CHAPTER XI

.

SACRED WELLS AND TREES.

{175}

In the light of the results thus obtained by an examination of certain of the methods of witchcraft and folk-medicine, we next approach a group of rites known in one form or other from shore to shore of the Old World, and the principle of which has regulated religious observances alike in North and South America. These rites are very numerous in the British islands; and it will be convenient to start from some of the most modern forms found in Great Britain. Professor Rhys, in a paper read a year or two ago before a joint meeting of the Cymmrodorion and Folklore Societies, quotes a correspondent as saying of Ffynnon Cae Moch, about half-way between Coychurch and Bridgend, in Glamorganshire: “People suffering from rheumatism go there. They bathe the part affected with water, and afterwards tie a piece of rag to the tree which overhangs the well. The rag is not put in the water at all, but is only put on the tree for luck. It is a stunted but very old tree, and is simply _covered_ with rags.” In another case, that of Ffynnon Eilian (Elian’s Well), near Abergele in Denbighshire, of which Professor Rhys was informed by Mrs. Evans, the late wife of Canon Silvan Evans, some bushes near the well had once been covered with bits of {176} rags left by those who frequented it. The rags used to be tied to the bushes by means of wool--not woollen yarn, but wool in its natural state. Corks with pins stuck in them were floating in the well when Mrs. Evans visited it, though the rags had apparently disappeared from the bushes. The well in question, it is noted, had once been in great repute as “a well to which people resorted for the kindly purpose of bewitching those whom they hated.” The Ffynnon Cefn Lleithfan, or Well of the Lleithfan Ridge, on the eastern slope of Mynydd y Rhiw, in the parish of Bryncroes, in the west of Carnarvonshire, is a resort for the cure of warts. The sacred character of the well may be inferred from the silence in which it is necessary to go and come, and from the prohibition to turn or look back. The wart is to be bathed at the well with a rag or clout, which has grease on it. The clout must then be carefully concealed beneath the stone at the mouth of the well. The Professor, repeating this account of the well, given him by a Welsh collector of folk-lore, says: “This brings to my mind the fact that I have, more than once, years ago, noticed rags underneath stones in the water flowing from wells in Wales, and sometimes thrust into holes in the walls of wells, but I had no notion how they came there.” The Rev. Elias Owen, writing on the Holy Wells of North Wales, relates that the patients who came to the Ffynnon Awen, or Muses’ Well, in the upper part of Llanrhaiadr, near Denbigh, buried under a stone close to or in the well the pieces of wool they had used in washing their wounds.[176.1]

Professor Rhys, in the paper just cited, mentions several {177} wells wherein it was usual to drop pins; but the most detailed account was afterwards furnished by Mr. T. E. Morris, from a correspondent who supplied him with the following information relating to Ffynnon Faglan (St Baglan’s Well) in the parish of Llanfaglan, Carnarvonshire: “The old people who would be likely to know anything about Ffynnon Faglan have all died. The two oldest inhabitants, who have always lived in this parish (Llanfaglan), remember the well being used for healing purposes. One told me his mother used to take him to it when he was a child, for sore eyes, bathe them with the water, and then drop in a pin. The other man, when he was young, bathed in it for rheumatism, and until quite lately people used to fetch away the water for medicinal purposes. The latter, who lives near the well at Tan-y-graig, said that he remembered it being cleared out about fifty years ago, when two basins-full of pins were taken out, but no coin of any kind. The pins were all bent, and I conclude the intention was to exorcise the evil spirit supposed to afflict the person who dropped them in, or, as the Welsh say, _dadwitsio_. No doubt some ominous words were also used. The well is at present nearly dry, the field where it lies having been drained some years ago, and the water in consequence withdrawn from it. It was much used for the cure of warts. The wart was washed, then pricked with a pin, which, after being bent, was thrown into the well.”[177.1]

