In the case of animals ailing, the herbs were also resorted to;

and, if the beasts happened to be milch cows, the herbs had to be

boiled in some of their milk. This was supposed to produce wonderful

results, described as follows by a man living at a place on the way

from Castletown up South Barrule:--A farmer in his parish had a cow

that milked blood, as he described it, and this in consequence of a

witch's ill-will. He went to the charmer, who gave him some herbs,

which he was to boil in the ailing cow's milk, and the charmer charged

him, whatever he did, not to quit the concoction while it was on the

fire, in spite of any noises he might hear. The farmer went home and

proceeded that night to boil the herbs as directed, but he suddenly

heard a violent tapping at the door, a terrible lowing of the cattle

in the cow-house, and stones coming down the 'chumley': the end of it

was that he suddenly fled and sprang into bed to take shelter behind

his wife. He went to the charmer again, and related to him what had

happened: he was told that he must have more courage the next time,

unless he wished his cow to die. He promised to do his best, and

this time he stood his ground in spite of the noises and the creaking

of the windows--until, in fact, a back window burst into pieces and

bodily let a witch in, who craved his pardon, and promised nevermore

to molest him or his. This all happened at the farm in question

in the time of the present farmer's grandfather. The boiling of

the charmer's herbs in milk always produces a great commotion and

lowing among the cattle, and it invariably cures the ailing ones:

this is firmly believed by respectable farmers whom I could name,

in the north of the island in particular, and I am alluding to men

whom one might consider fairly educated members of their class.

In the last mentioned instance not only is the requisite cure

effected, but the witch who caused the mischief is brought on the

spot. I have recently heard of a parallel to this in a belief which

appears to be still prevalent in the Channel Islands, more especially

Guernsey. The following incidents have been communicated to me by an

ardent folklorist, who has friends in the islands:--

An old woman in Torteval became ill, and her two sons were told that

if they tried one of the charms of divination, such as boiling certain

weeds in a pot, the first person to come to the house would prove

to be the one who had cast a spell over their mother. Accordingly

they made their bouillederie, and who should come to the door but

a poor, unoffending Breton onion seller, and as he was going away

he was waylaid by the two sons, who beat him within an inch of his

life. They were prosecuted and sentenced to terms of imprisonment;

but the charming did not come out in the evidence, though it was

generally known to have been the reason for the assault. This account

was given my informant in 1898, and the incident appears to have

happened not very long before. Another is related thus:--A certain

family suffered from a plague of lice, which they regarded as the

consequence of a spell. They accordingly made their boiling of herbs

and looked for the first comer. He turned out to be a neighbour of

theirs who wished to buy some turnip seeds. The family abused him

roundly. He went away, but he was watched and caught by two of the

sons of the house, who beat him cruelly. They, on being prosecuted,

had to pay him £5 damages. This took place in the summer of 1898,

in the narrator's own parish, in Guernsey. I have also another case

of recent date, to the effect that a young woman, whose churning was

so unsuccessful that the butter would not come, boiled herbs in the

prescribed way. She awaited the first comer, and, being engaged, her

intended husband was not unnaturally the first to arrive. She abused

him so unsparingly that he broke off the engagement. These instances

go far enough to raise the question why the boiling of herbs should

be supposed to bring the culprit immediately on the spot, but they

hardly go any further, namely, to help us to answer it.

Magic takes us back to a very primitive and loose manner of thinking;

so the marvellously easy way in which it identifies any tie of

association, however flimsy, with the insoluble bond of relationship

which educated men and women regard as connecting cause and effect,

renders even simpler means than I have described quite equal to the

undoing of the evils resulting from the activity of the evil eye. Thus,

let us suppose that a person endowed with the evil eye has just passed

by the farmer's herd of cattle, and a calf has suddenly been seized

with a serious illness, the farmer hurries after the man of the evil

eye to get the dust from under his feet. If he objects, the farmer

may, as has sometimes been actually done, throw him down by force,

take off his shoes, and scrape off the dust adhering to their soles,

and carry it back to throw over the calf. Even that is not always

necessary, as it appears to be quite enough if he takes up dust where

he of the evil eye has just trod the ground. There are innumerable

cases on folk-record of both means proving entirely efficacious,

and they remind one of a story related in the Itinerarium Kambriæ,

i. 11, by Giraldus, as to the archbishop when he was preaching in the

neighbourhood of Haverfordwest. A certain woman had lost her sight,

but had so much faith in that holy man that she sent her son to try and

procure the least bit of the fringe of his clothing. The youth, unable

to make his way through the crowd that surrounded the preacher, waited

till it dispersed, and then took home to his mother the sod on which

he had stood and on which his feet had left their mark. That earth was

applied by her to her face and eyes, with the result that she at once

recovered her sight. A similar question of psychology presents itself

in a practice intended as a preservative against the evil eye rather

than as a cure. I allude to what I have heard about two maiden ladies

living in a Manx village which I know very well: they are natives

of a neighbouring parish, and I am assured that whenever a stranger

enters their house they proceed, as soon as he goes away, to strew a

little dust or sand over the spot where he stood. That is understood

to prevent any malignant influence resulting from his visit. This

tacit identifying of a man with his footprints may be detected in a

more precarious and pleasing form in a quaint conceit familiar to me

in the lyrics of rustic life in Wales, when, for example, a coy maiden

leaves her lovesick swain hotly avowing his perfect readiness to cusanu

ol ei thraed, that is, to do on his knees all the stages of her path

across the meadow, kissing the ground wherever it has been honoured

with the tread of her dainty foot. Let me take another case, in which

the cord of association is not so inconceivably slender, namely,

when two or more persons standing in a close relation to one another

are mistakenly treated a little too much as if mutually independent,

the objection is heard that it matters not whether it is A or B, that

it is, in fact, all the same, as they belong to the same concern. In

Welsh this is sometimes expressed by saying, Yr un yw Huw'r Glyn a'i

glocs, that is, 'Hugh of the Glen and his clogs are all one.' Then,

when you speak in English of a man 'standing in another's shoes,'

I am by no means certain, that you are not employing an expression

which meant something more to those who first used it than it does to

us. Our modern idioms, with all their straining after the abstract,

are but primitive man's mental tools adapted to the requirements of

civilized life, and they often retain traces of the form and shape

which the neolithic worker's chipping and polishing gave them.

It is difficult to arrange these scraps under any clearly classified

headings, and now that I have led the reader into the midst of matters

magical, perhaps I may just as well go on to the mention of a few

more: I alluded to the boiling of the herbs according to the charmer's

orders, with the result, among other things, of bringing the witch to

the spot. This is, however, not the only instance of the importance

and strange efficacy of fire. For when a beast dies on a farm, of

course it dies, according to the old-fashioned view of things as I

understand it, from the influence of the evil eye or the interposition

of a witch. So if you want to know to whom you are indebted for the

loss of the beast, you have simply to burn its carcase in the open

air and watch who comes first to the spot or who first passes by:

that is the criminal to be charged with the death of the animal,

and he cannot help coming there--such is the effect of the fire. A

Michael woman, who is now about thirty, related to me how she watched

while the carcase of a bewitched colt was burning, how she saw the

witch coming, and how she remembers her shrivelled face, with nose

and chin in close proximity. According to another native of Michael,

a well informed middle-aged man, the animal in question was oftenest

a calf, and it was wont to be burnt whole, skin and all. The object,

according to him, is invariably to bring the bewitcher on the spot,

and he always comes; but I am not clear what happens to him when

he appears. My informant added, however, that it was believed that,

unless the bewitcher got possession of the heart of the burning beast,

he lost all his power of bewitching. He related, also, how his father

and three other men were once out fishing on the west coast of the

island, when one of the three suddenly expressed his wish to land. As

they were fishing successfully some two or three miles from the shore,

they would not hear of it. He, however, insisted that they must put him

ashore at once, which made his comrades highly indignant; but they soon

had to give way, as they found that he was determined to leap overboard

unless they complied. When he got on shore they watched him hurrying

away towards where a beast was burning in the corner of a field.

Manx stories merge this burning in a very perplexing fashion with what

may be termed a sacrifice for luck. The following scraps of information

will make it clear what I mean:--A respectable farmer from Andreas

told me that he was driving with his wife to the neighbouring parish of

Jurby some years ago, and that on the way they beheld the carcase of a

cow or an ox burning in a field, with a woman engaged in stirring the

fire. On reaching the village to which they were going, they found

that the burning beast belonged to a farmer whom they knew. They

were further told it was no wonder that the said farmer had one of

his cattle burnt, as several of them had recently died. Whether this

was a case of sacrifice or not I cannot say. But let me give another

instance: a man whom I have already mentioned, saw at a farm nearer

the centre of the island a live calf being burnt. The owner bears

an English name, but his family has long been settled in Man. The

farmer's explanation to my informant was that the calf was burnt to

secure luck for the rest of the herd, some of which were threatening

to die. My informant thought there was absolutely nothing the matter

with them, except that they had too little food. Be that as it may,

the one calf was sacrificed as a burnt offering to secure luck for

the rest of the cattle. Let me here also quote Mr. Moore's note in

his Manx Surnames, p. 184, on the place-name Cabbal yn Oural Losht,

or the 'Chapel of the Burnt Sacrifice.' 'This name,' he says, 'records

a circumstance which took place in the nineteenth century, but which,

it is to be hoped, was never customary in the Isle of Man. A farmer,

who had lost a number of his sheep and cattle by murrain, burned a calf

as a propitiatory offering to the Deity on this spot, where a chapel

was afterwards built. Hence the name.' Particulars, I may say, of time,

place, and person, could be easily added to Mr. Moore's statement,

excepting, perhaps, as to the deity in question: on that point I have

never been informed, but Mr. Moore was probably right in the use of

the capital d, as the sacrificer was, according to all accounts, a

devout Christian. I have to thank Sir Frederick Pollock for calling my

attention to a parallel this side of the sea: he refers me to Worth's

History of Devonshire (London, 1886), p. 339, where one reads the

following singular passage:--'Living animals have been burnt alive in

sacrifice within memory to avert the loss of other stock. The burial

of three puppies "brandise-wise" in a field is supposed to rid it

of weeds.' The second statement is very curious, and the first seems

to mean that preventive sacrifices have been performed in Devonshire

within the memory of men living in the author's time.

One more Manx instance: an octogenarian woman, born in the parish of

Bride, and now living at Kirk Andreas, saw, when she was a 'lump of

a girl' of ten or fifteen years of age, a live sheep being burnt in

a field in the parish of Andreas, on May-day, whereby she meant the

first of May reckoned according to the Old Style. She asserts [125]

very decidedly that it was son oural, 'for a sacrifice,' as she put

it, and 'for an object to the public': those were her words when she

expressed herself in English. Further, she made the statement that

it was a custom to burn a sheep on Old May-day for a sacrifice. I was

fully alive to the interest of this evidence, and cross-examined her

so far as her age allows of it, and I find that she adheres to her

statement with all firmness, but I distinguish two or three points in

her evidence: 1. I have no doubt that she saw, as she was passing by

a certain field on the borders of Andreas parish, a live sheep being

burnt on Old May-day. 2. But her statement that it was son oural, or

as a sacrifice, was probably only an inference drawn by her, possibly

years afterwards, on hearing things of the kind discussed. 3. Lastly,

I am convinced that she did hear the May-day sacrifice discussed, both

in Manx and in English: her words, 'for an object to the public,' are

her imperfect recollection of a phrase used in her hearing by somebody

more ambitious of employing English abstract terms than she is; and

the formal nature of her statement in Manx, that it was customary

on May-day to burn as a sacrifice one head of sheep (Laa Boaldyn va

cliaghtey dy lostey son oural un baagh keyrragh), produces the same

impression on my mind, that she is only repeating somebody else's

words. I mention this more especially as I have failed to find anybody

else in Andreas or Bride, or indeed in the whole island, who will

now confess to having ever heard of the sheep sacrifice on Old May-day.

The time assigned to the sheep sacrifice, namely May-day, leads

me to make some remarks on the importance of that day among the

Celts. The day meant is, as I have already said, Old May-day, in Manx

Shenn Laa Boaldyn, the belltaine of Cormac's Glossary, Scotch Gaelic

bealtuinn. This was a day when systematic efforts were made to protect

man and beast against elves and witches; for it was then that people

carried crosses of rowan in their hats and placed May flowers over

the tops of their doors and elsewhere as preservatives against all

malignant influences. With the same object in view crosses of rowan

were likewise fastened to the tails of the cattle, small crosses

which had to be made without the help of a knife: I exhibited a tiny

specimen at one of the meetings of the Folk-Lore Society. Early on May

morning one went out to gather the dew as a thing of great virtue,

as in other countries. At Kirk Michael one woman, who had been out

on this errand years ago, told me that she washed her face with the

dew in order to secure luck, a good complexion, and safety against

witches. The break of this day is also the signal for setting the

ling or the gorse on fire, which is done in order to burn out the

witches wont to take the form of the hare; and guns, I am told,

were freely used to shoot any game met with on that morning. With the

proper charge some of the witches were now and then hit and wounded,

whereupon they resumed the human form and remained cripples for the

rest of their lives. Fire, however, appears to have been the chief

agency relied on to clear away the witches and other malignant beings;

and I have heard of this use of fire having been carried so far that

a practice was sometimes observed--as, for example, in Lezayre--of

burning gorse, however little, in the hedge of each field on a farm

in order to drive away the witches and secure luck.

