# A Book of the West/Volume 2/2

CHAPTER II.
THE HOLY WELLS
THE system adopted by S. Patrick in Ireland was that of making as little alteration as he could in the customs of the people, except only when such customs were flatly opposed to the precepts of the gospel. He did not overthrow their lechs or pillar-stones; he simply cut crosses on them. When he found that the pagans had a holy well, he contented himself with converting the well into a baptistery. It is a question of judgment whether to wean people gently and by slow degrees from their old customs, or whether wholly to forbid these usages. S. Patrick must have known perfectly what the episcopal system was in Gaul, yet when he came into a land where the Roman territorial organisation had never prevailed, he accommodated Christian Church government to the conditions of Celtic tribal organisation.
S. MELOR'S WELL, LINKINHORNE
peoples, held wells in great veneration. He did not preach against this, denounce it as idolatrous, or pass canons condemning it. He quietly appropriated these wells to the service of the Church, and made of them baptisteries.
What Patrick did in Ireland was what had been done elsewhere.
When S. Samson was travelling in Cornwall between Padstow and Southill, and visited his cousin Padarn on the way; at a place called Tregear he found the people dancing round an upright stone, and offering it idolatrous worship. He did not smash it in pieces. He contented himself with cutting a cross on it.
Now the Celtic saints were mighty choice in their tipple. They insisted on having the purest of water for their drink ; and not only did they require it for imbibing, but they did a great deal of tubbing.
One day S. Germoe paid S. Piran a visit; after they had prayed together, "It is my tubbing time," said Piran. " Will you have a bath too?" "With the greatest of pleasure," responded Germoe. So the two saints got into the tub together. But the water was so cold that Germoe's teeth began to chatter, and he put one leg over the edge, intending to scramble out. "Nonsense!" said Piran; "bide in a bit, and you will feel the cold less sharply."
Germoe did this. Presently Piran yelled out, "Heigh! a fish! a fish!" and, between them, the two nude saints succeeded in capturing a trout that was in the vat.
"I rejoice that we have the trout," said Piran, ​ "for I am expecting home my old pupil Carthagh, and I was short of victuals. We will cook it for his supper."
Some of the saints had the fancy for saying their prayers standing up to their necks in water.
There is a story of S. Erc, the S. Erth of Land's End district, to the purpose, but I admit it is on late authority.
Domnhal, king of Ireland, sent his servants to collect goose-eggs. They found a woman carrying a black basket on her head piled up with the eggs of geese. The king's servants demanded them, but she answered that they were intended as a present to Ere, who spent the day immersed to the armpits in running water, with his Psalter on the bank, from which he recited the psalms. In the evening he emerged from his bath, shook himself, and ate an egg and a half together with three bunches of water- cress.
However, regardless of the saint's necessities, the servants carried the eggs away.
When S. Erc came out of the river, dripping from every limb, and found there were no eggs for his supper, he waxed warm, and roundly cursed the rascals who had despoiled him, and those who had set them on, and all such as should eat them.
The story goes on to tell how these eggs became veritable apples of discord, breeding internecine strife.
But to return to the wells.
Whether taught by experience, or illumined by the light of nature, I cannot say, but most assuredly ​ the saints of Ireland, Wales, and Cornwall were vastly particular as to their wells being of the purest and coldest water obtainable.
S. Senan had settled for a while by a well in Inis Caorach, and one day his disciple Setna—our Cornish Sithney—found a woman washing her child's dirty clothes in the fountain. He flew into a fury, and his companion Liberius was equally abusive in the language employed. Shortly after the boy tumbled over the rocks into the sea. The distracted mother ran to S. Senan, and when he heard the circumstances, assuming that this was due to the imprecations called down on the woman and her child by his two pupils, he bade both of them depart and not see his face again, unless the child should be produced uninjured. Setna and Liberius sneaked away very disconsolate, but as they happily found the lad on the beach uninjured, they were once more received into favour.
It is unnecessary here to repeat all the hackneyed references to the cult of fountains among the Celts; they may be taken for granted. We know that such was the case, and that the same cult continues very little altered among the Irish and Breton peasantry to the present day. In Cornwall there is now little or none of it. "When I was a man I put away childish things," says S. Paul, and the same applies to peoples. When they are in their cultural childhood they have their superstitious beliefs and practices; but they grow out of them, and we pity those who stick in the observance of usages that are unreasonable.
In pagan times money was dropped into wells ​ and springs, and divination was taken from the rising of bubbles. Now the only relic of such a proceeding is the dropping in of pins or rush crosses.
Wells were also sought for curative purposes, and unquestionably some springs have medicinal qualities, but these are entirely unconnected with the saints, and depend altogether on their chemical constituents.
It is said that rags may still be seen on the bushes about Madron well as they are about holy wells in Ireland and about the tombs of fakirs and Mussulman saints. I doubt if any Cornish people are so foolish as to do such a thing as suspend rags about a well with the idea of these rags serving as an oblation to the patron of the spring for the sake of obtaining benefits from him.
In Pembrokeshire till quite recently persons, even Dissenters, were wont to drink water from S. Teilo's well out of a portion of the reputed skull of S. Teilo, of which the Melchior family are the hereditary custodians.
The immersing of the bone of a saint in water, and the drinking of the water thus rendered salutary, is still practised in Brittany. This was done when Ireland was pagan; but the bones soaked were those of Druids.
There is a curious illustration, as I take it, of this practice in S. Clether's well chapel, recently restored. Here the stone altar remains in situ; it has never been disturbed.
