THE HOLY WELLS
S. Patrick in Ireland--A pagan holy well--S. Samson--Celtic
saints very particular about the water they drank--S. Piran
and S. Germoe--S. Erth and the goose-eggs--S. Sithney and
the polluted well--Dropping of pins into wells--Hanging
rags about--Well-chapel of S. Clether--Venton Ia--Jordan
wells--Gwennap ceremony--Fice’s well--Modern stupidity
about contaminated water.
The system adopted by S. Patrick in Ireland was that of making as
little alteration as he could in the customs of the people, except only
when such customs were flatly opposed to the precepts of the gospel. He
did not overthrow their lechs or pillar-stones; he simply cut crosses
on them. When he found that the pagans had a holy well, he contented
himself with converting the well into a baptistery. It is a question
of judgment whether to wean people gently and by slow degrees from
their old customs, or whether wholly to forbid these usages. S. Patrick
must have known perfectly what the episcopal system was in Gaul, yet
when he came into a land where the Roman territorial organisation had
never prevailed, he accommodated Christian Church government to the
conditions of Celtic tribal organisation.
[Illustration: S. MELOR’S WELL, LINKINHORNE]
He found that the Irish, like all other Celtic peoples, held wells
in great veneration. He did not preach against this, denounce it as
idolatrous, or pass canons condemning it. He quietly appropriated these
wells to the service of the Church, and made of them baptisteries.
What Patrick did in Ireland was what had been done elsewhere.
When S. Samson was travelling in Cornwall between Padstow and Southill,
and visited his cousin Padarn on the way; at a place called Tregear
he found the people dancing round an upright stone, and offering it
idolatrous worship. He did not smash it in pieces. He contented himself
with cutting a cross on it.
Now the Celtic saints were mighty choice in their tipple. They insisted
on having the purest of water for their drink; and not only did they
require it for imbibing, but they did a great deal of tubbing.
One day S. Germoe paid S. Piran a visit; after they had prayed
together, “It is my tubbing time,” said Piran. “Will you have a bath
too?” “With the greatest of pleasure,” responded Germoe. So the two
saints got into the tub together. But the water was so cold that
Germoe’s teeth began to chatter, and he put one leg over the edge,
intending to scramble out. “Nonsense!” said Piran; “bide in a bit, and
you will feel the cold less sharply.”
Germoe did this. Presently Piran yelled out, “Heigh! a fish! a fish!”
and, between them, the two nude saints succeeded in capturing a trout
that was in the vat.
“I rejoice that we have the trout,” said Piran, “for I am expecting
home my old pupil Carthagh, and I was short of victuals. We will cook
it for his supper.”
Some of the saints had the fancy for saying their prayers standing up
to their necks in water.
There is a story of S. Erc, the S. Erth of Land’s End district, to the
purpose, but I admit it is on late authority.
Domnhal, king of Ireland, sent his servants to collect goose-eggs.
They found a woman carrying a black basket on her head piled up with
the eggs of geese. The king’s servants demanded them, but she answered
that they were intended as a present to Erc, who spent the day immersed
to the armpits in running water, with his Psalter on the bank, from
which he recited the psalms. In the evening he emerged from his bath,
shook himself, and ate an egg and a half together with three bunches of
watercress.
However, regardless of the saint’s necessities, the servants carried
the eggs away.
When S. Erc came out of the river, dripping from every limb, and found
there were no eggs for his supper, he waxed warm, and roundly cursed
the rascals who had despoiled him, and those who had set them on, and
all such as should eat them.
The story goes on to tell how these eggs became veritable apples of
discord, breeding internecine strife.
But to return to the wells.
Whether taught by experience, or illumined by the light of nature,
I cannot say, but most assuredly the saints of Ireland, Wales, and
Cornwall were vastly particular as to their wells being of the purest
and coldest water obtainable.
S. Senan had settled for a while by a well in Inis Caorach, and one
day his disciple Setna--our Cornish Sithney--found a woman washing
her child’s dirty clothes in the fountain. He flew into a fury, and
his companion Liberius was equally abusive in the language employed.