In England the custom is well known of throwing pins into the water or hanging rags torn from the devotee’s {178} clothing upon the neighbouring bushes and trees.[178.1] But without pausing on English examples we pass at once to Ireland. There sacred wells and other places of pilgrimage are numerous and interesting. Mr. W. C. Borlase, quoting from the manuscripts of the late Mr. Windele of Cork, mentions the cromlech of Maul na holtora, in Kerry, as reputed to contain a well to which a legend of a sacred fish attached. It was a place of pilgrimage every Saturday. “The brambles are tied with rags, and there is a deposit of pins as offerings.” The ritual prescribed at this and similar places of pilgrimage is the performance of a circuit from point to point, right-hand-wise, or in the direction of the sun, the recital of a certain number of paternosters and aves, just as at the stations of the Cross in a Roman Catholic church, and finally the deposit of the offering of a rag or pins. A well at Finmagh, in Roscommon, in which a Druid was said to be buried, was regarded as a deity. Here, however, the offerings, thrust through a hole or cleft in the roof, were of gold and silver.[178.2] This is a rare case. Quite recently Professor Haddon and Dr. Browne found, in the Aran Islands, Galway, rags attached to sprays of the bramble or ivy at most of the holy wells. Buttons, fish-hooks, iron nails, shells, pieces of crockery and other things are deposited in the holy well at Tempulan-Cheathruir-aluinn, or the Church of the Four Comely Ones.[178.3] Turish Lyn, a pool in the stream a little below Kilgort Bridge, in County Derry, is still resorted to for the cure of various diseases. Among the offerings left on a {179} bush beside the stream are enumerated a piece of cloth, a lock of hair and three stones picked up from the pool.[179.1] A number of other instances are cited by Mr. Gomme from various authorities.[179.2] What seems an analogous custom is declared by Sir Ralph Payne-Gallwey to be practised at the Large Skellig, off the coast of Kerry. This island contains the ruin of an ancient monastery, and is accounted a holy place. When workmen from the mainland have been employed on the buildings on the Skellig and are bidding farewell to the island, “they invariably cast some well-worn article of clothing, oftener than not a pair of shoes, at a solitary rock, known as the Blue Man, which stands abruptly out of the ocean.”[179.3]

In the Isle of Man there is a well called Chibber Unjin, or Ash-tree Well, which I mention for the sake of calling attention to an interesting detail of the rite. A patient visiting the well had to take a mouthful of water, retaining it in his mouth until he had made the circuit of the well, and then empty it upon a rag of his own clothing, which he afterwards tied on the hawthorn growing there.[179.4]

I select a few examples out of a large number from Scotland. Saint Wallach’s Well and Bath in the parish of Glass, Aberdeenshire, are famous for their healing qualities. {180} The former is now dry, save in rainy weather; but it was frequented by persons with sore eyes, “and every one who went to it left a pin in a hole which had been cut either by nature or by art in a stone beside the well.” The bath is a cavity in the rock, supplied by a spring which flows into it and overflows into the river Deveron. Children who did not thrive were brought and dipped in it, “a rag, an old shirt, or a bib from the child’s body being hung on a tree beside the bath, or thrown into it.”[180.1] “There is a big rugged rock,” says the Rev. Walter Gregor, “on the top of Ben Newe in Strathdon, Aberdeenshire. On the north side of this rock, under a projection, there is a small circular-shaped hollow which always contains water. Every one that goes to the top of the hill must put some small object into it, and then take a draught of water off it. Unless this is done the traveller will not reach in life the foot of the hill. I climbed the hill in June of 1890, and saw in the well several pins, a small bone, a pill-box, a piece of a flower, and a few other objects.”[180.2] Saint John’s Well, at Balmano, in the parish of Marykirk, Kincardineshire, was reputed to heal sore eyes and rickety children. The “oblations” left here were generally pins, needles and rags taken from the pilgrim’s clothes. In the island of St. Kilda is a consecrated well called Tobir-minbuadh, or Well of diverse Virtues. The votaries laid their offerings on an “altar” (probably a rock, or perhaps a rude stone monument) that stood near; and Macaulay in his _History of St. Kilda_ sarcastically remarks: “The devotees were abundantly frugal.… Shells and pebbles, rags of linen or stuffs worn out, pins, needles or rusty nails were generally all the tribute that was paid; and sometimes, though {181} rarely enough, copper coins of the smallest value.” Of Loch-siant Well in the island of Skye we read that the sick people who made a pilgrimage to it, after drinking “move thrice round the well, proceeding sun-ways,” and it was “a never-failing custom to leave some small offering on the stone which covers the well. There is a small coppice near it, of which none of the natives dare venture to cut the least branch, for fear of some signal judgment to follow upon it.”[181.1] And Mr. David MacRitchie, recording similar offerings at Grew’s Well, Stormont, Perthshire, made on the first Sunday of May (Old Style), and speaking from the information of an old woman on the spot, says: “No good whatever was expected to result from the bathing if no offering was left.”[181.2] It is rarely that an offering of value is recorded at these wells. A spring is, however, mentioned by Mr. Gregor, called Tobar-fuarmor, in Aberdeenshire, where no cure was effected unless gold was presented.[181.3] The well and tree on the island of Maelrubha in Loch Maree are dedicated to Saint Maree, or Mourie. We need not concern ourselves whether this holy man ever existed in the flesh. It is clear that he succeeded to the divinity of an ancient heathen god, and wielded all, and perhaps more than all, his predecessor’s powers. Whether the mediæval church ever struggled against the deeply-rooted cult we do not know. Since the Reformation the Dingwall presbytery has in vain striven to destroy it, though at last it seems to be dying before the blasts of modern disbelief. {182} Miss Godden, who visited the shrine in the summer of 1893, describes the tree--an oak--“as a slight white trunk--bare, branchless, leafless, with spreading foot, and jagged and broken top. The cracks and clefts in the stem are studded with coins, nails, screws, and rusty iron fragments. No sign of leaf or shoot remains to give the gaunt shaft any touch of common vegetation. It stands alone and inviolate--a Sacred Tree. In the damp ground at the tree’s foot is a small dark hole, the sides of which are roughly formed by stones overhung with moss and grass. A cover of unwrought stone lies beside it, and it is filled up with dead leaves. This is the healing well of power unspeakable in cases of lunacy.… The tree,” she adds, “is now a Wishing Tree, and the driving in of a bit of metal is the only necessary act.” The well, in fact, long so famous, is now disused, and the ritual of the shrine is in the last stage of decay. Formerly, when an afflicted person was brought thither for the cure of insanity, a portion of his clothing was attached to a nail, which was driven on his behalf into the tree. Sir Arthur Mitchell in the year 1860 found two bone buttons and two buckles nailed to the tree, and a faded ribbon fluttering from another nail. The tree, now dead as the superstition which hallowed it, was then living. Countless pennies and halfpennies had been driven edgewise into it, and the bark was closing over many of them, while it was believed to have covered many others.[182.1]

