In Sir Walter Scott’s “Pirate” one of the characters expresses the wish that providence would soon send a wreck to gladden the hearts of the Shetlanders. At the other extremity of Britain, viz., in the Scilly Isles, the same hope was at one time cherished. St. Warna, who had to do with wrecks, was the patron saint of St. Agnes, one of the islands of the group. She had her holy well, and there the natives anciently dropped in a crooked pin and invoked the saint to send them a rich wreck.
It would be useless to attempt to give a list of Scottish wishing-wells; but the following may be mentioned. There is one in West Kilbride parish, Ayrshire, close to a cave at Hunterston. There is another at Ardmore, in Dumbartonshire. At Rait, in Perthshire, is St. Peter’s Wishing-well. In the united parishes of Kilcalmonell and Kilberry, in Argyllshire, is the ancient ecclesiastical site of Kilanaish. “Near the burial-ground,” Captain White tells us, “is its holy well, where it is proper to wish the usual three wishes, which, on my last visit to the place, our party, including one lady, devoutly did.” The same writer gives the following particulars about another Argyllshire spring:—“Near the Abbey of Saddell, Kintyre, is a fine spring of the class known throughout Scotland as Wishing-wells, which has always borne the name of Holy-well. It had the usual virtues and wishing powers ascribed to it. A pretty little pillar with cross cut upon it which has been mistaken for one of ancient date is scooped out into a small basin to catch the drip of the water. It was erected by a Bishop Brown, when residing at Saddell, in the beginning of the present century, to replace another one that had formerly stood there. Beside it, flows a stream called Alt-nam-Manach (the Monk’s Burn), and this, with the spring, no doubt formed the water supply of the monastery.”
St. Anthony’s Well, beside St. Anthony’s ruined Chapel, near Edinburgh, is probably the best known of Scottish wishing-wells. Its sanative virtues have already been alluded to, but it is nowadays more noted for its power of securing the fulfilment of wishes than the recovery of health. A pleasant picture of the romantic spot is given by Sir Daniel Wilson in his “Memorials of Edinburgh in the Olden Time”:—“The ancient Hermitage and Chapel of St. Anthony, underneath the overhanging crags of Arthur’s Seat, are believed to have formed a dependency of the preceptory at Leith, and to have been placed there, to catch the seaman’s eye as he entered the Firth, or departed on some long and perilous voyage; when his vows and offerings would be most freely made to the patron saint, and the hermit who ministered at his altar. No record, however, now remains to add to the tradition of its dedication to St. Anthony; but the silver stream, celebrated in the plaintive old song, ‘O waly, waly up yon bank,’ still wells clearly forth at the foot of the rock, filling the little basin of St. Anthony’s Well, and rippling pleasantly through the long grass into the lower valley.” The song in question gives expression to the grief of Lady Barbara Erskine, wife of James, Marquis of Douglas, in the time of Charles II., in connection with her desertion by her husband—
1. “O waly, waly up the bank
And waly, waly down the brae,
And waly, waly yon burnside,
Where I and my love wont to gae!
I lean’d my back unto an aik,
I thoucht it was a trusty tree;
But first it bow’d, and syne it brak: