Chapter XI: Sacred Wells and Trees (1)

{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 chapter I mentioned a practice of the Masurs in Eastern Prussia of taking off the patient’s shirt after an attack of fever, carrying it to a cross-road and suspending it on a signpost. It is probable that the signpost represents a sacred tree, or perhaps a cross. In Hungary there are two fountains resorted to for the cure of ailing limbs; but it is essential to wait until the water-spirit is in a good humour and to leave behind as an offering articles of {192} clothing and hair from the head. These are put upon the trees that stand around. Both in Hungary and in Transylvania ill-luck is like to befall one when his name-day happens on a Friday. To avoid the threatening evil, a rag is torn off the clothing, and hung, in Transylvania, on a tree before sunrise. The Magyar puts some of his blood and saliva on the rag and then burns it.[192.1]

Leaving the real meaning of these ceremonies to be considered hereafter, we go on for the present with the search for parallel superstitions in other parts of the world. In Hindustan, a festival called Melá is held at the beginning of the month of Mágha (about the middle of January) at the island of Ságar, at the mouth of the Hugli. A temple of Kapila, who is held to be an incarnation of Vishnu, stands on the island, and in front of it is (or was) a Bur-tree, beneath which were images of Ráma and Hanumán, while an image of Kapila, nearly of life-size, was within the temple. The pilgrims who crowd thither at the festival commonly write their names on the walls, with a short prayer to Kapila, or suspend a piece of earth or brick from a bough of the tree, offering at the same time a prayer and a promise, if the prayer be granted, to make a gift to some divinity.[192.2] Shreds of clothing and feathers may be seen flying from the posts erected on the roofs of the Toda temple-huts in the Neilgherry Hills. The Korwas hang rags on the tree which constitutes the shrine of their village gods. The Patáris, when attacked by fever, tie round a pípal-tree a cotton string that has never touched water, and suspend rags from the branches. Elsewhere in India, as well as in Arabia and Persia, strips of cloth are {193} suspended from shrubs and trees, which, for some reason or other, are venerated; and, in Persia at all events, not only are rags, amulets, and other votive offerings found upon the trees, but the trees are also covered with nails.[193.1] At the source of the Jordan, as I am informed by Dr. Robert Munro, there is a tree hung with rags; and indeed such trees are not uncommon throughout Asiatic Turkey. Mohammed is said to have made a pilgrimage to a similar one. At Tyana, in Cappadocia, was a pillar to which persons used to go to nail their fevers.[193.2] With this last may be compared an Athenian legend of Saint John, who is declared to have been a physician especially skilled in the treatment of fevers. Before his death he set up a column and bound under its foundations with silken threads all manner of diseases; fevers with a yellow thread, measles with a red one, and so forth. And he said: “When I die, let whosoever is sick come and tie to this column a silken thread with three knots of the colour that his sickness takes, and say, ‘Dear Saint John, I bind my sickness to the column, and do by thy favour loose it from me,’ and then he will be healed.”[193.3] Neither of these is an ordinary case of transference, however it may look like it at first sight. It falls rather into the category of rags used to bathe a wounded limb and left in the holy well or on the bushes adjacent.

{194}

In Tibet there are numerous heaps of stones erected by wayfarers, to which every one who passes adds, and where he prays. Lamas who come by set up stakes, fastening thereon a bit of silk or other stuff, so that they resemble flags. At the tops of the passes in the mountains between Siam and Burmah are found heaps of stones. Passengers, besides stones, lay down on them flowers and leaves. Among the Mongols heaps of this kind are called _obo_; and they are said to be all consecrated by Buddhist lamas. Pousselgue describes one on a difficult pass between Urga and Kiachta. A rude image of Buddha was formed of two roughly chiselled blocks. By it stood a large granite urn for the burning of incense; and all around were numbers of stakes covered with offerings of clouts, pieces of paper, prayer-wheels, and even purses and objects of precious metal. Pousselgue’s guide bowed down before the obo and offered up a bit of his fur-robe.[194.1] Nobody who has read Mr. Cooper’s amusing account of his marriage unawares to a girl in Eastern Tibet will forget how, when he got up to the top of a high hill, a little later in the day, with his bride, the lady contributed her quota of stones and prayers at the inevitable cairn, and then insisted, first, that in order to secure their connubial happiness the baggage must be unpacked and a couple of Khatah cloths taken out and fastened by her unwilling bridegroom to the flag-staves, and then that he must prostrate himself in prayer with her. “And there, on the summit of a Tibetan mountain, kneeling before a heap of stones, my hand wet with the tears of a daughter of the country, I muttered curses on the fate that had placed me in such a position.”[194.2] Similarly an English traveller in Ladákh was compelled to gratify the spirits of {195} a certain pass with an offering of the leg of a worn-out pair of nankin trousers.[195.1] Nor is the custom confined to Buddhists. Among the Mrús of the Chittagong Hills every one on reaching the crest of a hill which he is crossing “plucks a fresh young shoot of grass, and places it on a pile of the withered offerings of former journeyers who have gone before.”[195.2]