We turn to the continent of Europe. Close parallels to the practices at the shrine at Maelrubha are found in Germany and Belgium. Such is the ceremony prescribed for hernia in Mecklenburgh. A cross is made over the affected part {183} with a nail on a Friday; and the nail is then driven, in unbroken silence, into a young beech or oak. The operation is repeated on the two Fridays following. A variant prescription directs the part to be touched with a coffin-nail, which is then to be driven over its head into the tree by the sufferer, barefoot and silent. As the nail is overgrown by the bark, the hernia will be healed.[183.1] In this case the rite does not seem to be attached to any specially hallowed tree. I cited some similar instances in the last chapter, and others will be mentioned presently. We must first consider, however, some cases where the sacred character of the object, whether well or tree, is unquestionable.

In Belgium, halfway between Braine l’Alleud and the wood of Le Foriet, two hollow, and therefore doubtless very ancient, roads cross one another. Two aged pine-trees are planted at the top of the bank at one of the corners; and formerly there stood between them a cross, which has disappeared for some thirty years. It was a very ancient custom to bury in the pines, and even in the cross, pins or nails, in order to obtain the cure of persons attacked by fevers of various kinds. The pins and nails thus employed must have been previously in contact with the patient or his clothes. If any one took out one of these pins or nails from the pines or the cross, and carried it home, it was believed that the disease would certainly have been communicated to some member of his family. The custom is said to have fallen out of use. Yet M. Schepers, who visited the place in September 1891, and to whose article on the subject in _Wallonia_, a periodical published at Liège, I am indebted for these particulars, found not {184} only rusty nails in the pines, but also pins quite recently planted. He was told that it was equally customary to roll round the pines, or the arms of the cross, some band of cloth or other stuff which had touched the sufferer. As soon as the nail or pin had been driven in, or the ribbon fastened, the operator used to run away as hard as he could. The spot was called _À l’crwe Saint Zè_, St. Etto’s Cross, or _Aux deux Sapins_, The two Pine-trees. Saint Etto, it seems, was an Irish missionary to these parts in the seventh century.[184.1] Nor is this by any means the only instance in Belgium. Two old lime-trees on either side of a Calvary, near the convent of Soleilmont at Gilly, in Hainaut, are covered with nails; and a similar tree is found behind a chapel between Trazegnies and Chapelle-lez-Herlaimont in the same province. At Chastrés, near Walcourt, a chapel of Our Lady is shown with pins thrown in through the interstices of the gate by devotees on reciting their prayers. Numbers of pins have also been taken from the beds of the Meuse and the Sambre at ancient fords, though whether they were put into the water for any superstitious purpose is uncertain.[184.2]

