired a similar bond; so that whatever is done to the pin or the
rag, whatever influences the pin or the rag may undergo, the same
influences are by that very act brought to bear upon the wart. If,
instead of using a rag, I rub my warts with raw meat and then bury the
meat, the wart will decay and disappear with the decay and dissolution
of the meat. In like manner my shirt or stocking, or a rag to {215}
represent it, placed upon a sacred bush, or thrust into a sacred
well--my name written upon the walls of a temple--a stone or a pellet
from my hand cast upon a sacred image or a sacred cairn--a remnant of
my food cast into a sacred waterfall or bound upon a sacred tree, or a
nail from my hand driven into the trunk of the tree--is thenceforth in
continual contact with divinity; and the effluence of divinity,
reaching and involving it, will reach and involve me. In this way I
may become permanently united with the god.
This is an explanation which I think will cover every case. Of course,
it cannot be denied that there are instances, like some of the
Japanese and Breton cases, where, the real object of the rite having
been forgotten, the practice has become to a slight extent deflected
from its earlier form. But it is not difficult to trace the steps
whereby the idea and practice of divination became substituted for
that of union with the object of devotion. Still less can it be denied
that, where the practice has not been deflected, the real intention
has in most places been obscured. These phenomena are familiar to us
everywhere, and will mislead no one who understands that the real
meaning is not what the people who practise a rite say about it, but
that which emerges from a comparison of analogous observances.
A few other customs remain to be considered. Prominent among these is
a rite well known to all students of classical antiquity--that of the
consecration of locks of hair at various shrines. It was usually
performed in consequence of a vow made by the parents at birth. The
actual ceremony took place on arriving at manhood or womanhood. A lock
of the hair and of the sprouting beard of the youth, a tress from the
maiden’s head, was cut off and presented {216} to the god; and in
Greece the youth then received the clothing of an ephebos and was
admitted to such of the privileges of a free citizen as his age
entitled him. The dedication of the hair was regarded as a symbol of
that of the entire person. And this dedication was extended to other
occasions, such as before marriage, before and after childbed, or at
the time of making or fulfilling a vow. Pausanias mentions a statue of
Hygeia hardly to be seen, by reason partly of the hair cut off by
women and bound or placed upon it.[216.1] On the death of one very
dear, a lock of the survivor’s hair was frequently cut off and placed
in the corpse’s hand or upon the grave, as Herakles did to Sostratos,
and Achilles to Patroklos. So Death was said to cut off the hair of
those who were about to die. Euripides represents him as declaring:
“Sacred to us Gods below
That head whose hair this sword shall sanctify.”
Graves and sacred trees were favourite places for the deposit of the
hair. Beneath the olive which grew upon the tomb of Hyperoche and
Laodike, in the entrance of the sanctuary of Artemis at Delos, epheboi
laid the first fruits of their beards, and bridal pairs their hair. At
Megara was the grave of the virgin Iphinoe, the daughter of Alcathous.
