III.

Only second in fame to Winifred's, among the Welsh themselves, is St. Tecla's well, or Ffynon Tegla, in Denbighshire. It springs out of a bog called Gwern Degla, about two hundred yards from the parish church of Llandegla. Some account of the peculiar superstitious ceremony connected with this well has already been given, in the chapter treating of the sin-eater. It is there suggested that the cock to which the fits are transferred by the patient at the well is a substitute for the scapegoat of the Jews. The parish clerk of Llandegla in 1855 said that an old man of his acquaintance 'remembered quite well seeing the birds staggering about from the effects of the fits' which had been transferred to them.