Chapter II

Mystic Wells--Their Good and Bad Dispositions--St.
Winifred's Well--The Legend of St. Winifred--Miracles--St.
Tecla's Well--St. Dwynwen's--Curing Love-sickness--St.
Cynfran's--St. Cynhafal's--Throwing Pins in
Wells--Warts--Barry Island and its Legends--Ffynon
Gwynwy--Propitiatory Gifts to Wells--The Dreadful Cursing
Well of St. Elian's--Wells Flowing with Milk--St.
Illtyd's--Taff's Well--Sanford's Well--Origins of
Superstitions of this Class.

I.

The waters of mystery which flow at Lourdes, in France, are paralleled in numberless Welsh parishes. In every corner of Cambria may be found wells which possess definite attributes, malicious or beneficent, which they are popularly supposed to actively exert toward mankind. In almost every instance, the name of the tutelary saint to whom the well is consecrated is known to the peasantry, and generally they can tell you something about him, or her. Unnumbered centuries have elapsed since the saint lived; nay, generation upon generation has perished since any complete knowledge of his life or character existed, save in mouldering manuscripts left by monks, themselves long turned to dust; yet the tradition of the saint as regards the well is there, a living thing beside its waters. However lightly some forms of superstition may at times be treated by the vulgar, they are seldom capable of irreverent remark concerning the well. In many cases this respect amounts to awe.

These wells are of varying power and disposition. Some are healing wells; others are cursing wells; still others combine the power alike to curse and to cure. Some are sovereign in their influence over all the diseases from which men suffer, mental and moral as well as physical; others can cure but one disease, or one specific class of diseases; and others remedy all the misfortunes of the race, make the poor rich, the unhappy happy, and the unlucky lucky. That these various reputations arose in some wells from medicinal qualities found by experience to dwell in the waters, is clear at a glance; but in many cases the character of the patron saint gives character to the well. In parishes dedicated to the Virgin Mary there will almost inevitably be found a Ffynon Mair, (Well of Mary,) the waters of which are supposed to be purer than the waters of other wells. Sometimes the people will take the trouble to go a long distance for water from the Ffynon Mair, though a good well may be nearer, in whose water chemical analysis can find no difference. Formerly, and indeed until within a few years past, no water would do for baptizing but that fetched from the Ffynon Mair, though it were a mile or more from the church. That the water flowed southward was in some cases held to be a secret of its virtue. In other instances, wells which opened and flowed eastward were thought to afford the purest water.

II.

Most renowned and most frequented of Welsh wells is St. Winifred's, at Holywell. By the testimony of tradition it has been flowing for eleven hundred and eighty years, or since the year 700, and during all this time has been constantly visited by throngs of invalids; and that it will continue to be so frequented for a thousand years to come is not doubted, apparently, by the members of the Holywell Local Board, who have just taken a lease of the well from the Duke of Westminster for 999 years more, at an annual rental of L1. The town of Holywell probably owes not only name but existence to this well. Its miraculous powers are extensively believed in by the Welsh, and by people from all parts of Great Britain and the United States; but Drayton's assertion that no dog could be drowned in its waters, on account of their beneficent disposition, is not an article of the existing faith. The most prodigious fact in connection with this wonderful fountain, when its legendary origin is contemplated, is its size, its abounding life, the great volume of its waters. A well which discharges twenty-one tons of water per minute, which feeds an artificial lake and runs a mill, and has cured unnumbered thousands of human beings of their ills for hundreds of years, is surely one of the wonders of the world, to which even mystic legend can only add one marvel more.