The man who told me this, on being asked whether he had ever heard

of cattle being driven through fire or between two fires on May-day,

replied that it was not known to him as a Manx custom, but that it was

an Irish one. A cattle-dealer whom he named used on May-day to drive

his cattle through fire so as to singe them a little, as he believed

that would preserve them from harm. He was an Irishman, who came to

the island for many years, and whose children are settled in the island

now. On my asking him if he knew whence the dealer came, he answered,

'From the mountains over there,' pointing to the Mourne Mountains

looming faintly in the mists on the western horizon. The Irish custom

known to my Manx informant is interesting both as throwing light on

the Manx custom, and as being the continuation of a very ancient rite

mentioned by Cormac. That writer, or somebody in his name, says that

belltaine, May-day, was so called from the 'lucky fire,' or the 'two

fires,' which the druids of Erin used to make on that day with great

incantations; and cattle, he adds, used to be brought to those fires,

or to be driven between them, as a safeguard against the diseases of

the year. Cormac [126] says nothing, it will be noticed, as to one of

the cattle or the sheep being sacrificed for the sake of prosperity

to the rest. However, Scottish [127] May-day customs point to a

sacrifice having been once usual, and that possibly of human beings,

and not of sheep as in the Isle of Man. I have elsewhere [128] tried

to equate these Celtic May-day practices with the Thargelia [129]

of the Athenians of antiquity. The Thargelia were characterized by

peculiar rites, and among other things then done, two adult persons

were led about, as it were scapegoats, and at the end they were

sacrificed and burnt, so that their ashes might be dispersed. Here

we seem to be on the track of a very ancient Aryan practice, although

the Celtic season does not quite coincide with the Greek one. Several

items of importance for comparison here will be found passed under

careful review in a most suggestive paper by Mr. Lawrence Gomme, 'On

the Method of determining the Value of Folklore as Ethnological Data,'

in the Fourth Report of the Ethnographical Survey Committee [130].

It is probably in some ancient May-day custom that we are to look

for the key to a remarkable place-name occurring several times in

the island: I allude to that of Cronk yn Irree Laa, which probably

means the Hill of the Rise of Day. This is the name of one of the

mountains in the south of the island, but it is also borne by one

of the knolls near the eastern end of the range of low hills ending

abruptly on the coast between Ramsey and Bride parish, and quite a

small knoll bears the name, near the church of Jurby [131]. I have

heard of a fourth instance, which, as I learn from Mr. Philip Kermode,

editor of the Lioar Manninagh, is on Clay Head, near Laxey. It has

been attempted to explain it as meaning the Hill of the Watch by Day,

in reference to the old institution of Watch and Ward on conspicuous

places in the island; but that explanation is inadmissible as doing

violence to the phonetics of the words in question [132]. I am rather

inclined to think that the name everywhere refers to an eminence to

which the surrounding inhabitants resorted for a religious purpose

on a particular day in the year. I should suggest that it was to

do homage to the rising sun on May morning, but this conjecture is

offered only to await a better explanation.

The next great day in the pagan calendar of the Celts is called in

Manx Laa Lhunys, in Irish Lugnassad, the assembly or fair, which was

associated with the name of the god Lug. This should correspond to

Lammas, but, reckoned as it is according to the Old Style, it falls

on the twelfth of August, which used to be a great day for business

fairs in the Isle of Man as in Wales. But for holiday making the

twelfth only suited when it happened to be a Sunday: when that was

not the case, the first Sunday after the twelfth was fixed upon. It is

known, accordingly, as the first Sunday of Harvest, and it used to be

celebrated by crowds of people visiting the tops of the mountains. The

kind of interference to which I have alluded with regard to an ancient

holiday, is one of the regular results of the transition from Roman

Catholicism to a Protestant system with only one fixed holiday, namely,

Sunday. The same shifting has partly happened in Wales, where Lammas

is Gwyl Awst, or the festival of Augustus, since the birthday of

Augustus, auspiciously for him and the celebrity of his day, fell in

with the great day of the god Lug in the Celtic world. Now the day

for going up the Fan Fach mountain in Carmarthenshire was Lammas,

but under a Protestant Church it became the first Sunday in August;

and even modified in that way it could not long survive under a

vigorous sabbatarian régime either in Wales or Man. As to the latter

in particular, I have heard it related by persons who were present,

how the crowds on the top of South Barrule on the first Sunday of

Harvest were denounced as pagans by a preacher called William Gick,

some seventy years ago; and how another man called Paric Beg, or

Little Patrick, preaching to the crowds on Snaefell in milder terms,

used to wind up the service with a collection, which appears to have

proved a speedier method of reducing the dimensions of these meetings

on the mountain tops. Be that as it may, they seem to have dwindled

since then to comparative insignificance.

If you ask the reason for this custom now, for it is not yet quite

extinct, you are told, first, that it is merely to gather ling

berries; but now and then a quasi-religious reason is given, namely,

that it is the day on which Jephthah's daughter went forth to bewail

her virginity 'upon the mountains': somehow some Manx people make

believe that they are doing likewise. That is not all, for people

who have never themselves thought of going up the mountains on the

first Sunday of harvest or any other, will be found devoutly reading

at home about Jephthah's daughter on that day. I was told this first

in the south by a clergyman's wife, who, finding a woman in the parish

reading the chapter in question on that day, asked the reason for her

fixing on that particular portion of the Bible. She then had the Manx

view of the matter fully explained to her, and she has since found

more information about it, and so have I. It is needless for me to

say that I do not quite understand how Jephthah's daughter came to be

introduced: perhaps it is vain to look for any deeper reason than that

the mention, of the mountains may have served as a sort of catch-word,

and that as the Manx people began to cease from visiting the tops of

the mountains annually, it struck the women as the next best thing

for them to read at home of one who did 'go up and down upon the

mountains': they are great readers of the Bible generally. In any case

we have here a very curious instance of a practice, originally pagan,

modifying itself profoundly to secure a new lease of life.

Between May-day and November eve, there was a day of considerable

importance in the island; but the fixing on it was probably

due to influence other than Celtic: I mean Midsummer Eve, or

St. John's. However, some practices connected with it would seem to

have been of Celtic origin, such as 'the bearing of rushes to certain

places called Warrefield and Mame on Midsummer Even.' Warrefield was

made in Manx into Barrule, but Mame, 'the jugum, or ridge,' has not

been identified. The Barrule here in question was South Barrule, and it

is to the top of that mountain the green rushes were carried, according

to Manx tradition, as the only rent or tax which the inhabitants paid,

namely, to Manannán mac Lir (called in Welsh Manawydan ab Llyr),

whom the same tradition treats as father and founder, as king and

chief wizard of the Isle of Man, the same Manannán who is quaintly

referred to in the illiterate passage at the head of this chapter

[133]. As already stated, the payment of the annual rent of rushes is

associated with Midsummer Eve; but it did not prevent the top of South

Barrule from being visited likewise later in the year. Perhaps it may

also be worth while mentioning, with regard to most of the mountains

climbed on the first Sunday of Harvest, that they seem to have near the

summit of each a well of some celebrity, which appears to be the goal

of the visitors' peregrinations. This is the case with South Barrule,

the spring near the top of which cannot, it is said, be found when

sought a second time; also with Snaefell and with Maughold Head, which

boasts one of the most famous springs in the island. When I visited

it last summer in company with Mr. Kermode, we found it to contain

a considerable number of pins, some of which were bent, and many

buttons. Some of the pins were not of a kind usually carried by men,

and most of the buttons decidedly belonged to the dress of the other

sex. Several people who had resorted many years ago to St. Maughold's

Well, told me that the water is good for sore eyes, and that after

using it on the spot, or filling a bottle with it to take home, one

was wont to drop a pin or bead or button into the well. But it had

its full virtue only when visited the first Sunday of Harvest, and

that only during the hour when the books were open at church, which,

shifted back to Roman Catholic times, means doubtless the hour when

the priest was engaged in saying Mass. Compare the passage in the

Mabinogi of Math, where it is said that the spear required for the

slaying of Llew Llawgyffes had to be a whole year in the making: the

work was to be pursued only so long as one was engaged at the sacrifice

on Sunday (ar yr aberth duw sul): see the Oxford Mabinogion, p. 76.

To return to Man, the restriction, as might be expected, is not

peculiar to St. Maughold's Well: I have heard of it in connexion

with other wells, such as Chibbyr Lansh in Lezayre parish, and with

a well on Slieau Maggyl, in which some Kirk Michael people have a

great belief. But even sea water was believed to have considerable

virtues if you washed in it while the books were open at church, as I

was told by a woman who had many years ago repeatedly taken her own

sister to divers wells and to the sea during the service on Sunday,

in order to have her eyes cured of a chronic weakness.

The remaining great day in the Celtic year is called Sauin or Laa

Houney: in Irish, Samhain, genitive Samhna. The Manx call it in

English Hollantide, a word derived from the English All hallowen tide,

'the Season of All Saints [134].' This day is also reckoned in Man

according to the Old Style, so that it is our twelfth of November. That

is the day when the tenure of land terminates, and when servant men

go to their places. In other words, it is the beginning of a new year;

and Kelly, in his Manx-English Dictionary, has, under the word blein,

'year,' the following note:--'Vallancey says the Celts began their

year with January; yet in the Isle of Man the first of November is

called New Year's day by the Mummers, who, on the eve, begin their

petition in these words: To-night is New Year's night, Hog-unnaa [135],

&c.' It is a pity that Kelly, whilst he was on this subject, did not

give the rhyme in Manx, and all the more so, as the mummers of the

present day, if he is right, must have changed their words into Noght

oie Houney, that is to say, To-night is Sauin Night or Halloween. So

I had despaired of finding anybody who could corroborate Kelly in his

statement, when I happened last summer to find a man at Kirk Michael

who was quite familiar with this way of treating the year. I asked

him if he could explain Kelly's absurd statement--I put my question

designedly in that form. He said he could, but that there was nothing

absurd in it. He then told me how he had heard some old people talk of

it: he is himself now about sixty-seven. He had been a farm servant

from the age of sixteen till he was twenty-six to the same man, near

Regaby, in the parish of Andreas, and he remembers his master and a

near neighbour of his discussing the term New Year's Day as applied to

the first of November, and explaining to the younger men that it had

always been so in old times. In fact, it seemed to him natural enough,

as all tenure of land ends at that time, and as all servant men begin

their service then. I cross-examined him, without succeeding in any

way in shaking his evidence. I should have been glad a few years ago

to have come across this piece of information, or even Kelly's note,

when I was discussing the Celtic year and trying to prove [136] that

it began at the beginning of winter, with May-day as the beginning

of its second half.

One of the characteristics of the beginning of the Celtic year with

the commencement of winter was the belief that indications can be

obtained on the eve of that day regarding the events of the year; but

with the calendar year gaining ground it would be natural to expect

that the Calends of January would have some of the associations of the

Calends of Winter transferred to them, and vice versa. In fact, this

can, as it were, be watched now going on in the Isle of Man. First,

I may mention that the Manx mummers used to go about singing, in

Manx, a sort of Hogmanay song [137], reminding one of that usual in

Yorkshire and other parts of Great Britain, and now known to be of

Romance origin [138]. The time for it in this country was New Year's

Eve, according to the ordinary calendar, but in the Isle of Man it

has always been Hollantide Eve, according to the Old Style, and this

is the night when boys now go about continuing the custom of the old

mummers. There is no hesitation in this case between Hollantide Eve

and New Year's Eve. But with the prognostications for the year it

is different, and the following practices have been usual. I may,

however, premise that as a rule I have abstained from inquiring too

closely whether they still go on, but here and there I have had the

information volunteered that they do.

1. I may mention first a salt prognostication, which was described

to me by a farmer in the north, whose wife practises it once a year

regularly. She carefully fills a thimble with salt in the evening

and upsets it in a neat little heap on a plate: she does that for

every member of the family, and every guest, too, if there happen to

be any. The plate is then left undisturbed till the morning, when

she examines the heaps of salt to see if any of them have fallen;

for whoever is found represented by a fallen heap will die during

the year. She does not herself, I am assured, believe in it, but she

likes to continue a custom which she has learned from her mother.