Brides there performed funeral rites, before the wedding ceremony, and
cut off their hair. The Roman Vestals, on attaining womanhood,
consecrated to Juno Lucina and {217} hung upon her tree, which was
older than the temple, the locks of their hair; whence it was called
the _arbor capillata_. At the completion of the mysteries of Cybele
the votaries dedicated locks of their hair at the door of her temple;
and in the same way the Bacchic votaries, when their mysteries were
finished, dedicated their locks at sacred pine-trees. In this
connection, too, we may remember that the Flamen Dialis buried the
clippings of his hair and nails beneath a lucky tree.[217.1]
The usage also extended to the Hebrews. It is referred to in the
legislation on vows and on mourning; and many examples are familiar to
us in the Bible, from Samson and Job to the Apostle Paul. The ancient
Arabs and Egyptians also on similar occasions cut or shaved their
hair.[217.2] Nor was it confined to ancient times. In the seventeenth
century the Serbs used to cut their hair and bind it on the grave of a
dead relative; and among the Albanians the sisters, daughters-in-law,
grown-up daughters and wife of a dead man are said still to cut their
hair in token of grief. The mourning women at Lecce in Apulia pluck
out their hair and strew it on the corpse.[217.3] Zingerle quotes from
an old manuscript in the Franciscan monastery at Botzen in the Tirol a
superstition which directs the hair of a sick man to be cut off,
rolled in wax and afterwards offered at some sacred shrine.[217.4] A
story is told in the province of Posen of the daughter of a
day-labourer who was sick and given up by the physician. She begged
her parents, as they stood by her bed plunged in helpless grief, {218}
to cut off her hair and lay it upon the crucifix in the convent at
Exin. This was done, and she recovered; and, marvellous to state, the
hair grew upon the head of the crucifix until it reached the ground,
to the gratification of the pious from all parts of the
province.[218.1] At Flastroff, in Lorraine, sick or vicious horses are
taken in pilgrimage to the shrine of Saint Elias on the 25th June.
After mass, at which the owners of the animals are present, the horses
are paraded round the outside of the chapel. A handful of hairs from
the tail of each of them is deposited on the steps of the altar,
sometimes accompanied by a gift of money; and the owner takes away a
cupful of holy water, made for the purpose, in order to mix it with
the animal’s drink. The custom of taking the horses themselves is now
disappearing. The owners, instead, take their handfuls of horsehair,
make the tour of the altar after mass to kiss the relic of the saint,
and deposit the offerings of hair in a niche in the wall of the apse
on the left side of the altar. And this has probably been found
equally efficacious.[218.2]
In some districts of the Abruzzi there is yet practised a rite that
seems to be a survival of an ancient act of worship such as I have
just referred to. Two or more girls who are desirous of swearing
eternal friendship of the most sacred kind join hands in a church and
compass the altar three times. They afterwards exchange kisses; and
each of them, pulling out a hair, hides it in some hole or dark recess
of the building. One of them then, standing in {219} front of the
altar, lifts her hand as if to count her companions, and solemnly
chants verses, the import of which is to pronounce them henceforth
gossips, spiritual kindred, entitled to share one another’s food, and
further to invoke blessing or ban, according as either of them shall
fulfil or neglect the duties of the relationship.[219.1] Reginald
Scot, apparently quoting Martin of Arles and speaking of the
Spaniards, mentions that “maids forsooth hang some of their haire
before the image of S. Urbane, bicause they would have the rest of
their haire grow long and be yellow.”[219.2] Pettigrew cites Mr. and
Mrs. S. C. Hall as authorities for the statement that pilgrims to
Tubber Quan, near Carrick-on-Suir, a sacred well dedicated to Saints
Quan and Brogawn, after performing certain circuits and reciting
prayers, go thrice round a tree on their bare knees and then cut off
locks of their hair and tie them on the branches as a specific against
headache. The tree, we are told, was an object of veneration and was
covered with human hair.[219.3] So at the two Hungarian fountains
already mentioned clothes and hair from the patients’ heads are left
on adjacent trees “as gifts for the water-spirit.”[219.4] In Turkey
among the Greek Christians three tiny locks are cut, if they can be
found on a baby’s head at his baptism, and thrown into the font in the
name of the Trinity; and the font is afterwards emptied into a pit or
well under the floor of the church.[219.5]
Outside Europe the ritual cutting and dedication of hair has been
found in modern times all over the world. I have space for but few
examples, and must content myself {220} with referring the reader for
others to the learned work on the subject by the late Professor
Wilken, who has made a large collection. Mr. Ainsworth relates that he
saw in an Arab cemetery on the Euphrates tresses of hair attached to
sticks over the graves of females.[220.1] And Olearius, who was in
Persia in 1637, saw a funeral procession in which three men carried
before the corpse each one a tree (the equivalent, probably, of Mr.
