In olden times fairies were sent to oppose the evil-doings of witches,
and to destroy their power. About three hundred years ago a band of
fairies, sixty in number, with their queen, called Queen of the Dell,
came to Mona to oppose the evil works of a celebrated witch. The fairies
settled by a spring, in a valley. After having blessed the spring, or
“well”, as they called it, they built a bower just above the spring for
the queen, placing a throne therein. Near by they built a large bower
for themselves to live in.
After that, the queen drew three circles, one within the other, on a
nice flat grassy place by the well. When they were comfortably settled,
the queen sent the fairies about the country to gather tidings of
the people. They went from house to house, and everywhere heard great
complaints against an old witch; how she had made some blind, others
lame, and deformed others by causing a horn to grow out of their
foreheads. When they got back to the well and told the queen, she said:
“I must do something for these old people, and though the witch is very
powerful, we must break her power.” So the next day the queen fairy sent
word to all the bewitched to congregate upon a fixed day at the sacred
well, just before noon.
When the day came, several ailing people collected at the well. The
queen then placed the patients in pairs in the inner ring, and the sixty
fairies in pairs in the middle ring. Each little fairy was three feet
and a half high, and carried a small wand in her right hand, and a bunch
of fairy flowers--cuckoo’s boots, baby’s bells, and day’s-eyes--in her
left hand. Then the queen, who was four feet and a half in height, took
the outside ring. On her head was a crown of wild flowers, in her right
hand she carried a wand, and in her left a posy of fairy flowers. At a
signal from the queen they began marching round the rings, singing in
chorus:
“We march round by two and two
The circles of the sacred well
That lies in the dell.”
When they had walked twice round the ring singing, the queen took her
seat upon the throne, and calling each patient to her, she touched him
with her wand and bade him go down to the sacred well and dip his body
into the water three times, promising that all his ills should be cured.
As each one came forth from the spring he knelt before the queen, and
she blessed him, and told him to hurry home and put on dry clothes. So
that all were cured of their ills.