Shortly after the boy tumbled over the rocks into the sea. The
distracted mother ran to S. Senan, and when he heard the circumstances,
assuming that this was due to the imprecations called down on the woman
and her child by his two pupils, he bade both of them depart and not
see his face again, unless the child should be produced uninjured.
Setna and Liberius sneaked away very disconsolate, but as they happily
found the lad on the beach uninjured, they were once more received into
favour.
It is unnecessary here to repeat all the hackneyed references to the
cult of fountains among the Celts; they may be taken for granted. We
know that such was the case, and that the same cult continues very
little altered among the Irish and Breton peasantry to the present day.
In Cornwall there is now little or none of it. “When I was a man I put
away childish things,” says S. Paul, and the same applies to peoples.
When they are in their cultural childhood they have their superstitious
beliefs and practices; but they grow out of them, and we pity those who
stick in the observance of usages that are unreasonable.
In pagan times money was dropped into wells and springs, and
divination was taken from the rising of bubbles. Now the only relic of
such a proceeding is the dropping in of pins or rush crosses.
Wells were also sought for curative purposes, and unquestionably some
springs have medicinal qualities, but these are entirely unconnected
with the saints, and depend altogether on their chemical constituents.
It is said that rags may still be seen on the bushes about Madron well
as they are about holy wells in Ireland and about the tombs of fakirs
and Mussulman saints. I doubt if any Cornish people are so foolish as
to do such a thing as suspend rags about a well with the idea of these
rags serving as an oblation to the patron of the spring for the sake of
obtaining benefits from him.
In Pembrokeshire till quite recently persons, even Dissenters, were
wont to drink water from S. Teilo’s well out of a portion of the
reputed skull of S. Teilo, of which the Melchior family are the
hereditary custodians.
The immersing of the bone of a saint in water, and the drinking of the
water thus rendered salutary, is still practised in Brittany. This was
done when Ireland was pagan; but the bones soaked were those of Druids.
There is a curious illustration, as I take it, of this practice in S.
Clether’s well chapel, recently restored. Here the stone altar remains
_in situ_; it has never been disturbed.
[Illustration: WELL-CHAPEL OF S. CLETHER]
S. Clether was the son of Clydwyn, prince of Carmarthen and grandson
of Brychan. He came to Cornwall in consequence of the invasion of his
territories by Dyfnwal, and here he spent a great part of his life,
and died at an advanced age. He settled in the Inney valley in a most
picturesque spot between great ruins of rock, where a perennial spring
of the coolest, clearest water gushes forth. There can be very little
doubt that S. Clether employed this spring as his baptistery, for the
traditional usage of fetching water from it for baptisms in the parish
church has lingered on there.
The holy well lies north-east of the chapel or oratory. When the chapel
was reconstructed in the fifteenth century the water from the holy
well was conveyed in a cut granite channel under the wall, and came
sparkling forth in a sort of locker on the right side of the altar in
the thickness of the wall.
To reach this there was a descent of a step in the floor. Thence the
water flowed away underground, and gushed forth in a second holy well,
constructed in the depth of the chapel wall outside on the south near
the east end. Consequently there are two holy wells. The first, I take
it, was the baptismal well; the second was used to drink from. A relic
of the saint was placed in the channel where exposed; the water flowed
over it, acquired miraculous virtues, and was drunk at the second well
outside the chapel by those who desired healing.
That there was a further significance in the management of the course
of the water I do not doubt.
An attempt was made to carry out the imagery of the vision of the holy
waters in Ezekiel:--
“Afterward he brought me again unto the door of the house; and,
behold, waters issued out from under the threshold of the house
eastward: for the forefront of the house stood toward the east,
and the waters came down from under from the right side of the
house, at the south side of the altar.” (xlvii. 1.)
Cornwall possesses a vast number of holy wells, many of them in very
bad repair. That at S. Cleer has been restored admirably; Dupath is in
perfect condition; that of S. Guron at Bodmin has been restored; S.