2. Next may be mentioned the ashes being carefully swept to the

open hearth, and nicely flattened down by the women just before

going to bed. In the morning they look for footmarks on the hearth,

and if they find such footmarks directed towards the door, it means,

in the course of the year, a death in the family, and if the reverse,

they expect an addition to it by marriage [139].

3. Then there is an elaborate process of eavesdropping recommended

to young women curious to know their future husbands' names: a girl

would go with her mouth full of water and her hands full of salt

to the door of the nearest neighbour's house, or rather to that

of the nearest neighbour but one--I have been carefully corrected

more than once on that point. There she would listen, and the first

name she caught would prove to be that of her future husband. Once

a girl did so, as I was told by a blind fisherman in the south, and

heard two brothers quarrelling inside the house at whose door she

was listening. Presently the young men's mother exclaimed that the

devil would not let Tom leave John alone. At the mention of that triad

the girl burst into the house, laughing and spilling the mouthful of

water most incontinently. The end of it was that before the year was

out she married Tom, the second person mentioned: the first either

did not count or proved an unassailable bachelor.

4. There is also a ritual for enabling a girl to obtain other

information respecting her future husband: vessels placed about the

room have various things put into them, such as clean water, earth,

meal, a piece of a net, or any other article thought appropriate. The

candidate for matrimony, with her eyes bandaged, feels her way about

the house until she puts her hand in one of the aforesaid vessels. If

what she lays her hand on is the clean water, her husband will be a

handsome man [140]; if it is the earth, he will be a farmer; if the

meal, a miller; if the net, a fisherman; and so on into as many of

the walks of life as may be thought worthy of consideration.

5. Lastly, recourse may be had to a ritual of the same nature as that

observed by the druid of ancient Erin, when, burdened with a heavy

meal of the flesh of a red pig, he laid him down for the night in

order to await a prophetic dream as to the manner of man the nobles of

Erin assembled at Tara were to elect to be their king. The incident

is given in the story of Cúchulainn's Sick-bed; and the reader,

doubtless, knows the passage about Brian and the taghairm in the

fourth Canto of Scott's Lady of the Lake. But the Manx girl has only

to eat a salt herring, bones and all, without drinking or uttering

a word, and to retire backwards to bed. When she sleeps and dreams,

she will behold her future husband approaching to give her drink.

Probably none of the practices which I have enumerated, or similar

ones mentioned to me, are in any sense peculiar to the Isle of Man;

but what interests me in them is the divided opinion as to the proper

night for them in the year. I am sorry to say that I have very

little information as to the blindman's-buff ritual (No. 4); what

information I have, to wit, the evidence of two persons in the south,

fixes it on Hollantide Eve. But as to the others (Nos. 1, 2, 3, 5),

they are observed by some on that night, and by others on New Year's

Eve, sometimes according to the Old Style [141] and sometimes the

New. Further, those who are wont to practise the salt heap ritual,

for instance, on Hollantide Eve, would be very indignant to hear

that anybody should think New Year's Eve the proper night, and vice

versa. So by bringing women bred and born in different parishes

to compare notes on this point, I have witnessed arguing hardly

less earnest than that which characterized the ancient controversy

between British and Italian ecclesiastics as to the proper time for

keeping Easter. I have not been able to map the island according to

the practices prevalent at Hollantide and the beginning of January,

but local folklorists could probably do it without much difficulty. My

impression, however, is that January is gradually acquiring the upper

hand. In Wales this must have been decidedly helped by the influence

of Roman rule and Roman ideas; but even there the adjuncts of the

Winter Calends have never been wholly transferred to the Calends

of January. Witness, for instance, the women who used to congregate

in the parish church to discover who of the parishioners would die

during the year [142]. That custom, in the neighbourhoods reported

to have practised it, continued to attach itself to the last, so

far as I know, to the beginning of November. In the Isle of Man

the fact of the ancient Celtic year having so firmly held its own,

seems to point to the probability that the year of the Pagan Norsemen

pretty nearly coincided with that of the Celts [143]. For there are

reasons to think, as I have endeavoured elsewhere to show, that the

Norse Yule was originally at the end of summer or the commencement

of winter, in other words, the days afterwards known as the Feast

of the Winter Nights. This was the favourite date in Iceland for

listening to soothsayers prophesying with regard to the winter then

beginning. The late Dr. Vigfusson had much to say on this subject,

and how the local sibyl, resuming her elevated seat at the opening

of each successive winter, gave the author of the Volospá his plan of

that remarkable poem, which has been described by the same authority

as the highest spiritual effort of the heathen muse of the North.

CHAPTER V

THE FENODYREE AND HIS FRIENDS

Emoi de hai sai megalai eutychiai ouk areskousi,

to theion epistamenô hôs esti phthoneron..--Herodotus.

The last chapter is hardly such as to call for a recapitulation of

its principal contents, and I venture to submit instead of any such

repetition an abstract of some very pertinent notes on it by Miss

M. G. W. Peacock, who compares with the folklore of the Isle of Man

the old beliefs which survive in Lincolnshire among the descendants

of Norse ancestors [144]. She was attracted by the striking affinity

which she noticed between them, and she is doubtless right in regarding

that affinity as due in no small degree to the Scandinavian element

present in the population alike of Man and the East of England. She

is, however, not lavish of theory, but gives us interesting items of

information from an intimate acquaintance with the folklore of the

district of which she undertakes to speak, somewhat in the following

order:--

1. Whether the water-bull still inhabits the streams of Lincolnshire

she regards as doubtful, but the deep pools formed, she says, by the

action of the down-flowing water at the bends of the country becks

are still known as bull-holes.

2. As to the glashtyn, or water-horse, she remarks that the

tatter-foal, tatter-colt, or shag-foal, as he is variously called,

is still to be heard of, although his visits take place less often

than before the fens and carrs were drained and the open fields and

commons enclosed. She describes the tatter-foal as a goblin of the

shape and appearance of a small horse or yearling foal in his rough,

unkempt coat. He beguiles lonely travellers with his numberless tricks,

one of which is to lure them to a stream, swamp, or water-hole. When

he has succeeded he vanishes with a long outburst of mockery, half

neigh, half human laughter.

3. The fenodyree, one is told, has in Lincolnshire a cousin, but he

is diminutive; and, like the Yorkshire Hob or Robin Round-Cap, and the

Danish Niss, he is used to befriend the house in which he dwells. The

story of his driving the farmer's sheep home is the same practically

as in the Isle of Man, even to the point of bringing in with them the

little grey sheep, as he called the fine hare that had given him more

trouble than all the rest of the flock: see pp. 286-7 above.

4. The story of this manikin's clothing differs considerably from

that of the fenodyree. The farmer gives him in gratitude for his

services a linen shirt every New Year's Eve; and this went on for

years, until at last the farmer thought a hemp shirt was good enough

to give him. When the clock struck twelve at midnight the manikin

raised an angry wail, saying:--

Harden, harden, harden hemp!

I will neither grind nor stamp!

Had you given me linen gear,

I would have served you many a year!

He was no more seen or heard: he vanished for ever. The Cornish

counterpart of this brownie reasons in the opposite way; for when,

in gratitude for his help in threshing, a new suit of clothes is

given him, he hurries away, crying [145]:--

Pisky new coat, and pisky new hood,

Pisky now will do no more good.

Here, also, one should compare William Nicholson's account of the

brownie of Blednoch [146], in Galloway, who wore next to no clothing:--

Roun' his hairy form there was naething seen,

But a philabeg o' the rushes green.

So he was driven away for ever by a newly married wife wishing him

to wear an old pair of her husband's breeches:--

But a new-made wife, fu' o' rippish freaks,

Fond o' a' things feat for the first five weeks,

Laid a mouldy pair o' her ain man's breeks

By the brose o' Aiken-drum.

Let the learned decide, when they convene,

What spell was him and the breeks between:

For frae that day forth he was nae mair seen,

And sair missed was Aiken-drum!

The only account which I have been able to find of a Welsh counterpart

will be found in Bwca'r Trwyn, in chapter x: he differs in some

important respects from the fenodyree and the brownie.

5. A twig of the rowan tree, or wicken, as it is called, was effective

against all evil things, including witches. It is useful in many ways

to guard the welfare of the household, and to preserve both the live

stock and the crops, while placed on the churn it prevents any malign

influence from retarding the coming of the butter. I may remark that

Celts and Teutons seem to have been generally pretty well agreed

as to the virtues of the rowan tree. Bits of iron also are lucky

against witches.

6. Fairies are rare, but witches and wizards abound, and some of them

have been supposed to change themselves into dogs to worry sheep and

cattle, or into toads to poison the swine's troughs. But they do not

seem to change themselves into hares, as in Man and other Celtic lands.

7. Witchcraft, says Miss Peacock, is often hereditary, passing most

frequently from mother to daughter; but when a witch has no daughter

her power may appear in a son, and then revert to the female line. This

appears far more natural than the Manx belief in its passing from

father to daughter and from daughter to son. But another kind of

succession is mentioned in the Welsh Triads, i. 32, ii. 20, iii. 90,

which speak of Math ab Mathonwy teaching his magic to Gwydion,

who as his sister's son was to succeed him in his kingdom; and of a

certain Rhudlwm Dwarf teaching his magic to Coll, son of Collfrewi,

his nephew. Both instances seem to point to a state of society which

did not reckon paternity but only birth.

8. Only three years previous to Miss Peacock's writing an old man died,

she says, who had seen blood drawn from a witch because she had, as

was supposed, laid a spell on a team of horses: as soon as she was

struck so as to bleed the horses and their load were free to go on

their way again. Possibly no equally late instance could be specified

in the Isle of Man: see p. 296 above.

9. Traces of animal sacrifice may still be found in Lincolnshire,

for the heart of a small beast, or of a bird, is necessary, Miss

Peacock says, for the efficient performance of several counter-charms,

especially in torturing a witch by the reversal of her spells, and

warding off evil from houses or other buildings. Apparently Miss

Peacock has not heard of so considerable a victim as a sheep or a

calf being sacrificed, as in the Isle of Man, but the objects of the

sacrifices may be said to be the same.

10. Several pin and rag wells are said to exist in Lincolnshire,

their waters being supposed to possess healing virtues, especially

as regards eye ailments.

11. Love-spells and prognostications are mentioned, some of them as

belonging to Allhallows, as they do partly in the Isle of Man: she

mentions the making of dumb cake, and the eating of the salt herring,

followed by dreams of the future husband bringing the thirsting

lass drink in a jug, the quality of which indicates the bearer's

position in life. But other Lincolnshire practices of the kind seem

to oscillate between Allhallows and St. Mark's Eve, while gravitating

decidedly towards the latter date. Here it is preferable to give Miss

Peacock's own words:--'Professor Rhys' mention of the footmark in the

ashes reminds me of a love-spell current in the Wapentake of Manley in

North Lincolnshire. Properly speaking, it should be put in practice

on St. Mark's E'en, that eerie spring-tide festival when those who

are skilled may watch the church porch and learn who will die in the

ensuing twelvemonth; but there is little doubt that the charm is also

used at Hallow E'en, and at other suitable seasons of the year. The

spell consists in riddling ashes on the hearthstone, or beans on the

floor of the barn, with proper ceremonies and at the proper time,

with the result that the girl who works her incantation correctly

finds the footprint of the man she is to marry clearly marked on the

sifted mass the following morning. It is to be supposed that the spirit

of the lover is responsible for the mark, as, according to another

folk-belief, any girl who watches her supper on St. Mark's E'en will

see the spirit of the man she will wed come into the room at midnight

to partake of the food provided. The room must be one with the door

and windows in different walls, and both must be open. The spirit

comes in by the door (and goes out by the window?). Each girl who

undertakes to keep watch must have a separate supper and a separate

candle, and all talking is to end before the clock goes twelve,

for there must not be any speaking before the spirits. From these

superstitions, and from the generally received idea that the spirits

of all the parishioners are to be observed entering the church on

St. Mark's E'en, it may be inferred that the Manx footprint is made

by the wraith of the person doomed to death.' Compare pp. 318-9 above.