At Croisic, in Upper Brittany, there is a well, called the Well of Saint Goustan, into which pins are thrown by those who wish to be married during the year. If the wish be granted, the pin will fall straight to the bottom. Similar practices are said to be performed in Lower Brittany, and in Poitou and Elsass.[184.3] Girls used to resort to the little {185} shrine of Saint Guirec, which stands on an isolated rock below high-water mark on the beach at Perros Guirec in Lower Brittany, to pray for husbands. The worshipper, her prayer concluded, stuck a pin into the wooden statue of the saint; and when I saw the shrine, in the year 1889, the figure was riddled from top to toe with pinholes. It was said that the prayer for a husband would infallibly be granted within a year. On the other side of Brittany, in the Morbihan, there is a chapel dedicated to Saint Uférier, credited with a similar reputation. The saint’s foot, if I may be guilty of a bull, is almost entirely composed of holes. It is, however, necessary here that the pin should be a new one and quite straight; not that the prayer will not be granted otherwise, but the husband will be crooked, humpbacked, and lame. In Upper Brittany, at St. Lawrence’s Chapel near Quintin and elsewhere, the condition is that the pin be planted at the first blow; the marriage will then take place within the year.[185.1] To avoid either the disfigurement or the desecration of this practice the authorities of the churches of Saint Peter at Louvain and of Bon-Secours at Brussels thoughtfully provide pincushions to receive the proofs of the worshippers’ pious enthusiasm;[185.2] but in Brittany the good priests are less fastidious.

Where the statue is of stone, it is of course impossible to plant the pins. They are then simply laid upon it, or thrust into cracks or hollows in the surface. At Loscouët young children are taken to the Virgin of Menès near the mill of Meu, in order that they may soon walk. The Virgin in question is nothing but the battered remains of a mullion {186} from a window in the ruined château of Menès, formerly the residence of the lords of Loscouët before the signory passed to the abbé of Saint Méen. This mullion the simple peasants take for a statue. The children are held by the armpits, and made to walk thrice round the Virgin, and pins are then placed upon her arms. At Penvenan the chapel of Notre Dame du Port-Blanc is resorted to for the same object. The parents exercise themselves in throwing small coins from the nave into the choir at the statues of the Virgin, and of Saint Yves of the Poor, and afterwards at those of Dives and Lazarus. The children are then put to pick the coins up and drop them into the Virgin’s coffer. Lastly, they are marched round the pavement outside the chapel; and within a fortnight they will certainly walk.[186.1]

All over France the like practices exist, or have died out only within comparatively recent years. In the Protestant villages of Montbéliard, between the Vosges and the Jura, at the moment of celebration of a wedding a nail was planted in the gallery (or, in some places, in the floor) of the church, to “nail” or fasten the marriage. In various parts of the country there are stone or iron crosses which have doubtless replaced wooden ones. In the case of these new crosses, votaries must content themselves with depositing pins upon the arms or the pedestal, or in the joints.[186.2] In the valley of Lunain there is a menhir called the Pierre Frite, in almost every hole or fissure of which may be found a pin or a nail, placed there by the youth of the neighbourhood in the belief that this action will bring a {187} speedy marriage.[187.1] The well of Moniés in the department of Tarn had, at the beginning of the present century, a great renown for the cure of various diseases. The rags which had been used in bathing with the sacred water the diseased members, were left stretched out on the neighbouring bushes.[187.2] An instance where the honour and glory, not to say the substantial gains attendant on the superstition, were early annexed by the Church is that of St. Michel-la-Rivière in the diocese of Bordeaux. Both the honour and the gains were considerable in the seventeenth century, as appears from quarrels between the curé and the fabriqueur of the church decided by the Archbishop of Bordeaux, and other orders made by him. The sick man was required to pass through a hole called a _veyrine_ at the end of the apse; and the patients left offerings not merely of linen, but also of money, wax, and other things.[187.3] Nor was this case at all singular; for similar practices obtained wherever in the diocese was a church dedicated to St. Michael. In a North German example the object of veneration was an oak-tree; and the pilgrim, after creeping through the hole in the prescribed manner, completed the performance by burying a piece of money under the roots. As many as a hundred patients a day are said to have visited it.[187.4] Here the Church had neglected her opportunities.

