“In a spring near Nogent men and women bathed on St. John’s eve: Holberg’s comedy of Kilde-reisen is founded on the Copenhagen people’s practice of pilgriming to a neighboring spring on St. Hans aften to heal and invigorate themselves in its waters. On Midsummer-eve the people of Ostergötland journeyed according to ancient custom to Lagman’s bergekälla near Skeninge, and drank of the well. In many parts of Germany some clear fountain is visited at Whitsuntide, and the water drunk in jugs of a peculiar shape. Still more important is Petrarch’s description of the annual bathing of the women of Cologne in the Rhine; it deserves to be quoted in full, because it plainly proves that the cult prevailed not merely at here and there a spring, but in Germany’s greatest river. From the Italian’s unacquaintance with the rite, one might infer that it was foreign to the country whence all Church ceremonies proceeded, and therefore altogether unchristian and heathenish. But Petrarch may not have had a minute knowledge of all the customs of his country; after his time, at all events, we find even there a lustration on St. John’s Day (described as ancient custom then dying out). And long before Petrarch, in Augustine’s time, the rite was practised in Libya, and is denounced by that Father as a relic of paganism. Generally sanctioned by the Church it certainly was not, yet it might be allowed here and there, as a not unapt reminder of the Baptizer in the Jordan, and now interpreted of him, though once it had been heathen. It might easily come into extensive favor, and that not as a Christian feast alone: to our heathen forefathers St. John’s Day would mean the festive middle of the year, when the sun turns, and there might be many customs connected with it. I confess, if Petrarch had witnessed the bathing in the river at some small town, I would the sooner take it for a native rite of the ancient Germani; at Cologne, the holy city so renowned for its relics, I rather suspect it to be a custom first introduced by Christian tradition.”[96]
Water used for mechanical purposes was also looked upon as possessing peculiar virtues. Down to the present time the Servians catch the water which rebounds from the paddles of mill wheels. Women go early on St. George’s day, April 23d, to catch such water for bathing purposes. Some carry it home on the evening before the twenty-third and sprinkle broken bits of green herbs and boughs upon it. They believe that all evil and harm “will then glance off their bodies like water off the mill wheel,” as the result of such bathing. A trace of the same superstition remains in Servia in the popular warning, “Not to flirt the water off your hands after washing in the morning,” else you flirt away your luck for the day.
Many religious and superstitious practices are prevalent in Northern Europe in times of drouth, in order to propitiate the divinities, either good or evil, and secure a rainfall. Certain goddesses which were prominent in the Northern European mythologies, especially Nerthus and Holda, were closely connected with water-worship. The former represented the earth and is spoken of as “the bath-loving Nerthus.” Holda lived in wells. She was identical with the Roman Isis. “When it snows, she is making her bed, and the feathers fly. She stirs up snow as Donar does rain.” In Prussia when it snows the people say: “The angels are shaking their beds, and the flakes of down drop to the earth.” It was believed that Holda haunted the lakes and fountains and might be seen bathing at the hour of noon. Mortals could reach her dwelling by passing through a well. She was supposed to pass through the land at Christmas time, bringing fertility by her presence.[97]
On the fifth of August the lace-makers of Brussels pray to Mary that their work “may keep as white as snow.” It was believed that Holda appeared as an ugly old woman, long-nosed, big-toothed, with bristling and thick-matted hair. The common people still say of a man whose hair is tangled and in disorder: “He has had a jaunt with Holda.”
The pagan fear of water sprites still exists in Sweden. On crossing any water after dark it is thought advisable to spit three times, as a safeguard against their evil influences.[98] It is also thought to be dangerous to draw water from a well without saluting the divinity which governs it. This custom remains among modern Greeks. A thief is supposed to be safe in his evil course if he sacrifices to the water sprites, by throwing a little of that which he has stolen into a stream. In Esthonia, the newly married wife drops a present into the well of the house where she is to reside. In 1641, Hans Ohm, of Sommerpahl in Esthonia, built a mill upon a sacred stream. Bad harvests followed for several years until the peasants fell upon the mill, burnt it down and destroyed the piles in the water. Ohm went to law and obtained a verdict against the peasants. But to rid himself of new and grievous persecutions, he induced pastor Gutslaff to write a treatise especially combating this superstition. The Esthonians replied, when asked how good or bad weather could depend upon springs and brooks: “It is our ancient faith: the men of old have so taught us. Mills have been burnt down on this brook before now.” They called it “Holy Brook,” and believed that when they wanted rain it could be produced by throwing something into the stream.[99]
Many similar stories abound in the modern literature of Esthonia. Although less refined, the water-worship mythology of Northern Europe was as widespread and persistent in its influence as that of Southern Europe or of Asia. Its influence upon Christianity was not less strongly marked, and the modifications which it produced in Christian baptism continue in a great degree to the present day. The universal sway of pagan baptism and its essential unity are shown by turning from Northern Europe to the extreme point of another continent and considering
Water-Worship in Mexico.
Prescott speaks of the amazement with which the early Spaniards beheld the points of similarity between the customs of the pagan Mexicans and the Roman Catholic Church; he says:
“With the same feelings they witnessed another ceremony, that of the Aztec baptism; in which, after a solemn invocation, the head and lips of the infant were touched with water, and a name given to it; while the goddess Cioacoatl, who presided over childbirth, was implored that the sin which was given to us before the beginning of the world might not visit the child, but that, cleansed by these waters, it might live and be born anew.”[100]