What Miss Peacock alludes to as watching the church porch was formerly

well known in Wales [147], and may be illustrated from a district so

far east as the Golden Valley, in Herefordshire, by the following

story told me in 1892 by Mrs. Powell of Dorstone, on the strength

of what she had learnt from her mother-in-law, the late Mrs. Powell,

who was a native of that parish:--

'On Allhallows Eve at midnight, those who are bold enough to look

through the church windows will see the building lighted with an

unearthly light, and the pulpit occupied by his Satanic majesty clothed

in a monk's habit. Dreadful anathemas are the burden of his preaching,

and the names of those who in the coming year are to render up their

souls may be heard by those who have courage to listen. A notorious

evil liver, Jack of France, once by chance passed the church at this

awful moment: looking in he saw the lights and heard the voice, and

his own name in the horrid list; and, according to some versions of

the story, he went home to die of fright. Others say that he repented

and died in good repute, and so cheated the evil one of his prey.'

I have no list of places in Wales and its marches which have this

sort of superstition associated with them, but it is my impression

that they are mostly referred to Allhallows, as at Dorstone, and that

where that is not the case they have been shifted to the beginning

of the year as at present reckoned; for in Celtic lands, at least,

they seem to have belonged to what was reckoned the beginning of the

year. The old Celtic year undoubtedly began at Allhallows, and the day

next in importance after the Calends of Winter (in Welsh Calangáeaf)

was, among the Celts, the beginning of the summer half of the year,

or the Calends of May (in Welsh Calánmai), which St. Mark's Eve

approaches too nearly for us to regard it as accidental. With this

modified agreement between the Lincolnshire date and the Celtic one

contrast the irreconcilable English date of St. John's Eve; and see

Tylor's Primitive Culture, i. 440, where one reads as follows of 'the

well-known superstition,' 'that fasting watchers on St. John's Eve

may see the apparitions of those doomed to die during the year come

with the clergyman to the church door and knock; these apparitions

are spirits who come forth from their bodies, for the minister has

been noticed to be much troubled in his sleep while his phantom was

thus engaged, and when one of a party of watchers fell into a sound

sleep and could not be roused, the others saw his apparition knock

at the church door.' With an unerring instinct for the intelligent

colligation of facts, Miss Peacock finds the nearest approach to the

yearly review of the moritures, if I may briefly so call them, in the

wraith's footprint in the ashes. Perhaps a more systematic examination

of Manx folklore may result in the discovery of a more exact parallel.

For want of knowing where else to put it, I may mention here in

reference to the dead, a passage which has been copied for me by

my friend Mr. Gwenogvryn Evans, from Manuscript 163 in the Peniarth

Collection. I understand it to be of the earlier part of the sixteenth

century, and p. 10 has the following passage:--

Yn yr ynys honn [Manaw] y kair gweled liw dyd bobyl a vvessynt veirw /

Rrai gwedi tori penav / eraill gwedi torri i haelode / Ac os dieithred

a dissyfynt i gweled hwynt / Sengi ar draed gwyr or tir ac velly

hwynt a gaent weled yr hyn a welssynt hwyntav.

'In this island [Man] one beholds in the light of day people who have

died, some with their heads cut off and others with their limbs cut

off. And if strangers desire to see them, they have to stand on the

feet of the natives of the land, and in that way they would see what

the latter had seen.'

A similar instance of the virtue of standing on the feet of another

person has been mentioned in reference to the farmer of Deunant, at

p. 230 above; the foot, however, on which he had to stand in order

to get a glimpse of the fairy world, was a fairy's own foot.

Lastly, the passage in the Peniarth Manuscript has something more to

say of the Isle of Man, as follows:--

Mawr oed arfer o swynion a chyvaredion gynt yn yr ynys honn / Kanys

gwraged a vydynt yno yn gwnevthvr gwynt i longwyr gwedir gav mewn tri

chwlm o edav aphan vai eissie gwynt arnynt dattod kwlm or edav anaynt.

'Great was the practice formerly of spells and sorceries in this

island; for there used to be there women making wind for sailors,

which wind they confined within three knots made on a thread. And

when they had need of wind they would undo a knot of the thread.'

This was written in the sixteenth century, and based probably

on Higden's Polychronicon, book I, chap. xliv. (= I. 42-3), but

the same practice of wind making goes on to this day, one of the

principal practitioners being the woman to whom reference was made

at p. 299. She is said to tie the breezes in so many knots which

she makes on the purchasing sailor's pocket-handkerchief. This

reminds one of the sibyl of Warinsey, or the Island of Guernsey,

who is represented by an ancient Norse poet as 'fashioning false

prophecies.' See Vigfusson and Powell's Corpus Poeticum Boreale,

i. 136; also Mela's first-century account of the virgins of the island

of Sena, which runs to the following effect:--'Sena, in the Britannic

Sea, opposite the coast of the Osismi, is famous for its oracle of a

Gaulish god, whose priestesses, living in the holiness of perpetual

virginity, are said to be nine in number. They call them Gallizenæ,

and they believe them to be endowed with extraordinary gifts to rouse

the sea and the wind by their incantations, to turn themselves into

whatsoever animal form they may choose, to cure diseases which among

others are incurable, to know what is to come and to foretell it. They

are, however, devoted to the service of voyagers only who have set out

on no other errand than to consult them [148].' It is probable that

the sacrosanct [149] inhabitants of the small islands on the coasts of

Gaul and Britain had wellnigh a monopoly of the traffic in wind [150].

In the last chapter I made allusion to several wells of greater or less

celebrity in the Isle of Man; but I find that I have a few remarks to

add. Mr. Arthur Moore, in his book on Manx Surnames and Place-Names,

p. 200, mentions a Chibber Unjin, which means the Well of the Ash-tree,

and he states that there grew near it 'formerly a sacred ash-tree,

where votive offerings were hung.' The ash-tree calls to his mind

Scandinavian legends respecting the ash, but in any case one may

suppose the ash was not the usual tree to expect by a well in the Isle

of Man, otherwise this one would scarcely have been distinguished as

the Ash-tree Well. The tree to expect by a sacred well is doubtless

some kind of thorn, as in the case of Chibber Undin in the parish of

Malew. The name means Foundation Well, so called in reference probably

to the foundations of an ancient cell, or keeill as it is called in

Manx, which lie close by, and are found to measure twenty-one feet

long by twelve feet broad. The following is Mr. Moore's account of

the well in his book already cited, p. 181:--'The water of this well

is supposed to have curative properties. The patients who came to it,

took a mouthful of water, retaining it in their mouths till they had

twice walked round the well. They then took a piece of cloth from a

garment which they had worn, wetted it with the water from the well,

and hung it on the hawthorn tree which grew there. When the cloth

had rotted away, the cure was supposed to be effected.'

I visited the spot a few years ago in the company of the

Rev. E. B. Savage of St. Thomas' Parsonage, Douglas, and we found

the well nearly dried up in consequence of the drainage of the field

around it; but the remains of the old cell were there, and the thorn

bush had strips of cloth or calico tied to its branches. We cut off

one, which is now in the Pitt-Rivers Museum at Oxford. The account

Mr. Savage had of the ritual observed at the well differed a little

from that given by Mr. Moore, especially in the fact that it made the

patient who had been walking round the well with water from the well

in his mouth, empty that water finally into a rag from his clothing:

the rag was then tied to a branch of the thorn. It does not appear that

the kind of tree mattered much; nay, a tree is not, it seems to me,

essential. At any rate, St. Maughold's Well has no tree growing near

it now; but it is right to say, that when Mr. Kermode and I visited

it, we could find no rags left near the spot, nor indeed could we

expect to find any, as there was nothing to which they might be tied

on that windy headland. The absence of the tree does not, however,

prove that the same sort of ritual was not formerly observed at

St. Maughold's Well as at Chibber Undin; and here I must mention

another well which I have visited in the island more than once. It

is on the side of Bradda Hill, a little above the village of Bradda,

and in the direction of Fleshwick: I was attracted to it by the fact

that it had, as I had been told by Mr. Savage, formerly an old cell

or keeill near it, and the name of the saint to which it belonged may

probably be gathered from the name of the well, which, in the Manx of

the south of the island, is Chibbyrt Valtane, pronounced approximately

Chuvurt Voltáne or Oldáne. The personal name would be written in

modern Manx in its radical form as Boltane, and if it occurred in

the genitive in Ogam inscriptions I should expect to find it written

Boltagni or Baltagni [151]. It is, however, unknown to me, though to

be placed possibly by the side of the name of the saint after whom the

parish of Santon is called in the south-east of the island. This is

pronounced in Manx approximately [152] Santane or Sandane, and would

have yielded an early inscriptional nominative SANCTANVS, which,

in fact, occurs on an old stone near Llandudno on the Welsh coast:

see some notes of mine in point in the Archæologia Cambrensis, 1897,

pp. 140-2. To return to the well, it would seem to have been associated

with an old cell, but it has no tree growing by. Mr. Savage and I were

told, nevertheless, that a boy who had searched the well a short time

previously had got some coins out of it, quite recent ones, consisting

of halfpennies or pennies, so far as I remember. On my observing to

one of the neighbours that I saw no rags there, I was assured that

there had been some; and, on my further saying that I saw no tree

there to which they could be tied, I was told that they used to be

attached to the brambles, which grew there in great abundance. Thus

it appears that, in the Isle of Man at any rate, a tree to bear the

rags was not an essential adjunct of a holy well.

Before leaving these well superstitions the reader may wish to know

how they were understood in Ireland not long ago: so I venture to

quote a passage from a letter by the late Mr. W. C. Borlase on Rag

Offerings and Primitive Pilgrimages in Ireland, as follows:--

'Among the MSS. of the late Mr. Windele, of Cork, ... I find a passage

which cannot fail to interest students of folk-lore. It relates to the

custom of affixing shreds of rag to the hawthorn tree, which almost

invariably stands by the brink of the typical Irish "holy well," and

it gives us the meaning of the custom as understood, some half-century

since, by the inhabitants of certain localities in the province of

Munster. The idea is, says the writer, that the putting up these rags

is a putting away of the evils impending or incurred by sin, an act

accompanied by the following ritual words: Air impide an Tiarna mo

chuid teinis do fhagaint air an ait so; i. e. By the intercession of

the Lord I leave my portion of illness on this place. These words, he

adds, should be uttered by whoever performs the round, and they are,

no doubt, of extreme antiquity. Mr. Windele doubtless took down the

words as he heard them locally pronounced, though, to be correct, for

Tiarna should be read Tigerna; for teinis, tinneas; and for fhagaint,

fhagaim [153].'

From the less known saints Boltane and Santane I wish to pass to the

mention of a more famous one, namely, St. Catherine, and this because

of a fair called after her, and held on the sixth day of December at

the village of Colby in the south of the island. When I heard of this

fair in 1888, it was in temporary abeyance on account of a lawsuit

respecting the plot of ground on which the fair is wont to be held;

but I was told that it usually begins with a procession, in which a

live hen is carried about: this is called St. Catherine's hen. The next

day the hen is carried about dead and plucked, and a rhyme pronounced

at a certain point in the proceedings contemplates the burial of the

hen, but whether that ever takes place I know not. It runs thus:--

Kiark Catrina marroo:

Gows yn kione as goyms ny cassyn,

As ver mayd ee fo'n thalloo.

Catherine's hen is dead:

The head take thou and I the feet,

We shall put her under the ground.

A man who is found to be not wholly sober after the fair is locally

said to have plucked a feather from the hen (T'eh er goaill fedjag

ass y chiark); so it would seem that there must be such a scramble to

get at the hen, and to take part in the plucking, that it requires

a certain amount of drink to allay the thirst of the over zealous

devotees of St. Catherine. But why should this ceremony be associated

with St. Catherine? and what were the origin and meaning of it? These

are questions on which I should be glad to have light shed.

Manx has a word quaail (Irish comhdháil), meaning a 'meeting,' and

from it we have a derivative quaaltagh or qualtagh, meaning, according

to Kelly's Dictionary, 'the first person or creature one meets going

from home,' whereby the author can have only meant the first met by

one who is going from home. Kelly goes on to add that 'this person is

of great consequence to the superstitious, particularly to women the

first time they go out after lying-in.' Cregeen, in his Dictionary,

defines the qualtagh as 'the first person met on New Year's Day,

or on going on some new work, &c.' Before proceeding to give the

substance of my notes on the qualtagh of the present day I may as

well finish with Cregeen, for he adds the following information:--'A

company of young lads or men generally went in old times on what they

termed the qualtagh, at Christmas or New Year's Day, to the houses

of their more wealthy neighbours; some one of the company repeating

in an audible voice the following rhyme:--

Ollick ghennal erriu as bleïn feer vie,

Seihll as slaynt da'n slane lught thie;

Bea as gennallys en bio ry-cheilley,

Shee as graih eddyr mrane as deiney;

Cooid as cowryn, stock as stoyr,

Palchey phuddase, as skaddan dy-liooar,

Arran as caashey, eeym as roayrt;

Baase, myr lugh, ayns uhllin ny soalt;

Cadley sauchey tra vees shiu ny lhie,

As feeackle y jargan, nagh bee dy mie.'