Ainsworth’s sticks) bearing, among other things, three tresses of the
wives of the dead man, torn or cut off in sign of fidelity.[220.2]
When King Ummeda of Búndi, in India, abdicated, an image was made of
him and burnt on a funeral pyre, as if it had been his corpse; and
among the ceremonies was that of taking off the hair and whiskers of
his successor and offering them to his _manes_.[220.3] At the junction
of the Ganges and Jumna and at other sacred places of pilgrimage,
Hindu women cause their hair to be cut by the priest with golden
shears, and the locks thrown with certain ceremonies into the
stream.[220.4] The Kirghiz, nominally adherents of Islam, have shrines
at the graves of sundry holy men, to whom they offer prayer and
sacrifice, and fasten not only ribbons and strips of cloth, but also
hair to the bushes, reeds and tall grasses growing around.[220.5]
Among the offerings to Pélé, the goddess of the volcano Kirauea in
Hawaii, Mr. Ellis found at her temple locks of human hair; and he
learned that they were frequently presented by those who passed by the
crater.[220.6] About Lake Nyassa, {221} in East Central Africa, one of
the funeral rites is the shaving of the heads of the deceased man’s
relatives. The hair is buried on the site of his house, which is taken
down unless he be buried in it. Two or three months later the mourners
are shaved again, and the hair is buried at the grave or in the
bush.[221.1] On the Gold Coast the ceremony of taking an oath bears a
certain resemblance to the Abruzzian practice above cited. This oath
is administered by the fetish-priest. His _bossum_, or fetish,
consists usually of a wooden vessel or calabash filled with various
objects. When the person who takes the oath has made his statement and
uttered the customary imprecation on himself if he violate his oath,
he goes thrice round the sacred vessel repeating the imprecation every
time. The priest then, taking a portion of the contents of the vessel,
rubs with it the man’s head, arms, abdomen and legs, turns it round
three times over his head, and cutting off a piece of nail from one of
the fingers and another piece from one of the toes of the oath-taker,
and plucking a few hairs from his head, he throws them all into the
vessel.[221.2] The Australian natives at a burial feast tear out parts
of their beards, singe them and throw them on the corpse. Sioux
mourners are described as cutting locks of their own hair and flinging
them upon the dead body;[221.3] and in various parts of America widows
are required to shave or cut their hair.[221.4] Indeed, haircutting or
shaving for the dead is found everywhere. The locks, it is true, are
not always thrown upon the corpse or upon the grave; but, as we shall
hereafter see in connection with the practice of blood-shedding, {222}
it is often considered enough simply to cut the hair or to shave. In
such cases the rite must be looked upon as mutilated. The original
intention is to bring the hair into contact with the dead. The true
rite was exemplified at the death of Asclepios, when
“Round the funeral pyre the populace
Stood with fierce light on their black robes which bound
Each sobbing head, while yet their hair they clipped
O’er the dead body of their withered prince.”[222.1]
It was not, however, always possible or convenient to do this; and it
has consequently been dispensed with until the purpose has been
forgotten.
These practices all explain themselves in the same way. The dedication
of the hair at a temple, or the placing of it in the hand of a corpse,
or on the grave, effects union with the divinity, or with the departed
friend. The tress is more than a symbol of devotion; it is more than a
gage of fidelity. The owner of the head whence it has been taken, and
the holder of the severed lock are in actual, though invisible, union.
This accounts for the efficacy of the practice in healing disease:
this accounts for its value as a guard of fidelity to an oath. In the
last chapter we saw that not only hair but nail-parings, teeth and
other things previously part of the patient, or in contact with him,
were plugged into trees, or hung from their branches, for the purpose
of uniting him with a living healthy body, which was believed to react
upon him. Much more powerful would be the action of an object regarded
as the abode of a supernatural being, even if only a departed
friend,--or rather, {223} the action of the supernatural being
himself, thus linked through that object with his worshipper, patient
or friend. Abruzzian girls put themselves in the hands of the saint
when they hide their hairs in his sanctuary, and doubtless feel
abundantly satisfied that he will perform the blessing or the ban they
invoke upon themselves in their rustic ritual. We had occasion in the
last chapter to consider the disposal of the hair when ceremonially
cut off. It will be recollected that the _Grihya-Sûtra_ of
Hiranyakesin directs the clippings of hair, beard and nails, made up
into a lump with bull’s dung, to be buried in a cow-stable, or near an
Udumbara-tree, or in a clump of Darbha-grass. It is true that the
words accompanying the act of burial were: “Thus I hide the sin of N.
