Chapter V: Modern Chips of the Old Blocks (5)

When royalty refused any longer to practise this healing art, a substitute was found, noways flattering to the royal touch. It was discovered that rubbing the body of a patient with the dead hand of a criminal who had been executed, was a certain and instant cure for the King’s Evil. Such a hand had other good qualities as well, and even in the beginning of the present century, it would sell for a considerable sum, the executioner at Newgate deriving large monies from this little perquisite.

As concerns the royal touch, it was small marvel that while such superstitions were encouraged in high places, the law could do little to check the practices of the people, so that little effect was produced till after 1745, when, with the fall of the Jacobites, everything that was supposed to savour of Popery, was doubly discountenanced.

Nevertheless, as we have seen, the old superstition still lingers in certain districts. At Glass, in Banffshire, the Wallack Well and the Corsmall Well still receive pins, buttons, rags, and coins from sick folk, who hope thereby to be cured of their diseases. So does St. Mungo’s Well in Huntly, where the people assemble on the first of May, and carry away bottles of its water as a charm against the fairies, who are supposed to hold their revels at the Elfin Croft hard by. I thought of this custom while watching the pilgrims near the source of the Ganges sealing up bottles of the precious water, which they carry with them to their far-distant homes, therewith to anoint their most cherished idols. Another favourite well has always been that of St. Cecilia, near Netherdale in Aberdeenshire: some strong enforcements of the law of trespass have, however, recently checked the meetings here. The same law did its best to check the gatherings at the old well at Hopeman, near Burghead; but the sturdy fishers there do not understand such interference with their old customs, so they are now left undisturbed.... St. Fergon’s Well, near Inverlochy, is another which is said to possess divers virtues, and continues to be a favourite place of resort—the general offering to its spirit being a crooked pin, or, on rare occasions, “a bawbee.”

The well at Metherclunie, near Dufftown, is a great gathering-point on May morning, when the usual offerings of pins, &c., are made. The well of Montblairie, also in Banffshire, is equally sacred; so is St. Colman’s Well, in the parish of Kiltearn, in Ross-shire. But perhaps the most popular of all is the Greuze Well, near Dunkeld, which is still frequented by people from all parts of the country, who bring their sick children, that having tasted the mystic waters they may be healed. The offerings here are of a very superior sort, as silver coin is occasionally thrown in instead of the more frequent pins and pence; and rags and scraps of the sick folks’ clothes are left hanging on the heathery tufts, as a reminder to the spirit of the Greuze.

St. Mary’s Well at Orton, on Speyside, still continues to attract crowds on certain days, chiefly of young folk, who here hold their tryst—lads and lasses who count on a day’s sweethearting and merrymaking; but for more serious purposes, such as quest of health, it seems to have somewhat lost favour lately, though it is not long since we noticed a girl hiding the cap of a sick baby under a stone, as though shrinking from observation. In Badenoch, however, there is no such shame. There are wells for heart ache and wells for toothache, and one well that is bottomless, for when careless hands drop their pails therein they can never be recovered. At Culbokie, in Ross-shire, there is another lucky well, which, like all these others, is duly honoured by contributions of votive offerings, chiefly in the form of “clouts.” St. Fillan’s Well, in Perthshire, has been held sacred from time immemorial, though the name it bears dates only from the days of that sainted abbot of Strath-Fillan, to whose pious intervention Bruce was said to owe the victory of Bannockburn. The King’s chaplain had been commanded (so says Boethius) to bring to the field of battle the sacred arm of the saint; but the wily priest, fearing the loss of the relic, brought only its silver shrine. Yet when the King invoked the holy saint, the shrine opened of its own accord, revealing the precious limb laid safely therein; and the soldiers beholding this token of the favour of heaven fought as those already assured of victory. St. Fillan’s Well was long believed to cure insanity, and the luckless sufferers received very rough handling to effect this, being thrown from a high rock down into the well, and then locked up for the night in the ruined chapel. On “the witch-elm that shades St. Fillan’s spring” were hung the gay rags and scraps of ribbon wherein the saint was supposed to find delight. An average of two hundred patients were annually brought to this well. Precisely similar was the belief of the Welsh in the waters of Llandegla for the cure of the same mysterious affliction. They, in like manner, cast the unhappy patient into the well, and then left him bound for the night in the church, beneath the communion table. An offering of poultry was deemed essential; so if the patient were a woman, a hen was imprisoned with her; in the case of a man, the victim was a cock, into whom doubtless the demon of insanity passed.