It may be loosely translated as follows:--

A merry Christmas, a happy new year,

Long life and health to all the household here.

Food and mirth to you dwelling together,

Peace and love to all, men and women;

Wealth and distinction, stock and store,

Potatoes enough, and herrings galore;

Bread and cheese, butter and gravy;

Die like a mouse in a barn or haggard;

In safety sleep while you lie to rest,

And by the flea's tooth be not distressed.

At present New Year's Day is the time when the qualtagh is of general

interest, and in this case he is, outside the members of one's own

household, practically the first person one sees on the morning of

that day, whether that person meets one out of doors or comes to

one's house. The following is what I have learnt by inquiry as to

the qualtagh: all are agreed that he must not be a woman or girl,

and that he must not be spaagagh or splay footed, while a woman from

the parish of Marown told me that he must not have red hair. The

prevalent belief, however, is that he should be a dark haired man

or boy, and it is of no consequence how rough his appearance may be,

provided he be black haired. However, I was told by one man in Rushen

that the qualtagh or 'first-foot' need not be a black haired person:

he must be a man or boy. But this less restricted view is not the one

held in the central and northern parts of the island, so far as I could

ascertain. An English lady living in the neighbourhood of Castletown

told me that her son, whom I know to be, like his mother, a blond,

not being aware what consequences might be associated with his visit,

called at a house in Castletown on the morning of New Year's Day, and

he chanced to be the qualtagh. The mistress of the house was horrified,

and expressed to the English lady her anticipation of misfortunes; and

as it happened that one of the children of the house died in the course

of the year, the English lady has been reminded of it since. Naturally

the association of these events are not pleasant to her; but, so far

as I can remember, they date only some eight or nine years ago [154].

By way of bringing Wales into comparison with Man, I may mention

that, when I was a very small boy, I used to be sent very early on

New Year's morning to call on an old uncle of mine, because, as I

was told, I should be certain to receive a calennig or a calends'

gift from him, but on no account would my sister be allowed to go,

as he would only see a boy on such an occasion as that. I do not

recollect anything being said as to the colour of one's hair or the

shape of one's foot; but that sort of negative evidence is of very

little value, as the qualtagh was fast passing out of consideration.

The preference here given to a boy over a girl looks like one of the

widely spread superstitions which rule against the fair sex; but, as

to the colour of the hair, I should be predisposed to think that it

possibly rests on racial antipathy, long ago forgotten; for it might

perhaps be regarded as going back to a time when the dark haired

race reckoned the Aryan of fair complexion as his natural enemy,

the very sight of whom brought with it thoughts calculated to make

him unhappy and despondent. If this idea proved to be approximately

correct, one might suggest that the racial distinction in question

referred to the struggles between the inhabitants of Man and their

Scandinavian conquerors; but to my thinking it is just as likely that

it goes much further back.

Lastly, what is one to say with regard to the spaagagh or splay footed

person, now more usually defined as flat footed or having no instep? I

have heard it said in the south of the island that it is unlucky to

meet a spaagagh in the morning at any time of the year, and not on New

Year's Day alone; but this does not help us in the attempt to find

the genesis of this belief. If it were said that it was unlucky to

meet a deformed person, it would look somewhat more natural; but why

fix on the flat footed especially? For my part I have not been trained

to distinguish flat footed people, so I do not recollect noticing any

in the Isle of Man; but, granting there may be a small proportion of

such people in the island, does it not seem strange that they should

have their importance so magnified as this superstition would seem

to imply? I must confess that I cannot understand it, unless we have

here also some supposed racial characteristic, let us say greatly

exaggerated. To explain myself I should put it that the non-Aryan

aborigines were a small people of great agility and nimbleness, and

that their Aryan conquerors moved more slowly and deliberately, whence

the former, of springier movements, might come to nickname the latter

the flat footed. It is even conceivable that there was some amount of

foundation for it in fact. If I might speak from my own experience,

I might mention a difficulty I have often had with shoes of English

make, namely, that I have always found them, unless made to measure,

apt to have their instep too low for me. It has never occurred to me to

buy ready-made shoes in France or Germany, but I know a lady as Welsh

as I am, who has often bought shoes in France, and her experience is,

that it is much easier for her to get shoes there to fit her than

in England, and for the very reason which I have already suggested,

namely, that the instep in English shoes is lower than in French ones.

Again, I may mention that one day last term [155], having to address a

meeting of Welsh undergraduates on folklore, I ventured to introduce

this question. They agreed with me that English shoes did not,

as a rule, fit Welsh feet, and this because they are made too low

in the instep: I ought to have said that they all agreed except one

undergraduate, who held his peace. He is a tall man, powerful in the

football field, but of no dark complexion, and I have never dared

to look in the direction of his feet since, lest he should catch

me carrying my comparisons to cruel extremes. Perhaps the flatness

of the feet of the one race is not emphasized so much as the height

of the instep in those of the other. At any rate I find this way of

looking at the question somewhat countenanced by a journalist who

refers his readers to Wm. Henderson's notes on the Folklore of the

Northern Counties, p. 74. The passage relates more particularly to

Northumberland, and runs as follows:--'In some districts, however,

special weight is attached to the "first-foot" being that of a

person with a high-arched instep, a foot that "water runs under." A

flat-footed person would bring great ill-luck for the coming year.'

These instances do not warrant the induction that Celts are higher

in the instep than Teutons, and that they have inherited that

characteristic from the non-Aryan element in their ancestry. Perhaps

the explanation is, at least in part, that the dwellers in hilly

regions tend to be more springy and to have higher insteps than

the inhabitants of flatter lands. The statement of Dr. Karl Blind

on this point does not help one to a decision when he speaks as

follows in Folk-Lore for 1892, p. 89:--'As to the instep, I can speak

from personal experience. Almost every German finds that an English

shoemaker makes his boots not high enough in the instep. The northern

Germans (I am from the south) have perhaps slightly flatter feet than

the southern Germans.' The first part of the comparison is somewhat

of a surprise to me, but not so the other part, that the southern

Germans inhabiting a hillier country, and belonging to a different

race, may well be higher in the instep than the more northern speakers

of the German language. But on the whole the more one examines the

qualtagh, the less clearly one sees how he can be the representative

of a particular race. More data possibly would enable one to arrive

at greater probability.

There is one other question which I should like to ask before leaving

the qualtagh, namely, as to the relation of the custom of New Year's

gifts to the belief in the qualtagh. I have heard it related in

the Isle of Man that women have been known to keep indoors on New

Year's Day until the qualtagh comes, which sometimes means their being

prisoners for the greater part of the day, in order to avoid the risk

of first meeting one who is not of the right sex and complexion. On the

other hand, when the qualtagh is of the right description, considerable

fuss is made of him; to say the least, he has to accept food and drink,

possibly more permanent gifts. Thus a tall, black haired native of

Kirk Michael described to me how he chanced on New Year's Day, years

ago, to turn into a lonely cottage in order to light his pipe, and

how he found he was the qualtagh: he had to sit down to have food,

and when he went away it was with a present and the blessings of

the family. Now New Year's Day is the time for gifts in Wales, as

shown by the name for them, calennig, which is derived from calan,

the Welsh form of the Latin calendæ, New Year's Day being in Welsh

Y Calan, 'the Calends.' The same is the day for gifts in Scotland

and in Ireland, except in so far as Christmas boxes have been making

inroads from England: I need not add that the Jour de l'An is the

day for gifts also in France. My question then is this: Is there any

essential connexion of origin between the institution of New Year's

Day gifts and the belief in the first-foot?

Now that it has been indicated what sort of a qualtagh it is unlucky

to have, I may as well proceed to mention the other things which I

have heard treated as unlucky in the island. Some of them scarcely

require to be noticed, as there is nothing specially Manx about them,

such as the belief that it is unlucky to have the first glimpse of the

new moon through glass. That is a superstition which is, I believe,

widely spread, and, among other countries, it is quite familiar in

Wales, where it is also unlucky to see the moon for the first time

through a hedge or over a house. What this means I cannot guess,

unless it be that it was once considered one's duty to watch the first

appearance of the new moon from the highest point in the landscape

of the district in which one dwelt. Such a point would in that case

become the chief centre of a moon worship now lost in oblivion.

It is believed in Man, as it used to be in Wales and Ireland, that

it is unlucky to disturb antiquities, especially old burial places

and old churches. This superstition is unfortunately passing away

in all three countries, but you still hear of it, especially in the

Isle of Man, mostly after mischief has been done. Thus a good Manx

scholar told me how a relative of his in the Ronnag, a small valley

near South Barrule, had carted away the earth from an old burial

ground on his farm and used it as manure for his fields, and how his

beasts died afterwards. The narrator said he did not know whether

there was any truth in it, but everybody believed that it was the

reason why the cattle died; and so did the farmer himself at last:

so he desisted from completing his disturbance of the old site. It

is possibly for a similar reason that a house in ruins is seldom

pulled down, or the materials used for other buildings. Where that has

been done misfortunes have ensued; at any rate, I have heard it said

so more than once. I ought to have stated that the non-disturbance

of antiquities in the island is quite consistent with their being

now and then shamefully neglected as elsewhere. This is now met by

an excellent statute recently enacted by the House of Keys for the

preservation of the public monuments of the island.

Of the other and more purely Manx superstitions I may mention

one which obtains among the Peel fishermen of the present day:

no boat is willing to be third in the order of sailing out from

Peel harbour to the fisheries. So it sometimes happens that after

two boats have departed, the others remain watching each other for

days, each hoping that somebody else may be reckless enough to break

through the invisible barrier of 'bad luck.' I have often asked for

an explanation of this superstition, but the only intelligible answer

I have had was that it has been observed that the third boat has done

badly several years in succession; but I am unable to ascertain how

far that represents the fact. Another of the unlucky things is to

have a white stone in the boat, even in the ballast, and for that I

never could get any explanation at all; but there is no doubt as to

the fact of this superstition, and I may illustrate it from the case

of a clergyman's son on the west side, who took it into his head to

go out with some fishermen several days in succession. They chanced

to be unsuccessful each time, and they gave their Jonah the nickname

of Clagh Vane, or 'White Stone.' Now what can be the origin of this

tabu? It seems to me that if the Manx had once a habit of adorning the

graves of the departed with white stones, that circumstance would be

a reasonable explanation of the superstition in question. Further,

it is quite possible they did, and here Manx archæologists could

probably help as to the matter of fact. In the absence, however,

of information to the point from Man, I take the liberty of citing

some relating to Scotland. It comes from Mr. Gomme's presidential

address to the Folk-Lore Society: see Folk-Lore for 1893, pp. 13-4:--

'Near Inverary, it is the custom among the fisher-folk, and has been

so within the memory of the oldest, to place little white stones or

pebbles on the graves of their friends. No reason is now given for

the practice, beyond that most potent and delightful of all reasons

in the minds of folk-lore students, namely, that it has always been

done. Now there is nothing between this modern practice sanctioned

by traditional observance and the practice of the stone-age people

in the same neighbourhood and in others, as made known to us by their

grave-relics. Thus, in a cairn at Achnacrie opened by Dr. Angus Smith,

on entering the innermost chamber "the first thing that struck the eye

was a row of quartz pebbles larger than a walnut; these were arranged

on the ledge of the lower granite block of the east side." Near Crinan,

at Duncraigaig and at Rudie, the same characteristic was observed,

and Canon Greenwell, who examined the cairns, says the pebbles "must

have been placed there with some intention, and probably possessed a

symbolic meaning."' See also Burghead, by Mr. H. W. Young (Inverness,

1899), p. 10, where we read that at Burghead the 'smooth white pebbles,

sometimes five or seven of them, but never more,' have been usually

arranged as crosses on the graves which he has found under the fallen

ramparts. Can this be a Christian superstition with the white stones

of the Apocalypse as its foundation?

Here I may mention a fact which I do not know where else to put,

namely, that a fisherman on his way in the morning to the fishing,

and chancing to pass by the cottage of another fisherman who is not

on friendly terms with him, will pluck a straw from the thatch of the

latter's dwelling. Thereby he is supposed to rob him of his luck in the

fishing for that day. One would expect to learn that the straw from

the thatch served as the subject of an incantation directed against

the owner of the thatch. I have never heard anything suggested to

that effect; but I conclude that the plucking of the straw is only

a partial survival of what was once a complete ritual for bewitching

one's neighbour, unless getting possession of the straw was supposed

to carry with it possession of everything belonging to the other man,

including his luck in fishing for that day.