N.” These words were probably not primitive, for the real intention of
the rite is revealed by the places prescribed for the burial. Had it
been meant simply to hide the lump of dung and hair, any secret place
would have sufficed. But the cow-stable, the Udumbara-tree and the
Darbha-grass were all sacred; and the object of placing these
clippings of the person in, or adjacent to, them must have been that
the man from whom the clippings had been taken might be blessed by the
hallowed influences which would surround those portions of himself,
severed indeed to outward appearance, but still subtly connected with
his frame. So also something more than a desire for safety leads the
sponsors of the Japanese boy to deposit his forelock on the family
shrine. And when the Omaha children received the tonsure, the
first-fruits (if I may so call them) of their heads, wrapped in the
sacred buffalo-hide, not merely secured the heads themselves from
harm, but kept them in a perpetual environment of positive good. For
the same reason in Tahiti the {224} child’s navel-string was buried in
the _marae_, or temple.[224.1] In Mecklenburgh and Thuringia the
navel-string, or a piece of it, is taken by the mother to her
churching and laid down behind the altar or elsewhere in the church.
This will keep the child continually surrounded with such holy
influences that he will grow up god-fearing and pious. If, on the
other hand, it be left in a shop, he will--at least in
Thuringia--become courteous and clever in business.[224.2]
Again. Athenian women who for the first time became pregnant used to
hang up their girdles in the temple of Artemis. So the Spanish women
tied their girdles or shoe-latchets about one of the church-bells, and
struck the bell thrice.[224.3] In the French department of
Côtes-du-Nord, to cure a certain childish disease the infant’s cap is
placed at the foot of the statue of St. Méen in the church of
Plaine-Haute.[224.4] Among the French superstitions enumerated by
Thiers is that of passing a child afflicted with Saint Giles’ sickness
through his father’s shirt, and carrying the shirt afterwards--not the
child--to Saint Giles’ altar, as a means of cure.[224.5] European
settlers in Virginia and Pennsylvania measure a child for a disease
called “the Go-backs” with a yarn string; and having by this means
diagnosed the disease they hang the string on the hinge of a gate in
the premises of the infant’s parents, believing that the disease will
die away with the decay of the string.[224.6] They have no local
shrines.
{225}
The converse case of measurement as a method of conveying the divine
effluence was a favourite during the Middle Ages, and is still
practised in Roman Catholic countries. It consisted in measuring with
a string or fillet the body of a saint, and passing the string
afterwards round the patient. Many miracles performed in this way were
attributed to Simon de Montfort. Pope Clement VIII. is said to have
given his sanction to a similar measurement purporting to be the “true
and correct length of Our Lord Jesus Christ,” found in the Holy
Sepulchre. Copies of this measurement were current in Germany up to a
comparatively late date.[225.1] By an application of the same
reasoning it seems to have been believed up to the seventeenth century
in this country that, to measure a living person with a rope which had
been used in a prescribed manner to measure a corpse, was to inflict
misfortune and misery.[225.2] The object specially in view of the
Athenian women was attained in Germany towards the end of the Middle
Ages by measuring a wick by Saint Sixtus’ image, and wearing it as a
girdle.[225.3] In Japan it is enough to wear, inside the sash, a
coloured strip made in imitation of a temple-flag.[225.4] The
underlying thought in these cases is the same as that of the Breton
girdles of Notre Dame de Délivrance, mentioned in a previous chapter.