The legend of St. Winifred, or Gwenfrewi, as she is called in Welsh, was related by the British monk Elerius in the year 660, or by Robert of Salop in 1190, and is in the Cotton MSS. in the British Museum. It is there written in characters considered to be of the middle of the eleventh century. Winifred was the daughter of a valiant soldier in North Wales; from her youth she loved a heavenly spouse, and refused transitory men. One day Caradoc, a descendant of royal stock, came to her house fatigued from hunting wild beasts, and asked Winifred for drink. But seeing the beauty of the nymph he forgot his thirst in his admiration, and at once besought her to treat him with the familiarity of a sweetheart. Winifred refused, asserting that she was engaged to be married to another. Caradoc became furious at this, and said, 'Leave off this foolish, frivolous, and trifling mode of speaking, and consent to my wish.' Then he asked her to be his wife. Finding he would not be denied, Winifred had recourse to a stratagem to escape from him: she pretended to comply, but asked leave to first make a becoming toilet. Caradoc agreed, on condition that she should make it quickly. The girl went through her chamber with swift feet into the valley, and was escaping, when Caradoc perceived the trick, and mounting his horse spurred after her. He overtook her at the very door of the monastery to which she was fleeing; before she could place her foot within the threshold he struck off her head at one blow. St. Beino coming quickly to the door saw bloody Caradoc standing with his stained sword in his hand, and immediately cursed him as he stood, so that the bloody man melted in his sight like wax before a fire. Beino then took the virgin's head (which had been thrown inside the door by the blow which severed it) and fitted it on the neck of the corpse. Winifred thereupon revived, with no further harm than a small line on her neck. But the floor upon which her bloody head had fallen, cracked open, and a fountain sprang up like a torrent at the spot. 'And the stones appear bloody at present as they did at first, and the moss smells as frankincense, and it cures divers diseases.'[161] Thus far the monastic legend. Some say that Caradoc's descendants were doomed to bark like dogs.

Among the miracles related of Winifred's well by her monkish biographer is one characterized as 'stupendous,' concerning three bright stones which were seen in the middle of the ebullition of the fountain, ascending and descending, 'up and down by turns, after the manner of stones projected by a shooter.' They so continued to dance for many years, but one day an unlucky woman was seized with a desire to play with the stones. So she took hold of one; whereat they all vanished, and the woman died. This miracle was supplemented by that of a man who was rebuked for theft at the fountain; and on his denying his guilt, the goat which he had stolen and eaten became his accuser by uttering an audible bleating from his belly. But the miracles of Winifred's well are for the most part records of wonderful cures from disease and deformity. Withered and useless limbs were made whole and useful; the dumb bathed in the water, came out, and asked for their clothes; the blind washed and received their sight; lunatics 'troubled by unclean spirits' were brought to the well in chains, 'tearing with their teeth and speaking vain things,' but returned homeward in full possession of their reason. Fevers, paralysis, epilepsy, stone, gout, cancers, piles--these are but a few of the diseases cured by the marvellous well, on the testimony of the ancient chronicler of the Cotton MSS. 'Nor is it to be hidden in the silence of Lethean oblivion that after the expulsion of the Franks from all North Wales' the fountain flowed with a milky liquor for the space of three days. A priest bottled some of it, and it 'was carried about and drunk in all directions,' curing diseases in the same manner as the well itself.

FOOTNOTE:

[161] 'Cambro-British Saints,' 519.

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.

IV.

Of great celebrity in other days was St. Dwynwen's well, in the parish of Llandwyn, Anglesea. This saint being patron saint of lovers, her well possessed the property of curing love-sickness. It was visited by great numbers, of both sexes, in the fourteenth century, when the popular faith in its waters seems to have been at its strongest. It is still frequented by young women of that part of the country when suffering from the woes inflicted by Dan Cupid. That the well itself has been for many years covered over with sand does not prevent the faithful from displaying their devotion; they seek their cure from 'the water next to the well.' Ffynon Dwynwen, or Fountain of Venus, was also a name given to the sea, according to the Iolo MSS.; and in the legend of Seithenhin the Drunkard, in the 'Black Book of Carmarthen,' this stanza occurs:

Accursed be the damsel,
Who, after the wailing,
Let loose the Fountain of Venus, the raging deep.[162]

The story of Aphrodite, born from the foam of the sea, need only be alluded to here.

FOOTNOTE:

[162] 'Black Book of Carmarthen,' xxxviii. (An ancient MS. in the Hengwrt collection, which belonged of old to the priory of Black Canons at Carmarthen, and at the dissolution of the religious houses in Wales, when their libraries were dispersed, was given by the treasurer of St. David's Church to Sir John Price, one of Henry VIII.'s commissioners.)

V.