The Karakasses, too, of Eastern Siberia make to the mountains and rivers which they pass offerings of tobacco, a branch of a tree, a strip of a pelisse or some other trifle. The Kamtchadales and Teleouts offer pine-branches, pieces of meat, fish or cheese, packets of hair or horsehair, little furs or ribbons of cloth. The offerings dedicated to a mountain are suspended from a tree on some hill or other conspicuous place. The Tunguz call these trees Nalaktits.[195.3] Erman, the German traveller in Siberia, records having seen in the woods between Churopchinsk and Aruilákhinsk trees, at different points along the road, hung thick with horse-hair. It was an ancient custom of the nomadic Yakuts, he was told, to put tufts of their horses’ hair on these trees, and many of the tufts “had so weather-beaten an appearance, that there could be no doubt of their antiquity.” Every horseman who passed added to them, and the custom was called by a name signifying propitiation for the Spirit of the Woods.[195.4] In the Alazeï Mountains, on the road from Kolymsk to Verkhoiansk, is the tomb of a famous Tchuktchi sorceress. All who pass deposit offerings: on the cross they hang strips of cloth and horsehair; at its foot they lay pieces of meat and fish. {196} He who forgets this act of homage is always punished. The devils cause him to lose his way, his horse breaks a limb, or his sledge is shattered.[196.1] The Kirghiz honour a solitary poplar, said to be the only tree standing between Fort Orsk on the Ural river and the Sea of Aral. It is covered with shreds torn from the clothing of the tribesmen who have worshipped at it. A certain wild plum-tree is also reverenced in the same way. The number of rags and pieces of sheep-skin attached to it is constantly increasing.[196.2] Every traveller from Marco Polo downward speaks of the practice as rife in Central Asia. Many of the Tartars are Mohammedans; and the shrine of every Mohammedan saint is adorned with rams’ horns and with long bits of dirty rag, a pious gift no pilgrim would omit to tie on some adjacent stick or tree.[196.3]

Sacred trees covered with clouts hung by votaries, as well as piles of stones cast from the hands of wayfarers, are to be seen everywhere in Corea.[196.4] We are told that “devils”--probably, as in the Tchuktchi superstition, a generic term for spirits--“are supposed to inhabit certain withered trees; and the natives are careful never to pass a devil-tree without throwing a stone at it, or tying a piece of cloth to one of its branches. If they omit to do this, evil, they believe, is sure to come to them and their families.”[196.5] Mr. J. F. Campbell records having found in Japan “strips of cloth, bits of rope, slips of paper, writings, bamboo strings, flags, tags, and prayers hanging from every temple,” and small piles of stones at the foot of every image {197} and memorial-stone, and on every altar by the wayside; and he draws attention to the similarity of the practices implied to those of his native country.[197.1] Another traveller in Japan states that women who desire children go to a certain sacred stone on the holy hill of Nikko, and throw pebbles at it. If they succeed in hitting it their wish is granted. They seem very clever at the game, he says maliciously. Further, the same writer speaks of a seated statue of Buddha in the park of Uyeno at Tokio, on whose knees women flung stones with the same object. Describing a temple elsewhere, he records that the grotesque figures placed at the door were covered--or, as he more accurately puts it, constellated--with pellets of chewed paper shot through the railing that surrounded them by persons who had some wish to be fulfilled. A successful shot implied the probability of the attainment of the shooter’s desire.[197.2] Japanese pilgrims also paste up their cards containing name and address on the doors or pillars of the shrines they visit.[197.3]

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In another Asiatic island, Borneo, a tree hung with countless rags is often seen at the cross-ways, and every passenger tears off a piece of his clothing and fastens it on the tree. The natives who practise it can give no other account of the custom than that they fear for their health if they omit it. Dr. Ten Kate lately found twice in the island of Great Bastard under the branches of a large tree a heap of stones whereon fishermen were wont to place rags of red, green or many-coloured calico. In the same way an old tree-trunk, or a stake propped upright with stones, is found here and there in the Egyptian desert adorned with shreds and tatters of clothing; for every pilgrim as he passes adds a rag. Such a tree is a certain ancient tamarisk-tree, called “the Mother of Clouts,” between Dar-el-beida and Suez. In the Mohammedan districts of North Africa trees of this kind are known as Marabout-trees; and it is thought that by tying on one of them a screed from one’s clothing all evil and sickness passes over to the tree, which is generally a crippled, miserable specimen.[198.1]