Owing to my ignorance as to the superstitions of other fishermen than

those of the Isle of Man, I will not attempt to classify the remaining

instances to be mentioned, such as the unluckiness of mentioning a

horse or a mouse on board a fishing-boat: I seem, however, to have

heard of similar tabus among Scottish fishermen; and, according to

Dr. Blind, Shetland fishermen will not mention a church or a clergyman

when out at sea, but use quite other names for both when on board a

ship (Folk-Lore for 1892, p. 89). Novices in the Manx fisheries have

to learn not to point to anything with one finger: they have to point

with the whole hand or not at all. This looks as if it belonged to a

code of rules as to the use of the hand, such as prevail among the

Neapolitans and other peoples whose chief article of faith is the

belief in malign influences: see Mr. Elworthy's volume on The Evil Eye.

Whether the Manx are alone in thinking it unlucky to lend salt from one

boat to another when they are engaged in the fishing, I know not: such

lending would probably be inconvenient, but why it should be unlucky,

as they believe it to be, does not appear. The first of May is a day

on which it is unlucky to lend anything, and especially to give anyone

fire [156]. This looks as if it pointed back to some druidic custom of

lighting all fires at that time from a sacred hearth, but, so far as is

known, this only took place at the beginning of the other half-year,

namely, Sauin or Allhallows, which is sometimes rendered into Manx as

Laa 'll mooar ny Saintsh, 'the Day of the great Feast of the Saints.'

Lastly, I may mention that it is unlucky to say that you are very well:

at any rate, I infer that it is regarded so, as you will never get a

Manxman to say that he is feer vie, 'very well.' He usually admits that

he is 'middling'; and if by any chance he risks a stronger adjective,

he hastens to qualify it by adding 'now,' or 'just now,' with an

emphasis indicative of his anxiety not to say too much. His habits

of speech point back to a time when the Manx mind was dominated by

the fear of awaking malignant influences in the spirit world around

him. This has had the effect of giving the Manx peasant's character

a tinge of reserve and suspicion, which makes it difficult to gain

his confidence: his acquaintance has, therefore, to be cultivated

for some time before you can say that you know the workings of his

heart. The pagan belief in a Nemesis has doubtless passed away, but not

without materially affecting the Manx idea of a personal devil. Ever

since the first allusion made in my hearing by Manxmen to the devil,

I have been more and more deeply impressed that for them the devil

is a much more formidable being than Englishmen or Welshmen picture

him. He is a graver and, if I may say so, a more respectable being,

allowing no liberties to be taken with his name, so you had better

not call him a devil, the evil one, or like names, for his proper

designation is Noid ny Hanmey, 'the Enemy of the Soul,' and in ordinary

Anglo-Manx conversation he is commonly called 'the Enemy of Souls.' I

well remember getting one day into a conversation with an old soldier

in the south of the island. He was, as I soon discovered, labouring

under a sort of theological monomania, and his chief question was

concerning the Welsh word for 'the Enemy of Souls.' I felt at once

that I had to be careful, and that the reputation of my countrymen

depended on how I answered. As I had no name anything like the one he

used for the devil, I explained to him that the Welsh, though not a

great nation, were great students of theology, and that they had by

no means neglected the great branch of it known as satanology. In

fact that study, as I went on to say, had left its impress on the

Welsh language: on Sunday the ministers of all denominations, the

deacons and elders, and all self-respecting congregations spoke of the

devil trisyllabically as diafol, while on the other days of the week

everybody called him more briefly and forcibly diawl, except bards

concocting an awdl for an Eistedfod, where the devil must always be

called diafl, and excepting also sailors, farm servants, post-boys and

colliers, together with country gentlemen learning Welsh to address

their wouldn't-be constituents--for all these the regulation form

was jawl, with an English j. Thus one could, I pointed out to him,

fix the social standing of a Welshman by the way he named 'the Enemy

of Souls,' as well as appreciate the superiority of Welsh over Greek,

seeing that Welsh, when it borrowed diabolos from Greek, quadrupled

it, while Greek remained sterile. He was so profoundly impressed

that I never was able to bring his attention back to the small fry,

spiritually speaking, of the Isle of Man, to wit, the fairies and

the fenodyree, or even the witches and the charmers, except that he

had some reserve of faith in witches, since the witch of Endor was in

the Bible and had ascribed to her a 'terr'ble' great power of raising

spirits: that, he thought, must be true. I pointed out to him that a

fenodyree (see p. 288) was also mentioned in his Bible: this display

of ready knowledge on my part made a deep impression on his mind.

The Manx are, as a rule, a sober people, and highly religious;

as regards their tenets, they are mostly members of the Church

of England or Wesleyan Methodists, or else both, which is by no

means unusual. Religious phrases are not rare in their ordinary

conversation; in fact, they struck me as being of more frequent

occurrence than in Wales, even the Wales of my boyhood; and here and

there this fondness for religious phraseology has left its traces

on the native vocabulary. Take, for example, the word for 'anybody,

a person, or human being,' which Cregeen writes py'agh or p'agh:

he rightly regards it as the colloquial pronunciation of peccagh,

'a sinner.' So, when one knocks at a Manx door and calls out, Vel

p'agh sthie? he literally asks, 'Is there any sinner indoors?' The

question has, however, been explained to me, with unconscious irony,

as properly meaning, 'Is there any Christian indoors?' and care

is now taken in reading to pronounce the middle consonants of the

word peccagh, 'sinner,' so as to distinguish it from the word for a

Christian 'anybody': but the identity of origin is unmistakable.

Lastly, the fact that a curse is a species of prayer, to wit, a prayer

for evil to follow, is well exemplified in Manx by the same words,

gwee [157], plural gwecaghyn, meaning both kinds of prayer. Thus I

found myself stumbling several times, in reading through the Psalms in

Manx, from not bearing in mind the sinister meaning of these words;

for example in Psalm xiv. 6, where we have Ta 'n beeal oc lane dy

ghweeaghyn as dy herriuid, which I mechanically construed to mean

'Their mouth is full of praying and bitterness,' instead of 'cursing

and bitterness'; and so in other cases, such as Ps. x. 7, and cix. 27.

It occurred to me on various occasions to make inquiries as to the

attitude of religious Manxmen towards witchcraft and the charmer's

vocation. Nobody, so far as I know, accuses them of favouring

witchcraft in any way whatsoever; but as to the reality of witches

and witchcraft they are not likely to have any doubts so long as they

dwell on the Biblical account of the witch of Endor, as I have already

mentioned in the case of the old Crimean soldier. Then as to charmers

I have heard it distinctly stated that the most religious men are

they who have most confidence in charmers and their charms; and a lay

preacher whom I know has been mentioned to me as now and then doing

a little charming in cases of danger or pressing need. On the whole,

I think the charge against religious people of consulting charmers is

somewhat exaggerated; but I believe that recourse to the charmer is

more usual and more openly had than, for example, in Wales, where those

who consult a dyn hyspys or 'wise man' have to do it secretly, and at

the risk of being expelled by their co-religionists from the Seiet or

'Society.' There is somewhat in the atmosphere of Man to remind one

rather of the Wales of a past generation--Wales as it was at the time

when the Rev. Edmund Jones could write a Relation of Apparitions of

Spirits in the County of Monmouth and the Principality of Wales, as

a book 'designed to confute and to prevent the infidelity of denying

the being and apparition of spirits, which tends to irreligion and

atheism': see pp. 174, 195 above.

The Manx peasantry are perhaps the most independent and prosperous in

the British Isles; but their position geographically and politically

has been favourable to the continuance of ideas not quite up to the

level of the latest papers on Darwinism and Evolution read at our

Church Congresses in this country. This may be thought to be here wide

of the mark; but, after giving, in the previous chapter, specimens of

rather ancient superstitions as recently known in the island, it is but

right that one should form an idea of the surroundings in which they

have lingered into modern times. Perhaps nothing will better serve to

bring this home to the reader's mind than the fact, for which there

is proof, that old people still living remember men and women clad

in white sheets doing penance publicly in the churches of Man.

The following is the evidence which I was able to find, and I may state

that I first heard in 1888 of the public penance from Mr. Joughin,

who was an aged man and a native of Kirk Bride. He related how a

girl named Mary Dick gave an impertinent answer to the clergyman

when he was catechizing her class, and how she had to do penance

for it at church. She took her revenge on the parson by singing,

while attending in a white sheet, louder than everybody else in the

congregation. This, unless I am mistaken, Mr. Joughin gave me to

understand he had heard from his father. I mentioned the story to a

clergyman, who was decidedly of opinion that no one alive now could

remember anything about public penance. Not long after, however, I got

into conversation with a shoemaker at Kirk Michael, named Dan Kelly,

who was nearly completing his eighty-first year. He was a native of

Ballaugh, and stated that he remembered many successive occupants of

the episcopal see. A long time ago the official called the sumner had,

out of spite he said, appointed him to serve as one of the four of the

chapter jury. It was, he thought, when he was about twenty-five. During

his term of office he saw four persons, of whom two were married

men and two unmarried women, doing penance in the parish church of

Ballaugh for having illegitimate children. They stood in the alley

of the church, and the sumner had to throw white sheets over them;

on the fourth Sunday of their penance they stood inside the chancel

rails, but not to take the communion. The parson, whose name was

Stowell or Stowall, made them thoroughly ashamed of themselves on the

fourth Sunday, as one of the men afterwards admitted. Kelly mentioned

the names of the women and of one of the men, and he indicated to

me some of their descendants as well known in the neighbourhood. I

cross-examined him all the more severely, as I had heard the other

view of the remoteness of the date. But nothing could shake Kelly,

who added that soon after the date of the above mentioned cases the

civil functionary, known as the vicar-general, put an end to the

chapter jury and to public penance: according to his reckoning the

penance he spoke of must have taken place about 1832. Another old

man, named Kewley, living now near Kirk Michael, but formerly in the

parish of Lezayre, had a similar story. He thinks that he was born

in the sixth year of the century, and when he was between eighteen

and twenty he saw a man doing public penance, in Lezayre Church, I

presume, but I have no decided note on that point. However that may

be, he remembered that the penitent, when he had done his penance,

had the audacity to throw the white sheet over the sumner, who, the

penitent remarked, might now wear it himself, as he had had enough

of it. Kewley would bring the date only down to about 1825.

Lastly, I was in the island again in 1891, and spent the first part of

the month of April at Peel, where I had conversations with a retired

captain who was then about seventy-eight. He is a native of the parish

of Dalby, but he was only 'a lump of a boy' when the last couple of

immorals were forced to do penance in white sheets at church. He gave

me the guilty man's name, and the name of his home in the parish,

and both the captain and his daughter assured me that the man had

only been dead six or seven years; that is, the penitent seems to have

lived till about the year 1884. I may here mention that the parish of

Dalby is the subject of many tales, which go to show that its people

were more old-fashioned in their ways than those of the rest of the

island. It appears to have been the last, also, to be reached by a

cart road; and I was amused by a native's description of the men at

Methodist meetings in Dalby pulling the tappag, or forelock, at the

name of Jesus, while the women ducked a curtsy in a dangerously abrupt

fashion. He and his wife appeared to be quite used to it: the husband

was an octogenarian named Quirc, who was born on the coast near the

low-lying peninsula called the Niarbyl, that is to say 'the Tail.'

To return to the public penance, it seems to us in this country to

belong, so to say, to ancient history, and it transports us to a state

of things which we find it hard to realize. The lapse of years has

brought about profounder changes in our greater Isle of Britain than

in the smaller Isle of Man, while we ourselves, helpless to escape

the pervading influence of those profounder changes, become living

instances of the comprehensive truth of the German poet's words,

Omnia mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis.

CHAPTER VI

THE FOLKLORE OF THE WELLS

... Iuvat integros accedere fontes.--Lucretius.