A very important feature in the ceremonial at St. Fillan’s, Struthill, and other wells where lunatics were cured is, that after their bath in the holy fountain and their sunwise procession, they were tied to a pillar, supposed to be far more ancient than the Christian church wherein it stood. Colonel Forbes-Leslie mentions just such a pillar in the ruined city of Anarajapoora, in Ceylon. It is said to be possessed of precisely similar virtues, and though the natives call it an old Buddhist monument, it is probably a relic of a much earlier superstition.

He also alludes to the legend which tells how Gautama Buddha first realized his having attained perfection by finding that a dish which he placed on the water would float miraculously against the current of the stream. This is much the same notion as we find connected with various holy wells; such as the Well of Shadar, in Isle Bernera, whereon a wooden bowl was set floating as a means of discovering whether a sick person would or would not rally. Should the dish turn sunwise all would be well.

St. Andrew’s Well, in the Isle of Lewis, was also consulted as an oracle when any one was dangerously ill. A wooden tub full of this water was brought to the sick man’s room, and a small dish was set floating on the surface of the water; if it turned sunwise it was supposed that the patient would recover, otherwise he was doomed.

One such far-famed fountain lies at the foot of the great rock-mountain of Quiraing, in the Isle of Skye, where, sheltered by the greenest of grassy hills, are the clear crystalline springs of Loch Shiant, whose bright waters gleam over a bed of pure sand, and are still considered a specific for all manner of diseases. Pilgrimages are still sometimes made here, and the usual turn sunwise must be made thrice before drinking, after which some small offering is laid down for the guardian spirit of the well. Formerly, though the rivulet and the loch were alike full of fish, no one would presume to touch them; they were, in fact, esteemed as sacred as those holy fishes which fatten in the tanks of Himalayan temples, and which rise mockingly to stare at hungry travellers. Close by the Loch there still remains some low brushwood, marking where formerly a copse of larger bushes flourished, which, even a hundred years ago, were held in such reverence that no one might venture to break a twig from their branches. This probably was the latest trace of the tree-worship once commonly practised in these isles.

It is somewhat singular that this phase of idolatry should have died out so wholly in all Christianized countries, while water, fire, and stones retained so strong a hold on the reverence of the people. Vainly did the Council at Arles, in A.D. 452, decree that “if in any diocese any infidel either lighted torches or worshipped trees, fountains, or stones, he should be found guilty of sacrilege.” Vainly did divers other Councils again and again repeat the same warning, especially forbidding the lighting of torches and offering candles and other gifts to these three sacred powers. Vainly, too, did King Edgar and Canute the Great forbid the barbarous adoration of the sun and moon, fire and fountains, stones, and all kinds of trees and wood; still the people clung with tenacity to all their varied forms of paganism except the worship of trees, which seems gradually to have been forgotten, or only remembered in Germany, whence we have borrowed the Yule custom of illuminating a fir-tree with offerings of candles. The people of Vienna still preserve one curious relic of this worship in the heart of their great city, namely the _Stock am Eisen_, the battered trunk of an old tree, into which every apprentice must drive a nail for luck ere starting to seek his fortune in life. This old tree is the last relic of that sacred grove beneath the shade of which the people were wont to worship, and round which the Christian city has grown up.

Another holy well of some note is that at Tullie Beltane, near to which are two Druidic circles. Here the people met (at all events till lately) and having drunk of the water they solemnly walked nine times sunwise round the lesser temple and nine times round the well. But it is not only in Scotland that these traces of the old well-worship are to be found. Shropshire has divers sacred wells, which are reputed to cure lameness. In Yorkshire many wells are decked with flowers on Ascension morn in lieu of the old spring festival; while in Derbyshire the original day claims the same honour, and women and children carry their flowers on May morning to deck the wells.

Passing southward to the wild coast of Cornwall, we find the same lingering reverence for many a gushing fountain; for

“Springs, that with their thousand crystal bubbles,
Burst from the bosom of some desert rock,
In secret solitude.”

Just as in the days of Cæsar, the old Druids foretold the future by watching the bubbles that rose in these clear waters as they dropped pebbles therein; so to this day the Cornish peasant casts in pebbles or bent pins, and watches their course to learn what may be in store for him and his. Especially at St. Madron’s Well, a great number of people still assemble at sunrise on the first Sunday in May, bringing sickly children to bathe in its healing waters, and tying scraps of rag on the bushes near as votive offerings. Near this well stands an ancient cromlech, which a neighbouring farmer in an evil hour determined to pull down for his own building purposes. He succeeded in pulling the stones out of their place, but not all his horses and not all his men could do more. The stones remain; but from that hour all went wrong with the covetous farmer. His crops failed, his cattle died, and the people’s reverence for the old stones and the old well grew stronger than ever. A very similar story is told of another foolish farmer who tried to steal the granite basin from St. Nunn’s Well, in Pelynt, as being a desirable pig’s trough. The heavy stone broke its chain, and rolled back to its place; the oxen which drew it, died; the owner became lame and speechless. Would that the same condign punishment had overtaken some of our Northern Goths!

The efficacy of these wells does not seem to be limited to the first Sunday in May. There are certain Cornish wells to which the people resort on the first three Wednesdays in May; as, for instance, St. Euny’s Well—a clear spring at the foot of a hill called Carn Brea. Nor is it only in cases of sickness that they are visited. Dr. O’Connor mentions having asked a very old man what possible advantage he expected from frequenting such wells as were situated close to old blasted oaks, or to some upright, unhewn stone; and what was the meaning of sticking rags on the branches of such trees, and spitting on them. His answer, and that of other old men, was that their ancestors always did it; that it was a preservative against _Gaesa-Draoidact_—_i.e._, the sorceries of the Druids; that their cattle were thereby preserved from infectious diseases, and that the fairies were likewise pleased by this attention.

Some of these Cornish wells are as efficacious for the cure of insanity as those in our own Highlands. Thus at St. Nunn’s, in the parish of Alternum, any unhappy maniac was tossed headlong into the deep pool, and thrown to and fro in the water, backwards and forwards, till he was quite exhausted—a process which was called _boussening_ or bathing. After this the patient was carried to church, and masses were sung over him. This process was repeated again and again, till his feverish lunacy was chilled, either by death or recovery!

Of the fishing-wells, some have high repute in deciding questions of supremacy between man and wife. St. Keynan has bequeathed to a well in Cornwall, and also to one in South Wales, the power of conferring the mastery on whichever of a young couple first drinks of it after their marriage. One aggrieved husband confesses his wife’s superior wit in these lines:—

“After the wedding I hurried away,
And left my wife in the porch:
But in faith, she had been wiser than I,
For she took a bottle to church!”

If we cross the Channel, we find similar wells in Brittany; as, for instance, that of St. Anne of Auray, where the worshippers, after making their confession in due form within the church, come forth and walk thrice, sunwise, round the well, and then return to their devotions in the church. From the time of Charlemagne, successive edicts have striven to put down well-worship in France; and with as little success as in our own land.