And so far is the practice carried in China that a woman who wishes to
bear children will borrow {226} on certain days in the year from the
temple of the goddess of children one of the votive shoes offered
there, and, taking it home, will pay it the same honours as to the
goddess herself; while another woman will take a flower from the hands
of the sacred image, or from a vase beside it, and wear it in her
hair.[226.1] Saint Francis’ girdle and other “blessed girdles” were
formerly worn in Europe for the purpose of facilitating delivery, and
for healing various diseases.[226.2] And still in Mexico the measure
of the head of an image of Saint Francis at Magdalena is sovran for
headache, the measurement of his waist for diseases of the abdomen,
and so on of other parts.[226.3]
In Poitou sick children are taken to the shrine of Saint Roch at
Saint-Rémy, to embrace the Saint’s image. But because it is so
horribly ugly, many children turn away with cries of fright. The
parents then content themselves with passing a handkerchief over the
statue, and afterwards wiping with it the child’s face and
hands.[226.4] Among the Basuto, travellers on entering a strange
country seek to render the indigenous gods propitious to them by
rubbing their foreheads with a little of the dust which they collect
on the road, or by making a girdle of the grass.[226.5] Newcomers to
places lying on the river Körös, in Hungary, used to {227} be dipped
in the water as a sort of baptism.[227.1] Many wells in Ireland are
called by the name of Saint Patrick. In the seventeenth century it
seems to have been a common belief among the Irish that a stranger who
drank at any of these wells would never after forsake the country, or
if he left it he would be sure to return thither.[227.2] At Rome an
old superstition, incidentally noticed in the last chapter, prescribes
for those who desire to return to the city to drink a little of the
Fountain of Trevi and to throw a small offering in the shape of a coin
into the basin. And with a little earth from the churchyard of
Applecross, in Ross-shire, where Saint Maelrubha is buried, a man may
fare the world round and safely come back to the neighbouring
bay.[227.3] Among the North American tribes, figures of sacred animals
and gods are drawn in coloured sand on the floor of the
medicine-lodge. The patient is rubbed with the dust composing the
figures. Applied to dying men, as a Roman Catholic Indian piously told
Captain Bourke, it corresponds to Extreme Unction.[227.4] Those who
doubt whether it be equally efficient may be recommended {228} to try
both. At any rate the parallel is instructive; for in all these cases
a substance which has been hallowed by contact with the divinity, or
with his shrine, brought afterwards into contact with the devotee and
patient, sets up union between the worshipper and his god; a portion
of the sacred earth or water in contact with the traveller or votary,
or united with his person, unites him with the remainder in such a
bond that he is infallibly brought back to it, or else he is endowed
with all the blessings that could be conferred by the touch of the
entirety.