It is only recently [158] that I heard for the first time of Welsh

instances of the habit of tying rags and bits of clothing to the

branches of a tree growing near a holy well. Since then I have obtained

several items of information in point: the first is a communication

received in June, 1892, from Mr. J. H. Davies, of Lincoln College,

Oxford--since then of Lincoln's Inn--relating to a Glamorganshire holy

well, situated near the pathway leading from Coychurch to Bridgend. It

is the custom there, he states, for people suffering from any malady

to dip a rag in the water, and to bathe the affected part of the

body, the rag being then placed on a tree close to the well. When

Mr. Davies passed that way, some three years previously, there were,

he adds, hundreds of such shreds on the tree, some of which distinctly

presented the appearance of having been very recently placed there. The

well is called Ffynnon Cae Moch, 'Swine-field Well,' which can hardly

have been its old name; and a later communication from Mr. Davies

summarizes a conversation which he had about the well, on December 16,

1892, with Mr. J. T. Howell, of Pencoed, near Bridgend. His notes run

thus:--'Ffynnon Cae Moch, between Coychurch and Bridgend, is one mile

from Coychurch, one and a quarter from Bridgend, near Tremains. It

is within twelve or fifteen yards of the high-road, just where the

pathway begins. 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.' A little less

than a year later, I had an opportunity of visiting this well in the

company of Mr. Brynmor-Jones; and I find in my notes that it is not

situated so near the road as Mr. Howell would seem to have stated to

Mr. Davies. We found the well, which is a powerful spring, surrounded

by a circular wall. It is overshadowed by a dying thorn tree, and

a little further back stands another thorn which is not so decayed:

it was on this latter thorn we found the rags. I took off a twig with

two rags, while Mr. Brynmor-Jones counted over a dozen other rags on

the tree; and we noticed that some of them had only recently been

suspended there: among them were portions undoubtedly of a woman's

clothing. At one of the hotels at Bridgend, I found an illiterate

servant who was acquainted with the well, and I cross-examined him

on the subject of it. He stated that a man with a wound, which he

explained to mean a cut, would go and stand in the well within the

wall, and there he would untie the rag that had been used to tie up

the wound and would wash the wound with it: then he would tie up the

wound with a fresh rag and hang the old one on the tree. The more

respectable people whom I questioned talked more vaguely, and only of

tying a rag to the tree, except one who mentioned a pin being thrown

into the well or a rag being tied to the tree.

My next informant is Mr. D. J. Jones, a native of the Rhonda Valley,

in the same county of Glamorgan. He was an undergraduate of Jesus

College, Oxford, when I consulted him in 1892. His information was to

the effect that he knows of three interesting wells in the county. The

first is situated within two miles of his home, and is known as Ffynnon

Pen Rhys, or the Well of Pen Rhys. The custom there is that the person

who wishes his health to be benefited should wash in the water of the

well, and throw a pin into it afterwards. He next mentions a well at

Llancarvan, some five or six miles from Cowbridge, where the custom

prevails of tying rags to the branches of a tree growing close at

hand. Lastly, he calls my attention to a passage in Hanes Morganwg,

'The History of Glamorgan,' written by Mr. D. W. Jones, known in Welsh

literature as Dafyd Morganwg. In that work, p. 29, the author speaks of

Ffynnon Marcros, 'the Well of Marcros,' to the following effect:--'It

is the custom for those who are healed in it to tie a shred of linen

or cotton to the branches of a tree that stands close by; and there

the shreds are, almost as numerous as the leaves.' Marcros is, I may

say, near Nash Point, and looks on the map as if it were about eight

miles distant from Bridgend. Let me here make it clear that so far

we have had to do with four different wells [159], three of which are

severally distinguished by the presence of a tree adorned with rags by

those who seek health in those waters; but they are all three, as the

reader will have doubtless noticed, in the same district, namely, the

part of Glamorganshire near the main line of the Great Western Railway.

There is no reason, however, to think that the custom of tying rags

to a well tree was peculiar to that part of the Principality. One

day, in looking through some old notes of mine, I came across an

entry bearing the date of August 7, 1887, when I was spending a few

days with my friend, Chancellor Silvan Evans, at Llanwrin Rectory,

near Machynlleth. Mrs. Evans was then alive and well, and took a

keen interest in Welsh antiquities and folklore. Among other things,

she related to me how she had, some twenty years before, visited

a well in the parish of Llandrillo yn Rhos, namely Ffynnon Eilian,

or Elian's Well, between Abergele and Llandudno, when her attention

was directed to some bushes near the well, which had once been covered

with bits of rags left by those who frequented the well. This was told

Mrs. Evans by an old woman of seventy, who, on being questioned by

Mrs. Evans concerning the history of the well, informed her that the

rags used to be tied to the bushes by means of wool. She was explicit

on the point, that wool had to be used for the purpose, and that even

woollen yarn would not do: it had to be wool in its natural state. The

old woman remembered this to have been the rule ever since she was

a child. Mrs. Evans noticed corks, with pins stuck in them, floating

in the well, and her informant remembered many more in years gone by;

for Elian's Well was once in great repute as a ffynnon reibio, or a

well to which people resorted for the kindly purpose of bewitching

those whom they hated. I infer, however, from what Mrs. Evans was

told of the rags, that Elian's Well was visited, not only by the

malicious, but also by the sick and suffering. My note is not clear on

the point whether there were any rags on the bushes by the well when

Mrs. Evans visited the spot, or whether she was only told of them by

the caretaker. Even in the latter case it seems evident that this

habit of tying rags to trees or bushes near sacred wells has only

ceased in that part of Denbighshire within this century. It is very

possible that it continued in North Wales more recently than this

instance would lead one to suppose; indeed, I should not be in the

least surprised to learn that it is still practised in out of the way

places in Gwyned, just as it is in Glamorgan: we want more information.

I cannot say for certain whether it was customary in any of the cases

to which I have called attention to tie rags to the well tree as

well as to throw pins or other small objects into the well; but I

cannot help adhering to the view, that the distinction was probably

an ancient one between two orders of things. In other words, I am

inclined to believe that the rag was regarded as the vehicle of the

disease of which the ailing visitor to the well wished to be rid,

and that the bead, button, or coin deposited by him in the well, or in

a receptacle near the well, formed alone the offering. In opposition

to this view Mr. Gomme has expressed himself as follows in Folk-Lore,

1892, p. 89:--'There is some evidence against that, from the fact that

in the case of some wells, especially in Scotland at one time, the

whole garment was put down as an offering. Gradually these offerings

of clothes became less and less till they came down to rags. Also

in other parts, the geographical distribution of rag-offerings

coincides with the existence of monoliths and dolmens.' As to the

monoliths and dolmens, I am too little conversant with the facts to

risk any opinion as to the value of the coincidence; but as to the

suggestion that the rag originally meant the whole garment, that will

suit my hypothesis admirably. In other words, the whole garment was,

as I take it, the vehicle of the disease: the whole was accursed,

and not merely a part. But Mr. Gomme had previously touched on the

question in his presidential address (Folk-Lore for 1892, p. 13);

and I must at once admit that he succeeded then in proving that a

certain amount of confusion occurs between things which I should

regard as belonging originally to distinct categories: witness the

inimitable Irish instance which he quotes:--'To St. Columbkill--I

offer up this button, a bit o' the waistband o' my own breeches, an'

a taste o' my wife's petticoat, in remimbrance of us havin' made this

holy station; an' may they rise up in glory to prove it for us in the

last day.' Here not only the button is treated as an offering, but also

the bits of clothing; but the confusion of ideas I should explain as

being, at least in part, one of the natural results of substituting a

portion of a garment for the entire garment; for thereby a button or

a pin becomes a part of the dress, and capable of being interpreted

in two senses. After all, however, the ordinary practices have not,

as I look at them, resulted in effacing the distinction altogether:

the rag is not left in the well; nor is the bead, button, or pin

attached to a branch of the tree. So, in the main, it seemed to me

easier to explain the facts, taken altogether, on the supposition that

originally the rag was regarded as the vehicle of the disease, and the

bead, button, or coin as the offering. My object in calling attention

to this point was to have it discussed, and I am happy to say that I

have not been disappointed; for, since my remarks were published [160],

a paper entitled Pin-wells and Rag-bushes was read before the British

Association by Mr. Hartland, in 1893, and published in Folk-Lore

for the same year, pp. 451-70. In that paper the whole question is

gone into with searching logic, and Mr. Hartland finds the required

explanation in one of the dogmas of magic. For 'if an article of my

clothing,' he says, '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 ... 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, or making a pilgrimage to a

sacred well, 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 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--is thenceforth in continual

contact with divinity; and the effluence of divinity, reaching and

involving it, will reach and involve me.' Mr. Hartland concludes from

a large number of instances, that as a rule 'where the pin or button is

dropped into the well, the patient does not trouble about the rag, and

vice versa.' This wider argument as to the effluence of the divinity

of a particular spot of special holiness seems to me conclusive. It

applies also, needless to say, to a large category of cases besides

those in question between Mr. Gomme and the present writer.

So now I would revise my position thus:--I continue to regard the

rag much as before, but treat the article thrown into the well as

the more special means of establishing a beneficial relation with the

well divinity: whether it could also be viewed as an offering would

depend on the value attached to it. Some of the following notes may

serve as illustrations, especially those relating to the wool and

the pin:--Ffynnon Gwynwy, or the Well of Gwynwy, near Llangelynin,

on the river Conwy, appears to be partly in point; for it formerly

used to be well stocked with crooked pins, which nobody would touch

lest he might get from them the warts supposed to attach to them,

whence it would appear that a pin might be regarded as the vehicle

of the disease. There was a well of some repute at Cae Garw, in the

parish of Pistyll, near the foot of Carnguwch, in Lleyn, or West

Carnarvonshire. The water possessed virtues to cure one of rheumatism

and warts; but, in order to be rid of the latter, it was requisite to

throw a pin into the well for each individual wart. For these two items

of information, and several more to be mentioned presently, I have

to thank Mr. John Jones, better known in Wales by his bardic name of

Myrdin Fard, and as an enthusiastic collector of Welsh antiquities,

whether in the form of manuscript or of unwritten folklore. On

the second day of the year 1893 I paid him a visit at Chwilog, on

the Carnarvon and Avon Wen Railway, and asked him many questions:

these he not only answered with the utmost willingness, but he also

showed me the unpublished materials which he had collected. I come

next to a competition on the folklore of North Wales at the London

Eistedfod in 1887, in which, as one of the adjudicators, I observed

that several of the competitors mentioned the prevalent belief, that

every well with healing properties must have its outlet towards the

south (i'r dê). According to one of them, if you wished to get rid of

warts, you should, on your way to the well, look for wool which the

sheep had lost. When you had found enough wool you should prick each

wart with a pin, and then rub the wart well with the wool. The next

thing was to bend the pin and throw it into the well. Then you should

place the wool on the first whitethorn you could find, and as the wind

scattered the wool, the warts would disappear. There was a well of the

kind, the writer went on to say, near his home; and he, with three or

four other boys, went from school one day to the well to charm their

warts away. For he had twenty-three on one of his hands; so that he

always tried to hide it, as it was the belief that if one counted the

warts they would double their number. He forgets what became of the

other boys' warts, but his own disappeared soon afterwards; and his

grandfather used to maintain that it was owing to the virtue of the

well. Such were the words of this writer, whose name is unknown to me;

but I guess him to have been a native of Carnarvonshire, or else of one

of the neighbouring districts of Denbighshire or Merionethshire. To

return to Myrdin Fard, he mentioned Ffynnon Cefn Lleithfan, or the

Well of the Lleithfan Ridge, on the eastern slope of Mynyd y Rhiw,

in the parish of Bryncroes, in the west of Lleyn. In the case of

this well it is necessary, when going to it and coming from it, to be

careful not to utter a word to anybody, or to turn to look back. What

one has to do at the well is to bathe the warts with a rag or clout

which has grease on it. When that is done, the clout with the grease

has to be carefully concealed beneath the stone at the mouth of the

well. This brings to my mind the fact that I noticed more than once,

years ago, 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.

On the subject of pin-wells I had in 1893, from Mr. T. E. Morris,

of Portmadoc, barrister-at-law, some account of Ffynnon Faglan,

or Baglan's Well, in the parish of Llanfaglan, near Carnarvon. The

well is situated in an open field to the right of the road leading

towards the church, and close to it. The church and churchyard form an

enclosure in the middle of the same field, and the former has in its

wall the old stone reading FILI LOVERNII ANATEMORI. My friend derived

information from Mrs. Roberts, of Cefn y Coed, near Carnarvon, as

follows:--'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 of 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 cleaned out about fifty

years ago, when two basinfuls 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. There is a very large and well-known well of

the kind at C'lynnog, Ffynnon Beuno, "St. Beuno's Well," which was

considered to have miraculous healing powers; and even yet, I believe,

some people have faith in it. Ffynnon Faglan is, in its construction,

an imitation, on a smaller scale, of St. Beuno's Well at C'lynnog.'

In the cliffs at the west end of Lleyn is a wishing-well called

Ffynnon Fair, or St. Mary's Well, to the left of the site of Eglwys

Fair, and facing Ynys Enlli, or Bardsey. Here, to obtain your wish,

you have to descend the steps to the well and walk up again to the

top with your mouth full of the water; and then you have to go round

the ruins of the church once or more times with the water still in

your mouth. Viewing the position of the well from the sea, I should

be disposed to think that the realization of one's wish at that price

could not be regarded as altogether cheap. Myrdin Fard also told me

that there used to be a well near Criccieth Church. It was known as

Ffynnon y Saint, or the Saints' Well, and it was the custom to throw

keys or pins into it on the morning of Easter Sunday, in order to

propitiate St. Catherine, who was the patron of the well. I should

be glad to know what this exactly meant.

Lastly, a few of the wells in that part of Gwyned may be grouped

together and described as oracular. One of these, the big well in

the parish of Llanbedrog in Lleyn, as I learn from Myrdin Fard,

required the devotee to kneel by it and avow his faith in it. When

this had been duly done, he might proceed in this wise: to ascertain,

for instance, the name of the thief who had stolen from him, he had

to throw a bit of bread into the well and name the person whom he

suspected. At the name of the thief the bread would sink; so the

inquirer went on naming all the persons he could think of until the

bit of bread sank, when the thief was identified. How far is one to

suppose that we have here traces of the influences of the water ordeal

common in the Middle Ages? Another well of the same kind was Ffynnon

Saethon, in Llanfihangel Bachellaeth parish, also in Lleyn. Here it was

customary, as he had it in writing, for lovers to throw pins (pinnau)

into the well; but these pins appear to have been the points of the

blackthorn. At any rate, they cannot well have been of any kind of

metal, as we are told that, if they sank in the water, one concluded

that one's lover was not sincere in his or her love.

Next may be mentioned a well, bearing the remarkable name of Ffynnon

Gwyned, or the Well of Gwyned, which is situated near Mynyd Mawr,

in the parish of Abererch: it used to be consulted in the following

manner:--When it was desired to discover whether an ailing person would

recover, a garment of his would be thrown into the well, and according

to the side on which it sank it was known whether he would live or die.

Ffynnon Gybi, or St. Cybi's Well, in the parish of Llangybi, was the

scene of a somewhat similar practice; for there, girls who wished to

know their lovers' intentions would spread their pocket-handkerchiefs

on the water of the well, and, if the water pushed the handkerchiefs

to the south--in Welsh i'r dê--they knew that everything was right--in

Welsh o dê--and that their lovers were honest and honourable in their

intentions; but, if the water shifted the handkerchiefs northwards,

they concluded the contrary. A reference to this is made by a modern

Welsh poet, as follows:--

Ambell dyn, gwaeldyn, a gyrch

I bant gorís Moel Bentyrch,

Mewn gobaith mai hen Gybi

Glodfawr syd yn llwydaw'r lli.

Some folks, worthless [161] folks, visit

A hollow below Moel Bentyrch,

In hopes that ancient Kybi

Of noble fame blesses the flood.

The spot is not far from where Myrdin Fard lives; and he mentioned,

that adjoining the well is a building which was probably intended

for the person in charge of the well: it has been tenanted within

his memory. Not only for this but also for several of the foregoing

items of information am I indebted to Myrdin; and now I come to

Mrs. Williams-Ellis, of Glasfryn Uchaf, who tells me that one day not

long ago, she met at Llangybi a native who had not visited the place

since his boyhood: he had been away as an engineer in South Wales

nearly all his life, but had returned to see an aged relative. So the

reminiscences of the place filled his mind, and, among other things,

he said that he remembered very well what concern there was one day

in the village at a mischievous person having taken a very large

eel out of the well. Many of the old people, he said, felt that much

of the virtue of the well was probably taken away with the eel. To

see it coiling about their limbs when they went into the water was

a good sign: so he gave one to understand. As a sort of parallel I

may mention that I have seen the fish living in Ffynnon Beris, not

far from the parish church of Llanberis. It is jealously guarded

by the inhabitants, and when it was once or twice taken out by a

mischievous stranger he was forced to put it back again. However,

I never could get the history of this sacred fish, but I found that

it was regarded as very old [162]. I may add that it appears the

well called Ffynnon Fair, 'Mary's Well,' at Llandwyn, in Anglesey,

used formerly to have inhabiting it a sacred fish, whose movements

indicated the fortunes of the love-sick men and maidens who visited

there the shrine of St. Dwynwen [163]. Possibly inquiry would result

in showing that such sacred fish have been far more common once in

the Principality than they are now.

The next class of wells to claim our attention consists of what I

may call fairy wells, of which few are mentioned in connexion with

Wales; but the legends about them are of absorbing interest. One of

them is in Myrdin Fard's neighbourhood, and I questioned him a good

deal on the subject: it is called Ffynnon Grassi, or Grace's Well,

and it occupies, according to him, a few square feet--he has measured

it himself--of the south-east corner of the lake of Glasfryn Uchaf,

in the parish of Llangybi. It appears that it was walled in, and

that the stone forming its eastern side has several holes in it,

which were intended to let water enter the well and not issue from

it. It had a door or cover on its surface; and it was necessary to

keep the door always shut, except when water was being drawn. Through

somebody's negligence, however, it was once on a time left open:

the consequence was that the water of the well flowed out and formed

the Glasfryn Lake, which is so considerable as to be navigable for

small boats. Grassi is supposed in the locality to have been the name

of the owner of the well, or at any rate of a lady who had something

to do with it. Grassi, or Grace, however, can only be a name which a

modern version of the legend has introduced. It probably stands for

an older name given to the person in charge of the well; to the one,

in fact, who neglected to shut the door; but though the name must be

comparatively modern, the story, as a whole, does not appear to be

at all modern, but very decidedly the contrary.

So I wrote in 1893; but years after my conversation with Myrdin Fard,

my attention was called to the fact that the Glasfryn family, of which

the Rev. J. C. Williams-Ellis is the head, have in their coat of arms

a mermaid, who is represented in the usual way, holding a comb in her

right hand and a mirror in her left. I had from the first expected

to find some kind of Undine or Liban story associated with the well

and the lake, though I had abstained from trying the risky effects of

leading questions; but when I heard of the heraldic mermaid I wrote

to Mr. Williams-Ellis to ask whether he knew her history. His words,

though not encouraging as regards the mermaid, soon convinced me that

I had not been wholly wrong in supposing that more folklore attached

to the well and lake than I had been able to discover. Since then

Mrs. Williams-Ellis has taken the trouble of collecting on the spot

all the items of tradition which she could find: she communicated them

to me in the month of March, 1899, and the following is an abstract

of them, preceded by a brief description of the ground:--

The well itself is at the foot of a very green field-bank at the

head of the lake, but not on the same level with it, as the lake

has had its waters lowered half a century or more ago by the outlet

having been cut deeper. Adjoining the field containing the well is

a larger field, which also slopes down to the lake and extends in

another direction to the grounds belonging to the house. This larger

field is called Cae'r Ladi, 'the Lady's Field,' and it is remarkable

for having in its centre an ancient standing stone, which, as seen

from the windows of the house, presents the appearance of a female

figure hurrying along, with the wind slightly swelling out her veil

and the skirt of her dress. Mr. Williams-Ellis remembers how when

he was a boy the stone was partially white-washed, and how an old

bonnet adorned the top of this would-be statue, and he thinks that

an old shawl used to be thrown over the shoulders.

Now as to Grassi, she is mostly regarded as a ghostly person somehow

connected with the lake and the house of Glasfryn. One story is to

the effect, that on a certain evening she forgot to close the well,

and that when the gushing waters had formed the lake, poor Grassi,

overcome with remorse, wandered up and down the high ground of Cae'r

Ladi, moaning and weeping. There, in fact, she is still at times to

be heard lamenting her fate, especially at two o'clock in the early

morning. Some people say that she is also to be seen about the lake,

which is now the haunt of some half a dozen swans. But on the whole

her visits appear to have been most frequent and troublesome at

the house itself. Several persons still living are mentioned, who

believe that they have seen her there, and two of them, Mrs. Jones

of Talafon, and old Sydney Griffith of Tydyn Bach, agree in the main

in their description of what they saw, namely, a tall lady with well

marked features and large bright eyes: she was dressed in white silk

and a white velvet bonnet. The woman, Sydney Griffith, thought that

she had seen the lady walking several times about the house and in

Cae'r Ladi. This comes, in both instances, from a young lady born

and bred in the immediate neighbourhood, and studying now at the

University College of North Wales; but Mrs. Williams-Ellis has had

similar accounts from other sources, and she mentions tenants of

Glasfryn who found it difficult to keep servants there, because they

felt that the place was haunted. In fact one of the tenants himself

felt so unsafe that he used to take his gun and his dog with him to

his bedroom at night; not to mention that when the Williams-Ellises

lived themselves, as they do still, in the house, their visitors have

been known to declare that they heard the strange plaintive cry out

of doors at two o'clock in the morning.

Traces also of a very different story are reported by

Mrs. Williams-Ellis, to the effect that when the water broke forth to

form the lake, the fairies seized Grassi and changed her into a swan,

and that she continued in that form to live on the lake sixscore years,

and that when at length she died, she loudly lamented her lot: that cry

is still to be heard at night. This story is in process apparently of

being rationalized; at any rate the young lady student, to whom I have

referred, remembers perfectly that her grandfather used to explain

to her and the other children at home that Grassi was changed into

a swan as a punishment for haunting Glasfryn, but that nevertheless

the old lady still visited the place, especially when there happened

to be strangers in the house. At the end of September last Mrs. Rhys

and I had the pleasure of spending a few days at Glasfryn, in the hope

of hearing the plaintive wail, and of seeing the lady in white silk

revisiting her familiar haunts. But alas! our sleep was never once

disturbed, nor was our peace once troubled by suspicions of anything

uncanny. This, however, is negative, and characterized by the usual

weakness of all such evidence.

It is now time to turn to another order of facts: in the first place

may be mentioned that the young lady student's grandmother used to

call the well Ffynnon Grâs Siôn Gruffud, as she had always heard that

Grâs was the daughter of a certain Siôn Gruffyd, 'John Griffith,'

who lived near the well; and Mrs. Williams-Ellis finds that Grâs was

buried, at a very advanced age, on December 14, 1743, at the parish

church of Llangybi, where the register describes her as Grace Jones,

alias Grace Jones Griffith. She had lived till the end at Glasfryn,

but from documents in the possession of the Glasfryn family it is

known that in 1728 Hugh Lloyd of Trallwyn purchased the house and

estate of Glasfryn from a son of Grace's, named John ab Cadwaladr,

and that Hugh Lloyd of Trallwyn's son, the Rev. William Lloyd,

sold them to Archdeacon Ellis, from whom they have descended to the

Rev. J. C. Williams-Ellis. In the light of these facts there is no

reason to connect the old lady's name very closely with the well or

the lake. She was once the dominant figure at Glasfryn, that is all;

and when she died she was as usual supposed to haunt the house and

its immediate surroundings; and if we might venture to suppose that

Glasfryn was sold by her son against her will, though subject to

conditions which enabled her to remain in possession of the place to

the day of her death, we should have a further explanation, perhaps,

of her supposed moaning and lamentation.

In the background, however, of the story, one detects the possibility

of another female figure, for it may be that the standing stone in

Cae'r Ladi represents a woman buried there centuries before Grace

ruled at Glasfryn, and that traditions about the earlier lady have

survived to be inextricably mixed with those concerning the later

one. Lastly, those traditions may have also associated the subject of

them with the well and the lake; but I wish to attach no importance

to this conjecture, as we have in reserve a third figure of larger

possibilities than either Grace or the stone woman. It needs no better

introduction than Mrs. Williams-Ellis' own words: 'Our younger boys

have a crew of three little Welsh boys who live near the lake, to

join them in their boat sailing about the pool and in camping on the

island, &c. They asked me once who Morgan was, whom the little boys

were always saying they were to be careful against. An old man living

at Tal Llyn, "Lake's End," a farm close by, says that as a boy he was

always told that "naughty boys would be carried off by Morgan into

the lake." Others tell me that Morgan is always held to be ready to

take off troublesome children, and somehow Morgan is thought of as a

bad one.' Now as Morgan carries children off into the pool, he would

seem to issue from the pool, and to have his home in it. Further, he

plays the same part as the fairies against whom a Snowdonian mother

used to warn her children: they were on no account to wander away

from the house when there was a mist, lest the fairies should carry

them to their home beneath Llyn Dwythwch. In other words, Morgan may

be said to act in the same way as the mermaid, who takes a sailor

down to her submarine home; and it explains to my mind a discussion

which I once heard of the name Morgan by a party of men and women

making hay one fine summer's day in the neighbourhood of Ponterwyd,

in North Cardiganshire. I was a child, but I remember vividly how

they teased one of their number whose 'style' was Morgan. They hinted

at dreadful things associated with the name; but it was all so vague

that I could not gather that his great unknown namesake was a thief,

a murderer, or any kind of ordinary criminal. The impression left

on my mind was rather the notion of something weird, uncanny, or

non-human; and the fact that the Welsh version of the Book of Common

Prayer calls the Pelagians Morganiaid, 'Morgans,' does not offer an

adequate explanation. But I now see clearly that it is to be sought

in the indistinct echo of such folklore as that which makes Morgan

a terror to children in the neighbourhood of the Glasfryn Lake.