Several wells appear to have been devoted to the cure of the lower animals' diseases. Such was the well of Cynfran, where this ejaculation was made use of: 'Rhad Duw a Chynfran lwydd ar y da!'--(the grace of God and the blessed Cynfran on the cattle.) This Cynfran was one of the many sons of the patriarch Brychan, and his well is near Abergeleu. Pennant speaks also of a well near Abergeleu, which he calls St. George's well, and says that there the British Mars had his offering of horses; 'for the rich were wont to offer one, to secure his blessing on all the rest. He was the tutelar saint of those animals.'

VI.

St. Cynhafal's well, on a hillside in Llangynhafal parish, Denbighshire, is one of those curing wells in which pins are thrown. Its specialty is warts. To exorcise your wart you stick a pin in it and then throw the pin into this well; the wart soon vanishes. The wart is a form of human trouble which appears to have been at all times and in all countries a special subject of charms, both in connection with wells and with pins. Where a well of the requisite virtue is not conveniently near, the favourite form of charm for wart-curing is in connection with the wasting away of some selected object. Having first been pricked into the wart, the pin is then thrust into the selected object--in Gloucestershire it is a snail--and then the object is buried or impaled on a blackthorn in a hedge, and as it perishes the wart will disappear. The scapegoat principle of the sin-eater also appears in connection with charming away warts, as where a 'vagrom man' counts your warts, marks their number in his hat, and goes away, taking the warts with him into the next county--for a trifling consideration.[163]

FOOTNOTE:

[163] A popular belief among boys in some parts of the United States is that warts can be rubbed off upon a toad impaled with a sharp stick; as the toad dies the warts will go. _Per contra_, this cruel faith is offset by a theory that toads if ill-treated can spit upon their aggressors' hands and thus cause warts.

VII.

On Barry Island, near Cardiff, is the famous well of St. Barruc, or Barri, which was still frequented by the credulous up to May, 1879, at which time the island was closed against visitors by its owner, Lord Windsor, and converted into a rabbit warren. Tradition directs that on Holy Thursday he who is troubled with any disease of the eyes shall go to this well, and having thoroughly washed his eyes in its water, shall drop a pin in it. The innkeeper there formerly found great numbers of pins--a pint, in one instance--when cleaning out the well. It had long been utterly neglected by the sole resident of the island, whose house was a long distance from the well, at a point nearer the main land; but pins were still discovered there from time to time. There was in old days a chapel on this island; no vestige of it remains. Tradition says that St. Barruc was buried there, and the now barren and deserted islet appears to have been anciently a popular place among the saints. St. Cadoc had one of his residences there.[164] He was one day sitting on a hill-top in that island when he saw the two saints Barruc and Gwalches drawing near in a boat, and as he looked the boat was overturned by the wind. Both saints were drowned, and Cadoc's manual book, which they had in the boat with them, was lost in the sea. But when Cadoc proceeded to order his dinner, a salmon was brought to him which being cut open was found to have the missing manual book in its belly in an unimpaired condition. Concerning another saint whose name was Barri, a wonderful story is told that one day being on a visit to St. David he borrowed the latter's horse and rode across the sea from Pembrokeshire to the Irish coast. Many have supposed this Barri to be the same person as Barruc, but they were two men.

This romantic island was anciently celebrated for certain ghastly noises which were heard in it--sounds resembling the clanking of chains, hammering of iron, and blowing of bellows--and which were supposed to be made by the fiends whom Merlin had set to work to frame the wall of brass to surround Carmarthen. So the noises and eruptions of Etna and Stromboli were in ancient times ascribed to Typhon or Vulcan. But in the case of Barry I have been unable, by any assistance from imagination, to detect these mystic sounds in our day. Camden, in his 'Britannica,' makes a like remark, but says the tradition was universally prevalent. The judicious Malkin, however, thinks it requires but a moderate stretch of fancy to create this cyclopean imagery, when the sea at high tides is often in possession of cavities under the very feet of the stranger, and its voice is at once modified and magnified by confinement and repercussion.[165]

FOOTNOTES:

[164] 'Cambro-British Saints,' 336.

[165] Malkin's 'South Wales,' 132.

VIII.

Another well whose specialty is warts is a small spring called Ffynon Gwynwy, near Llangelynin church, Carnarvonshire. The pins used here must be crooked in order to be efficacious. It is said that fifty years ago the bottom of this little well was covered with pins; and that everybody was careful not to touch them, fearing that the warts deposited with the pins would grow upon their own hands if they did so.[166] At present the well is overgrown with weeds, like that on Barry Island.

FOOTNOTE:

[166] 'Arch. Camb.,' 3rd Se., xiii., 61.

IX.

The use of pins for purposes of enchantment is one of the most curious features of popular superstition. Trivial as it appears to superficial observation, it can be associated with a vast number of mystic rites and ceremonials, and with times the most ancient. There is no doubt that before the invention of pins in this country small pieces of money were thrown into the well instead; indeed it was asserted by a writer in the 'Archaeologia Cambrensis' in 1856 that money was still thrown into St. Tecla's well, by persons desirous of recovering from fits. That the same practice prevailed among the Romans is shown by Pliny, who speaks of the sacred spring of the Clitumnus, so pure and clear that you may count the pieces of money that have been thrown into it, and the shining pebbles at the bottom. And in connection with the Welsh well of St. Elian there was formerly a box into which the sick dropped money as they nowadays drop a pin into that well. This box was called cyff-elian, and was in the form of a trunk studded with nails, with an aperture in the top through which the money was dropped. It is said to have got so full of coins that the parishioners opened it, and with the contents purchased three farms. The presentation of pins to the well, though now a meaningless rite on the part of those who practice it, was originally intended as a propitiatory offering to the evil spirit of the well. In some instances the heathen faith is virtually restored, and the well endowed with supernatural powers irrespective of the dedication of its waters to a Christian saint. Indeed in the majority of cases where these wells are now resorted to by the peasantry for any other than curative purposes, the fetichistic impulse is much more conspicuous than any influence associated with religious teaching.

X.

St. Elian's is accounted the most dreadful well in Wales. It is in the parish of Llanelian, Denbighshire. It is at the head of the cursing wells, of which there are but few in the Principality, and holds still a strong influence over the ignorant mind. The popular belief is that you can 'put' your enemy 'into' this well, i.e., render him subject to its evil influence, so that he will pine away and perhaps die unless the curse be removed. The degree and nature of the curse can be modified as the 'offerer' desires, so that the obnoxious person will suffer aches and pains in his body, or troubles in his pocket--the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. The minister of the well appears to be some heartless wretch residing in the neighbourhood, whose services are enlisted for a small fee. The name of the person to be 'put into' the well is registered in a book kept by the wretch aforesaid, and a pin is cast into the well in his name, together with a pebble inscribed with its initials. The person so cursed soon hears of it, and the fact preys on his mind; he imagines for himself every conceivable ill, and if gifted with a lively faith soon finds himself reduced to a condition where he cannot rest till he has secured the removal of the curse. This is effected by a reversal of the above ceremonies--erasing the name, taking out the pebble, and otherwise appeasing the spirit of the well. It is asserted that death has in many instances resulted from the curse of this wickedly malicious well.[167]

FOOTNOTE:

[167] 'Camb. Pop. Ant.,' 247. See also 'Arch. Camb.,' 1st Se., i. 46.

XI.

Occasionally the cursing powers of a well were synonymous with curing powers. Thus a well much resorted to near Penrhos, was able to curse a cancer, i.e., cure it. The sufferer washed in the water, uttering curses upon the disease, and also dropping pins around the well. This well has been drained by the unsympathizing farmer on whose land it was, on account of the serious damage done to his crops by trespassers.

XII.

Wells from which milk has flowed have been known in several places. That Winifred's well indulged in this eccentricity on one occasion has been noted. The well of St. Illtyd is celebrated for the like performance. This well is in Glamorganshire, in the land called Gower, near Swansea. It was about the nativity of John the Baptist, on the fifth day of the week, in a year not specified, but certainly very remote, that for three hours there flowed from this well a copious stream of milk instead of water. That it was really milk we are not left in any possible doubt, for 'many who were present testified that while they were looking at the milky stream carefully and with astonishment, they also saw among the gravel curds lying about in every direction, and all around the edge of the well a certain fatty substance floating about, such as is collected from milk, so that butter can be made from it.'[168]

The origin of this well is a pleasing miracle, and recalls the story of Canute; but while Canute's effort to command the sea was a failure in the eleventh century, that of St. Illtyd five hundred years earlier was a brilliant success. It appears that the saint was very pleasantly established on an estate consisting of a field surrounded on all sides by plains, with an intermediate grove, but was much afflicted by the frequent overflowings of the sea upon his land. In vain he built and rebuilt a very large embankment of mud mixed with stones, the rushing waves burst through again and again. At last the saint's patience was worn out, and he said, 'I will not live here any longer; I much wished it, but troubled with this marine molestation, it is not in my power. It destroys my buildings, it flows to the oratory which we built with great labour.' However, the place was so convenient he was loth to leave it, and he prayed for assistance. On the night before his intended departure an angel came to him and bade him remain, and gave him instructions for driving back the sea. Early in the morning Illtyd went to the fluctuating sea and drove it back; it receded before him 'as if it were a sensible animal,' and left the shore dry. Then Illtyd struck the shore with his staff, 'and thereupon flowed a very clear fountain, which is also beneficial for curing diseases, and which continues to flow without a falling off; and what is more wonderful, although it is near the sea, the water emitted is pure.'[169]

FOOTNOTES:

[168] 'Arch. Camb.,' 1st Se., iii., 264.

[169] 'Cambro-British Saints,' 478.

XIII.

Some of the Welsh mystic wells are so situated that they are at times overflowed by the waters of the sea, or of a river. Taff's Well, in Glamorganshire, a pleasant walk from Cardiff, is situated practically in the bed of the river Taff. One must wade through running water to reach it, except in the summer season, when the water in the river is very low. A rude hut of sheet iron has been built over it. This well is still noted for its merits in healing rheumatism and kindred ailments. The usual stories are told of miraculous cures. A primitive custom of the place is that when men are bathing at this well they shall hang a pair of trousers outside the hut; women, in their turn, must hang out a petticoat or bonnet.

At Newton Nottage, Glamorganshire, a holy well called Sanford's is so situated that the water is regulated in the well by the ocean tides. From time immemorial wondrous tales have been told of this well, how it ebbs and flows daily in direct contrariety to the tidal ebb and flow. The bottom of the well is below high-water mark on the beach, where it has an outlet into the sea. At very low tides in the summer, when the supply of water in the well is scanty, it becomes dry for an hour or two after low water. When the ocean tide rises, the sea-water banks up and drives back the fresh water, and the well fills again and its water rises. The villagers are accustomed to let the well-water rise through what they call the 'nostrils of the well,' and become settled a little before they draw it. Of course this phenomenon has been regarded as something supernatural by the ignorant for ages, and upon the actual visible phenomena have been built a number of magical details of a superstitious character.

XIV.

The wide prevalence of some form of water-worship among Aryan peoples is a fact of great significance. Superstitions in connection with British wells are generally traceable to a Druidic origin. The worship of natural objects in which the British Druids indulged, particularly as regards rivers and fountains, probably had a connection with traditions of the flood. When the early Christian preachers and teachers encountered such superstitions among the people, they carefully avoided giving unnecessary offence by scoffing at them; on the contrary they preferred to adopt them, and to hallow them by giving them Christian meanings. They utilized the old Druidic circles as places of worship, chose young priests from among the educated Druids, and consecrated to their own saints the mystic wells and fountains. In this manner were continued practices the most ancient. As time passed on, other wells were similarly sanctified, as the new religion spread and parish churches were built. Disease and wickedness being intimately associated in the popular mind--epileptics and like sufferers being held to be possessed of devils, and even such vulgar ills as warts and wens being considered direct results of some evil deed, suffered or performed--so the waters of Christian baptism which cleansed from sin, cleansed also from disease. Ultimately the virtue of the waters came to be among the vulgar a thing apart from the rite of baptism; the good was looked upon as dwelling in the waters themselves, and the Christian rite as not necessarily an element in the work of regeneration. The reader who will recall what has been said in the chapter on changelings, in the first part of this volume, will perceive a survival of the ancient creed herein, in the notion that baptism is a preventive of fairy babe-thievery. Remembering that the changeling notion is in reality nothing but a fanciful way of accounting for the emaciation, ugliness, idiocy, bad temper--in a word, the illness--of the child, it will be seen that the rite of baptism, by curing the first manifestations of evil in the child's system, was the orthodox means of preventing the fairies from working their bad will on the poor innocent.