But the custom is not confined in Africa any more than in Asia to Mohammedan districts. The Shilluk on the White Nile derive their origin from an ancestor whom they call Niekam; and from his sacred tree they suspend glass beads and pieces of stuff.[198.2] On the western side of the continent, Mungo Park found a tree in the kingdom of Woolli decorated with innumerable rags or scraps of cloth {199} tied upon its branches at different times by travellers. He conjectures that it was at first intended as an indication that water was to be found not far off; but of this there is no evidence. The custom was, as he says, so greatly sanctioned by time that nobody presumed to pass without hanging up something; and the intrepid explorer himself followed the example. A pool was, in fact, found not far off, as his Negroes predicted.[199.1] A French traveller in the region of the Congo relates with astonishment concerning the _n’doké_--which he portrays as “fetishes important enough to occupy a special hut, and confided to the care of a sort of priests, who alone are reputed to have the means of making them speak”--that when it is desired to invoke the fetish, one or more pieces of native cloth, and the like, are offered to it or to the fetish-priest; and the worshipper is then admitted to plant a nail in the statue, the priest meanwhile, or the worshipper himself, formulating his prayer or his desires.[199.2] Another French traveller in the watershed of the upper Niger reports the custom of sacrificing animals under sacred trees. The animal when slain is eaten; its head is placed under the tree, or suspended from one of the branches, or laid in a fork. Pottery of various kinds, handles of old agricultural implements, old clothes and calabashes, cow-tails, and so forth, lie around the fetish-tree; and under one such tree he saw a piece of {200} hollow wood propped on forks and filled with grass and other plants.[200.1]

In the New World the practice does not seem so common. Darwin, however, notes one instance. On the sandstone plain from which the valley of the Rio Negro has been carved, not far from the town of Patagones, is a solitary tree reverenced by the aborigines as a god by the name of Walleechu. The traveller found it leafless, being winter-time; but from numberless threads were suspended on the branches cigars, bread, meat, pieces of cloth and other things. “Poor Indians,” he says, “not having anything better, only pull a thread out of their ponchos, and fasten it to the tree. Richer Indians are accustomed to pour spirits and _maté_ into a certain hole, and likewise to smoke upwards, thinking thus to afford all possible gratification to Walleechu. To complete the scene, the tree was surrounded by the bleached bones of horses which had been slaughtered as sacrifices. All Indians of every age and sex make their offerings; they then think that their horses will not tire, and that they themselves shall be prosperous.”[200.2]

To sum up:--We find widely spread in Europe the practice of throwing pins into sacred wells, or sticking pins or nails into sacred images or trees, or into the wall of a temple, or floor of a church, and--sometimes accompanying this, more usually alone--a practice of tying rags or leaving portions of clothing upon a sacred tree or bush, or a tree or bush overhanging, or adjacent to, a sacred well, or of depositing them in or about the well. The object of this rite is generally the attainment of some wish, or the granting {201} of some prayer, as for a husband, or for recovery from sickness. In the Roman instance it was a solemn religious act, to which (in historical times at least) no definite meaning seems to have been attached; and the last semblance of a religious character has vanished from the analogous performances at Angers and Vienna. In Asia we have the corresponding customs of writing the name on the walls of a temple, suspending some apparently trivial article upon the boughs of a sacred tree, flinging pellets of chewed paper or stones at sacred images, and attaching rags, writings, and other things to the temples, and to trees. Trees are adorned in the same way with rags and other useless things in Africa--a practice not unknown, though rare, in America. On the Congo a nail is driven into an idol in the Breton manner. It cannot be doubted that the purpose and origin of all these customs are identical, and that an explanation of one will explain all.

The most usual explanations are, first, that the articles left are offerings to the god or presiding spirit, and, secondly, that they contain the disease of which one desires to be rid, and transfer it to any one who touches or removes them. These two explanations appear to be mutually exclusive, though Professor Rhys suggests that a distinction is to be drawn between the pins and the rags. The pins, he thinks, may be offerings; and it is noteworthy that in some cases they are replaced by buttons or small coins. The rags, on the other hand, may be, in his view, the vehicles of the disease. If this opinion were correct, one would expect to find both ceremonies performed by the same patient at the same well: he would throw in the pin and also place the rag on the bush, or wherever its proper place might be. The performance of _both_ ceremonies {202} is, however, I think, exceptional. Where the pin or button is dropped into the well, the patient does not trouble about the rag, and _vice versâ_. Professor Rhys only cites one case to the contrary. There the visit to the well was prescribed as a remedy for warts. Each wart was to be pricked with a pin, and the pin bent and thrown into the well. The warts were then to be rubbed with tufts of wool collected on the way to the well, and the wool was to be put on the first whitethorn the patient could find. As the wind scattered the wool the warts would disappear. Upon this one or two observations may be made. Either the act of affixing the wool bears the meaning assigned in the last chapter to similar practices, or the rite only survives in a degraded form, and originally some definite sacred tree was its object. If the latter, then the rite is here duplicated. For if the pins were really offerings, to be distinguished in character from the deposits of wool, the prescription to touch the warts with them would be meaningless. But we must surely deem that whatever value attached to the rubbing of the warts with wool would equally attach to their pricking with the pins.