Strange hints of the old faith also reveal themselves dimly through the traditions which relate to the principal churches of St. Michael, just as on some old palimpsest the curious scholar discerns faint traces of the characters first inscribed thereon, and but partially erased by the later scribe. Both at Mont S. Michel and at Monte Galgano, in Southern Italy, the mystic waters, and still more mystic bull, are strangely interwoven with the legend of the archangel. Thus, on the Monte Galgano, a herdsman is said to have pursued a refractory bull into a cavern on the very summit of the mountain, and, drawing a bow, would have slain him; but lo! the arrow returning, pierced the archer to the heart. Then the owner of the herd appealed to St. Michael, who, appearing in visible majesty, revealed the cause of the herdsman’s death—namely, that by seeking to slay the bull, he had profaned a cave, especially sacred to St. Michael himself; who further revealed that within the cave there flowed a hidden stream of limpid waters for the healing of all diseases, while beyond, there stood three mystic altars, decked by angelic hands. But the bull was no more seen. On this spot Galgano erected the first church dedicated to St. Michael.

Again, we hear how the archangel revealed to the Bishop of Avranches that on the very highest point of the detached crag, now known as the Mont S. Michel, there was concealed a living bull, and also a well-spring of pure water, and that where the bull had trampled the earth, a church was to be erected. The Bishop repaired to the crag, found the bull and the fountain, and built a small church, which in after years was replaced by that magnificent abbey whose massive towers and pinnacles, cresting the rocky, wave-beaten peak, have already “braved the tempests of a thousand years.”

As we listen to these Christian legends, we are carried dreamily back to the still older days, when healing waters and light and fire were adored; when the sun’s daily victory over the dark serpent of night was a matter of religious rejoicing, and the mighty bull was his recognised symbol of strength and power. From these to the triumphant archangel, and the crushed dragon, with the shadowy mysterious bull, and the hidden fountain of crystal waters in the background, the sequence seems so natural, that we need not wonder to find that all along the coast of Brittany and Cornwall the adoration of St. Michael was the branch of Christianity which found readiest acceptance among the people—a fact which accounts for the multitude of churches along these shores which bear his name.

Comparatively few traces now remain in those isles of the worship of the moon-goddess, Ashtaroth, or

“Astoreth, whom the Phœnicians called
Astarte, queen of heaven, with crescent horns;
To whose bright image nightly by the moon
Sidonian virgins paid their vows and songs,
In Sion also, not unsung....”

Some lingering notion of her influence doubtless inspired the extreme reverence with which the Highlanders and Islanders have always noted all changes of the moon. So late as the year 1700, the latter invariably selected the time of the moon’s increase for cutting their peat and rushes, building their earthen dykes _and felling timber_ (hence we assume they _had_ some trees then!) asserting that all manner of evils would attend their labour, should these things be done at the time of her decrease. As to the timber, they certainly have left little for their descendants! A birth or a marriage at the time of the full moon was accounted lucky; whereas to marry, or to kill a beast for food while the moon was waning, would have been the height of folly. In fact, no important business was commenced at the wane.

It is but a few years since the people of Morayshire used to gather long sprays of woodbine and ivy during the increase of the moon in March. These they twisted into wreaths, and kept them till the following March. Sick children were (as we have noticed) passed thrice through the wreaths, and likewise cattle, and their cure was considered almost certain. Shaw mentions having often seen this done. Even in England there are still some remote corners, such as Dartmoor, where it is considered very dangerous to cut children’s hair in March, at certain phases of the moon.

In Orkney the moon worship seems to have lingered longer than in most of the isles. Even in the present century the people used to assemble on New Year’s night and dance by moonlight round an upright Druid stone. Precisely the same custom is said to be still observed at the village of Croisic in France. In Orkney it was formerly _de rigueur_ for all young couples to repair by moonlight to the semi-circle of great stones at Stennis, known as the Temple of Odin (the Scandinavian sun-god), whom the woman, kneeling on the ground, must invoke. Then the lovers plighted their troth by clasping hands through the perforated stone of Odin. This pledge was recognized as legal, and so late as the year 1760 we hear how the elders of the kirk punished a girl’s false love, because he had broken the promise of Odin.