Melor’s well at Linkinhorn is very beautiful and in perfect condition;
S. John’s well, Morwenstow, S. Julian’s, Mount Edgcumbe, S. Indract’s
in the parish of S. Dominic, the well of S. Sidwell and S. Wulvella
at Laneast, S. Samson’s, Southill, Menacuddle, S. Anne’s, Whitstone,
S. Neot’s, S. Nin’s, Pelynt, Roche, S. Ruan’s, are in good condition,
but many are ruinous, or have been so altered as to have lost their
interest. That of S. Mawes has been built up, and two great cast-iron
pipes carried up from it for the circulation of air over the water,
which is drawn away to a tap which supplies the town or village.[2]
Here is a melancholy account of the condition to which a holy well has
sunk:--
“Venton Eia (S. Ia’s well), on the cliff overlooking
Porthmeor.--This ancient well, associated with the memory of
the patron saint of the town (S. Ives), was formerly held in
the highest reverence. Entries occur in the borough records
of sums paid for cleansing and repairing it, under 1668-9
and 1692-3. On the last of these occasions the well was
covered, faced, and floored with hewn granite blocks in two
compartments. It is still known as ‘the Wishing Well,’ from
the old custom of divination by crooked pins dropped into
the water. For some years past, however, this ancient source
of purity has been shamefully outraged by contact with all
that is foul. Close to it is a cluster of sties, known as
‘Pig’s Town,’ and the well has become the receptacle for
stinking fish and all kinds of offal. Just above it are the
walls of the new cemetery. All veneration for this spot, so
dear to countless generations of our forefathers, seems to
have departed.”[3]
The well of S. Bridget at Landue remains, but the saint’s chapel is
gone. Stables near the well are thought to have polluted the water, and
the well is closed lest the incautious should drink of the reputedly
contaminated waters.
There are a good many holy wells in Devon also, but none of mark. At
Sticklepath above the well rises a very early inscribed stone. There is
a holy well, ruinous, at Halwell, one, probably of S. Lo, at Broadwood,
one at Ermington, from which water is still drawn for baptisms, one at
Lifton, one at Ashburton, probably dedicated to S. Wulvela. S. Sidwell
and S. Anne each has her well at Exeter, and the water of the latter
has of late become of repute, and is in request under the form of beer.
It supplies a brewery.
When S. Cadoc returned from the Holy Land he brought with him a bottle
of water from the Jordan, and poured it into a well in Cornwall. None
that I know of bears his name, but that at Laneast is called Jordan
well.
There is a very singular custom still observed in connection with a
stream in place of a holy well at Gwennap. There, on Good Friday,
children seek two spots by a stream to baptise their _dolls_. This can
be due only to a dim reminiscence of baptising in the open.
In addition to the holy wells, there are the pixy wells, where the
ancient spirits have not been dispossessed by the saints.
Poughill parish takes its name from a puck or pisgie well.
Fice’s well, near Prince Town, has on it “J. F. 1568.” John Fitz, the
astrologer, and his lady were once pixy-led whilst riding on Dartmoor.
After long wanderings in the vain effort to find their way, they
lighted on a pure spring, drank of it; and their eyes were opened to
know where they were and which was their right direction. In gratitude
for this deliverance, old John Fitz caused the stone memorial to be
set over the spring for the advantage of all pixy-led wanderers. Alas!
the convict establishment has enclosed the moor all round, and now
this well, though intact, no longer stands, as I remember it, in wild
moorland, but enclosed by a protecting wall in a field.
In a certain large village of which I know something water was
introduced by means of earthenware pipes for a considerable distance,
and then conveyed to taps at convenient spots by iron and lead.
Now there was one of these taps placed outside the Board school. The
master said within himself, “If I go to the tap, I shall have to pay
the water rate, which will be very heavy; if I never turn the tap, I
surely cannot be required to pay. So I know what I will do. Go to! I
will draw all my water from the well in the yard of the farm at the
back of my premises.”
He did so, and lost his wife and child by diphtheria. Verily even
modern Board school masters might learn something from these wild old
pure water-loving Celtic saints.
NOTE.--Book on Cornish Holy Wells:--
QUILLER-COUCH (M. and L.), _Ancient and Holy Wells of Cornwall_.
London: Clark, 1894.