WELL-CHAPEL OF S. CLETHER
territories by Dyfnwal, and here he spent a great part of his life, and died at an advanced age. He settled in the Inney valley in a most picturesque spot between great ruins of rock, where a perennial spring of the coolest, clearest water gushes forth. There can be very little doubt that S. Clether employed this spring as his baptistery, for the traditional usage of fetching water from it for baptisms in the parish church has lingered on there.
The holy well lies north-east of the chapel or oratory. When the chapel was reconstructed in the fifteenth century the water from the holy well was conveyed in a cut granite channel under the wall, and came sparkling forth in a sort of locker on the right side of the altar in the thickness of the wall.
To reach this there was a descent of a step in the floor. Thence the water flowed away underground, and gushed forth in a second holy well, constructed in the depth of the chapel wall outside on the south near the east end. Consequently there are two holy wells. The first, I take it, was the baptismal well; the second was used to drink from. A relic of the saint was placed in the channel where exposed; the water flowed over it, acquired miraculous virtues, and was drunk at the second well outside the chapel by those who desired healing.
​ An attempt was made to carry out the imagery of the vision of the holy waters in Ezekiel:—
"Afterward he brought me again unto the door of the house; and, behold, waters issued out from under the threshold of the house eastward : for the forefront of the house stood toward the east, and the waters came down from under from the right side of the house, at the south side of the altar." (xlvii. i.)
Cornwall possesses a vast number of holy wells, many of them in very bad repair. That at S. Cleer has been restored admirably; Dupath is in perfect condition; that of S. Guron at Bodmin has been restored; S. Melor's well at Linkinhorn is very beautiful and in perfect condition; S. John's well, Morwenstow, S. Julian's, Mount Edgcumbe, S. Indract's in the parish of S. Dominic, the well of S. Sidwell and S. Wulvella at Laneast, S. Samson's, Southill, Menacuddle, S. Anne's, Whitstone, S. Neot's, S. Nin's, Pelynt, Roche, S. Ruan's, are in good condition, but many are ruinous, or have been so altered as to have lost their interest. That of S. Mawes has been built up, and two great cast-iron pipes carried up from it for the circulation of air over the water, which is drawn away to a tap which supplies the town or village."
Here is a melancholy account of the condition to which a holy well has sunk:—
"Venton Eia (S. la's well), on the cliff overlooking Porthmeor.—This ancient well, associated with the memory ​of the patron saint of the town (S. Ives), was formerly held in the highest reverence. Entries occur in the borough records of sums paid for cleansing and repairing it, under 1668-9 and 1692-3. On the last of these occasions the well was covered, faced, and floored with hewn granite blocks in two compartments. It is still known as 'the Wishing Well,' from the old custom of divination by crooked pins dropped into the water. For some years past, however, this ancient source of purity has been shamefully outraged by contact with all that is foul. Close to it is a cluster of sties, known as 'Pig's Town,' and the well has become the receptacle for stinking fish and all kinds of offal. Just above it are the walls of the new cemetery. All veneration for this spot, so dear to countless generations of our forefathers, seems to have departed."
The well of S. Bridget at Landue remains, but the saint's chapel is gone. Stables near the well are thought to have polluted the water, and the well is closed lest the incautious should drink of the reputedly contaminated waters.
​ When S. Cadoc returned from the Holy Land he brought with him a bottle of water from the Jordan, and poured it into a well in Cornwall. None that I know of bears his name, but that at Laneast is called Jordan well.
There is a very singular custom still observed in connection with a stream in place of a holy well at Gwennap. There, on Good Friday, children seek two spots by a stream to baptise their dolls. This can be due only to a dim reminiscence of baptising in the open.
In addition to the holy wells, there are the pixy wells, where the ancient spirits have not been dispossessed by the saints.
Poughill parish takes its name from a puck or pisgie well.
Fice's well, near Prince Town, has on it "J. F. 1568." John Fitz, the astrologer, and his lady were once pixy-led whilst riding on Dartmoor. After long wanderings in the vain effort to find their way, they lighted on a pure spring, drank of it ; and their eyes were opened to know where they were and which was their right direction. In gratitude for this deliverance, old John Fitz caused the stone memorial to be set over the spring for the advantage of all pixy-led wanderers. Alas! the convict establishment has enclosed the moor all round, and now this well, though intact, no longer stands, as I remember it, in wild moorland, but enclosed by a protecting wall in a field.
In a certain large village of which I know something water was introduced by means of earthenware ​ pipes for a considerable distance, and then conveyed to taps at convenient spots by iron and lead.
Now there was one of these taps placed outside the Board school. The master said within himself, "If I go to the tap, I shall have to pay the water rate, which will be very heavy; if I never turn the tap, I surely cannot be required to pay. So I know what I will do. Go to! I will draw all my water from the well in the yard of the farm at the back of my premises."
He did so, and lost his wife and child by diphtheria. Verily even modern Board school masters might learn something from these wild old pure water- loving Celtic saints.
Note.—Book on Cornish Holy Wells:—
Quiller-Couch (M. and L.), Ancient and Holy Wells of Cornwall. London: Clark, 1894.
* ↑ Misses Couch were misled when they visited S. Mawes, and they give a photograph of a well which is not the holy well. The latter is among the houses opposite the post office, and had an arched entrance, now walled up.
* ↑ Matthews, History of the Parishes of S. Ives, Lelant, Towednack, and Zenttor (London, 1892), p. 40.