But binding as was this ceremony, there was, nevertheless, provision made for the untying of such matrimonial bonds as proved unbearable, and that, by a simpler process than the Divorce Court; for the unhappy couple had only to adjourn to the circle, or in later years to the kirk at Stennis, and thence go forth, one by the north, the other by the south door, a ceremony which was held to be a legal divorce, each being free straightway to make a new selection. A simple and more poetic form of betrothal was for the lad and lass to stand on either side of a narrow brook, and to clasp hands across the stream, calling on the moon to witness their pledge. Sometimes the young couple each took a handful of meal, and kneeling down, with a bowl between them, emptied their hands therein, and mixed the meal; at the same time taking an oath on the Bible never to sever till death should them part. A case was tried in Dalkeith in 1872, where this simple marriage ceremony was proved by Scotch law to be legally binding. But the commonest, and certainly the most curious custom of betrothal was that of thumb-licking, when lovers licked their thumbs and pressed them together, vowing constancy. This was held binding as an oath, and to break a vow so made was equivalent to perjury. This custom is still quite common in Ross-shire, on concluding all manner of bargains, such as sales of cattle or grain. Hence the saying, “I’ll gie ye my thumb on it,” or, “I’ll lay my thoomb on that,” expressing that the statement last made is satisfactory. There are men still in the prime of life who remember when the custom of thumb-licking was the recognised conclusion of business transactions, even so far south as the Clyde, and not unknown in Glasgow itself! Whatever may have been the origin of this quaint ceremony, it is curious to remember that the ancient Indian custom on sealing a bargain or conferring a gift was to pour water into the hand of the recipient, as is shown on many sculptures. Probably the thumb-licking was a convenient substitute for the original symbol.

Certainly it is curious to trace back some of these simple customs to their origin. How little we think, as we kiss our hands to the young moon, that more than three thousand years ago, Job, the grand old Arabian patriarch, spoke of this very action as of a sin to be punished: a denial of the Creator![47] There seems always to have been some difficulty in determining under what sex to adore the host of Heaven. The feminine Sun, and Moon masculine of the Germans certainly sound incongruous in our ears. In Northern India, also, as with the old Scandinavians, the moon is worshipped as a male divinity, under the name of Chandra (silvery), at whose great festivals all devout Hindus appear in white raiment, with silver ornaments. They sit on white cloths, and make offerings of milk and white sugar—gifts which surely must be more acceptable to the heavenly bodies than such libations of swine’s blood, as we are told the priestesses of the Philippine Isles, pour out to the stars (whom they adore as the children of the Sun and the Moon), and wherewith they mark the worshippers on the forehead.

The moon seems always to have found more favour with the women than the men, and while we hear of the old Highlanders taking off their bonnet to the rising sun, the women reserved their homage for the new moon. Any lassie who desired to invoke her protection, and crave her good influence in her sweethearting, had to go out at night and watch for the first new moon of the new year. Then kneeling on a “yerd-fast stane” (that is, one fixed immovably in the earth like the Druid altars) she was to lean her back against a tree, and thus wait for the moment when she might hail the pale crescent as it rose above the horizon. Bitterly cold work this must have been, on a chilly night in January, but with such an object in view, what mattered the freezing blast? _Le jeu valait bien la chandelle!_

How often we have laughed at the story of the lassie who thus went out to invoke the lady-moon, and pray that she would speedily send her a faithful swain. Now in the ivy behind her sat a great white owl, whose eyes winked and blinked and twinkled as he said “Who-o-oooo?” “Oh!” cried the lassie, “I dinna mind _who_. _Just anybody!_” Thereupon she returned home in all faith, and having found a suitable love, sent all her friends and companions forth on a similar errand.

All these legends of old Pagan times have tempted me to wander very far away from the green shores of Skye, along which we were sailing; but, knowing that such old lore is as dear to you as to myself, I make no apology for having spun such a yarn. However, it really is high time to return to the little yacht, and glide onward on our pleasant way, congratulating ourselves that our barque is no frail curragh of wickerwork and raw hides, nor our merry blue-jackets grey barbarians tattooed with woad!