Our examination of the practices of throwing pins into wells, of tying
rags on bushes and trees, of driving nails into trees and stocks, of
throwing stones and sticks on cairns, and the analogous practices
throughout the world, leads to the conclusion that they are to be
interpreted as acts of ceremonial union with the spirit identified
with well, with tree, or stock, or cairn. In course of time, as the
real intention of the rite has been forgotten, it has been resorted to
(in Christian countries at least) chiefly for the cure of diseases,
and the meaning has been overlaid by the idea of the transfer of the
disease. This idea belongs to the same category as that of the union
by means of the nail or the rag with divinity, but apparently to a
somewhat later stratum of thought. Since the spread of Christianity
the reason for the sacredness of many trees or wells has passed from
memory; and it has consequently been natural to substitute any tree or
any well for a particular one. The substitution has favoured the idea
of transfer of disease, which has thus become the ordinary intention
of the rite in later times.[228.1]
{229}
But I cannot close this inquiry without referring to one or two other
ceremonies not quite so easily deciphered. The first is reported by a
German writer whose authority for the statement I have been unable to
trace. He says it is the custom in Wales for a bride and bridegroom to
go and lie down beside a well or fountain and throw in pins as a
pledge of the new relation into which they have entered. And he adds
that in clearing out an old Roman well in the Isle of Wight, about the
year 1840, some bushels of ancient British pins for the clothes were
found.[229.1] Whether or not the British pins are to be connected with
the alleged custom in Wales, it is difficult to account for a
collection of pins in such a situation except upon the supposition
that they were purposely thrown into the well. As in the case of the
pins found in the Meuse and the Sambre, however, we can only guess at
the reason that brought them there. If the alleged Welsh rite be
correctly described, no prayer is offered. Could we find an early
shape of it, we should probably recognise a solemn consecration of the
one spouse to the domestic divinity of the other--a ritual reception
into the kin. The analogy with the marriage custom of the Montbéliard
Protestants is obvious. An instance in which the same analogy lies
even more on the surface is a ceremony in use among the Mohammedan
tribes of Daghestan. Imperfectly civilised, they are still organised
in _gentes_, each of which derives its origin from a mythical
ancestor. But it is possible for a man to break with his _gens_, if he
desire to do so. The desire must be expressed solemnly and publicly at
a meeting in the mosque; and {230} he must announce that every tie is
broken between himself and his _touchoum_, or clan. By way of memorial
a nail is then driven into one of the walls of the mosque.[230.1] It
seems to be unnecessary now to enter another clan in place of the one
renounced; and the words employed express no more than the _detestatio
sacrorum_, or renunciation. But, as we shall see in the next chapter,
this could only have been half the original ceremony. It must once
have been followed by admission into another kin, for no one would be
content to be a kinless man. The ceremony now takes place in a mosque.
Before the conversion to Islam it must have taken place in the hut or
temple where the totem or ancestor-god of the new kin was worshipped.
And the driving of the nail into the wall of the mosque may be
imagined to be the only remaining relic of the rite of admission into
the new _gens_ and of initiation into its cult. If this be so, it
probably expressed and effected the neophyte’s union with the divinity
into whose kin and worship he was entering.
Assuming this conjecture to be correct, we may go a step further. To
anticipate again what I shall have to explain more fully hereafter,
the union with the totem-god would have to be renewed at intervals.
Some such intention perhaps governed the rite at Reggio Emilia, in
Italy, which is now called “burying the old year.” At midnight of the
last day of the year the head of the household goes into the courtyard
of his house and thrusts into the ground a stake.[230.2] Turning back
to Wales, at Gumfreston, in Pembrokeshire, there is a holy well to
which the villagers {231} used to repair on Easter Day, when each of
them would throw a crooked pin into the water. This was called
“throwing Lent away.”[231.1] On the same day at Bradwell, in
Derbyshire, it was the practice for children to drop pins into the
various wells in the town. A fairy was said to preside over each well,
and to know whether a child had deposited a pin in her well, or not.
On Easter Monday every child carried a bottle of sweetmeats all day
long; and if a bottle were broken, it was because the child had
forgotten to drop a pin into one of the wells, “the fairy of the well
being the protector of the bottle.”[231.2] I need hardly pause on the
proof, which the comparison of these rites affords, of the absolute
ritual equivalence of throwing pins into a holy well and driving a
stake, or a nail, into the ground, or into a wall. Nor--even apart
from the evidence of the custom at Bradwell, which is obviously much
degraded--can it be necessary to insist on the improbability that
anything would be thrown into a holy well with the idea of simply
getting rid of it. The pins must have been intended, as elsewhere, to
unite the thrower with the god. And the custom may accordingly be
supposed to be a periodical renewal of union with the divinity,
removed under Christian influences from the day of the pagan festival
(perhaps May-day) to the nearest great feast-day of the Church. In the
same way the Italian peasant in planting a stake in his
courtyard--doubtless in the centre of his dwelling--would be renewing
his union with his household god, and emphatically asserting once more
his ownership of the house and his headship of the household.