We have already dealt with the custom of creeping {188} through trees. Our concern at present is with the offerings. Passing the Pyrenees, let us note that in the seventeenth century it was usual to stick needles or pins in a certain tree belonging to the church of Saint Christopher, situated on a high mountain near the city of Pampeluna.[188.1] At Naples it used to be the custom to lead a sick horse round the church of Saint Elias, and afterwards to fasten one of his shoes on the church-door.[188.2] One who suffers from intermittent fever will go and hang a small pebble on the inside of the door of Saint Giles’ church in the Abruzzian commune of Lanciano.[188.3]

A rite hitherto unexplained was practised from very early times at Rome. From the date of the erection of the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus it was the custom on the festival of the dedication, the Ides of September, for the highest person of the state to drive a nail into the right wall of the _Cella Jovis_. This was usually done by the consuls or prætor; but in case of the appointment of a dictator the latter performed the ceremony. After it was dropped as an annual performance, recourse was occasionally had to it for the staying of a pestilence, or as an atonement for crime. More ancient still was the corresponding Etruscan practice of sticking a nail every year into the temple of Nortia, the fate-goddess.[188.4] Curious parallels to this custom are found in modern Europe. Near Angers was an oak which bore the singular name of _Lapalud_. It was regarded as of the same antiquity as the town, and was covered with nails to the height of ten feet or thereabouts. From {189} time immemorial every journeyman carpenter, joiner, or mason who passed it, used to stick a nail in it. Near the cathedral at Vienna was the stock of an old tree, called the _Stock im Eisen_, said to be the last remnant of an ancient forest which once covered the neighbourhood. Every workman who passed through Vienna was expected to fasten a nail in it; and it was in fact invested with a complete coat of mail, consisting entirely of the heads of the nails it had thus received.[189.1] These two examples existed almost down to the present day; elsewhere the rite appears to be still in full force. At Evessen stands a lime-tree on a barrow wherein a golden coffin is believed to have been buried. In the trunk (which is seven mètres in girth at the height of one mètre from the soil) are driven numbers of nails, some of them recently fixed. This is often done by travelling apprentices.[189.2]

At Athens, mothers bring their sick children to the little church of Santa Marina, under the Observatory Hill, and there undress them, leaving the old clothes behind. There is a dripping well near Kotzanes, in Macedonia, “said to issue from the Nereids’ breasts, and to cure all human ills. Those who would drink of it must enter the cave with a torch or lamp in one hand and pitcher in the other, which they must fill with the water, and, leaving some scrap of their clothing behind them, must turn round without being scared by the noises they may hear within, and quit the cave without ever looking back.”[189.3] Among the inscriptions discovered at Epidauros, recording the miraculous cures attributed to Asklepios, is the record of what happened to {190} Pandaros, a Thessalian who was afflicted with certain unsightly marks upon his forehead. The god appeared to him in a dream, pressing a bandage on the spots and directing him when he left the chamber to take off the bandage and deposit it as an offering in the temple. When the patient untied the bandage in the morning, the marks were transferred to it, leaving his forehead free; and he left the bandage in the temple, with this proof of his recovery,[190.1] just as crutches are left in modern times at Roman Catholic shrines by persons who believe themselves healed by the presiding saint. It is clear from a reference by Aristophanes that the Greeks were in the habit on certain occasions of hanging articles of their clothing on, or even nailing them to, sacred trees as an offering to the god.[190.2] Indeed, allusions to the practice are not uncommon in Greek poetry. Among the Romans, Pompey is compared by Lucan to a lofty oak, hung with old clothes and other votive offerings; and Vergil describes an olive-tree whereon the vests and votive tablets of mariners who had escaped shipwreck were suspended.[190.3] To-day in Lesbos sick women vow to walk before Our Lady, or one of the saints, with bare feet, flowing hair, and their hands tied behind their backs with a handkerchief which they subsequently leave suspended on the image. In one of their tied hands they must contrive to carry a large lighted taper. Lofty sacred trees are still numerous, frequently growing in {191} the vicinity of some chapel. The sick suspend on the branches their shirts or their girdles, in the hope, we are told, of leaving their ailments there. Feverish patients hang their clothes on a tree near the chapel of Saint John.[191.1]

In the Baltic Provinces of the Russian Empire stands a great sacred aspen near the village of Röiks, which, up to the year 1845 at all events, was hung with wreaths and many-coloured ribbons to win the favour of the tree-spirit for sick cattle. Near Pallifer stood in the seventeenth century two holy elms, which are reported to have been hung and bound with ribbons, this time for the healing of human ailments and to obtain good luck. An old lime-tree near the chapel of Keppo is also held sacred. Passers-by tear off ribbons and rags from their clothing and nail them upon it. The trees of the sacred woods on the island of Oesel are hung with rags by the Esthonian inhabitants of the island.[191.2] In the district of Vynnytzia, government of Podolia in Ukrainia, there is a mineral spring much resorted to. The sick, after bathing, hang to the branches of the trees their shirts, handkerchiefs, and other articles, “as a mark,” says M. Volkov, who reports the case, “that their diseases are left there.”[191.3]

In the last