Moreover, the curious detail mentioned by Mrs. Evans in reference to the rags tied on the bushes at Elian’s Well--namely, that they must be tied on with wool--points further to a degradation of the rite in the case we are now examining. Probably at one time rags were used, and simply tied to the sacred tree with wool. What may have been the reason for using wool remains to be discovered. But it is easy to see how, if the reason were lost, the wool might be looked upon as the essential condition of the due performance of the ceremony, and so continue after the disuse of the rags.

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Nor can we stop here. From all we know of the process of ceremonial decay, we may be tolerably sure that the rags represent entire articles of clothing, which were at an earlier period deposited. There is no need to discuss here the principle of substitution and representation, so familiar to all students of folklore. It is sufficient to point out that, since the rite is almost everywhere in a state of decay, the presumption is in favour of entire garments having been originally deposited; and that, in fact, we do find this original form of the rite in the ancient and several of the modern examples I have cited on the continent of Europe and elsewhere. Entire articles of clothing seem also to have been usually left at several Scottish wells in quite recent times. Such was a chalybeate spring in the parish of Kennethmont, Aberdeenshire. As its virtue was invoked not only for human beings but for cattle, the tribute consisted of “part of the clothes of the sick and diseased, and harness of the cattle.”[203.1] If we may trust the slovenly compilation of Mr. R. C. Hope on the holy wells of Scotland, a traveller in 1798, from whom he professes to quote, but whom he neither names nor identifies, relates of the Holy Pool of Strathfillan in Perthshire, that “each person gathers up nine stones in the pool, and after bathing, walks to a hill near the water, where there are three cairns, round each of which he performs three turns, at each turn depositing a stone; and if it is for any bodily pain, fractured limb, or sore, that they are bathing, they throw upon one of those cairns that part of their clothing which covered the part affected; also, if they have at home any beast that is diseased, they have only to bring some of the meal which it feeds upon, and make it into paste with {204} these waters, and afterwards give it to him to eat, which will prove an infallible cure; but they must likewise throw upon the cairn the rope or halter with which he was led. Consequently the cairns are covered with old halters, gloves, shoes, bonnets, night-caps, rags of all sorts, kilts, petticoats, garters and smocks. Sometimes they go as far as to throw away their halfpence.”[204.1] From this account it appears that stones from the pool, rags, garments which had covered the diseased parts of the devotees, and halfpence, had all the same value. The stones could not have been offerings, and it was evidently not usual to throw away halfpence. The gifts of rags and articles of clothing are ambiguous. If we must choose between regarding them as offerings and as vehicles of disease, the analogy of the gifts at the shrine of Saint Michel-la-Rivière favours the former. Under ecclesiastical patronage, however, the rite had doubtless been manipulated to the benefit of the officials; and we can use the instance no further than as proof that the deposit of garments was ambiguous enough to develop sometimes into pious gifts, if it developed at other times into devices for the shuffling of disease off the patient on another person.[204.2]

Cairns have already been mentioned as occurring in {205} Buddhist lands, where we found an apparent equality in the offerings of stones and of other things at these sacred places, just as at Strathfillan. But the custom of erecting piles of stones is so ancient and widespread, that it may be worth while looking at it a little more closely before proceeding with our inquiry. Dr. Andree, whose ethnographical collections have furnished me with many examples for the present chapter, has brought together a large number of instances of cairns from all quarters of the globe. They resolve themselves, on examination, into three classes.

First are those to which no additions are made and where no rites are performed. Of such it may be said broadly that they only exist where the original purpose of the cairn has been forgotten, and probably the race that erected it has passed away. Of this kind was the cairn at Gilead, said to have been erected by Jacob and Laban on the scene of their final reconciliation and parting.[205.1] It is hardly necessary to say that there is nothing worthy of being called evidence in favour of the tradition preserved in Genesis. We may conjecture that it was a place held sacred by the predecessors of the conquering Hebrews. If the Batoka were not in the habit of adding to the pile {206} mentioned by Livingstone, that pile must be set down as belonging to the same class. They declared it was made by their forefathers by way of protest against the wrong done them by another tribe not named, as an alternative to fighting.[206.1] The omission of the name of the offending tribe is an index to their forgetfulness of the real object of the cairn. Such, too, were the small heaps of stones found by Darwin on the summit of the Sierra de las Animas in Uruguay. The Indians are extirpated from the district, and nobody knows the purpose for which the heaps were erected.[206.2]