Sir William Betham, in his “Gael and Cymbri,” (Dublin: W. Curry, Jun., & Co., 1834,) says, at page 235:—“The Celtæ were much addicted to the worship of fountains and rivers as divinities. They had a deity called Divona, or the river-god.”
THE WELL AT ALTAR-NUN. CURE OF INSANITY.
Amongst the numerous holy wells which exist in Cornwall, that of Alternon, or Altar-Nun, is the only one, as far as I can learn, which possessed the virtue of curing the insane.
We are told that Saint Nunne or Nuanita was the daughter of an Earl of Cornwall, and the mother of St David; that the holy well, which is situated about a mile from the cathedral of St David, was dedicated to her; and that she bestowed on the waters of the Cornish well those remarkable powers, which were not given to the Welsh one, from her fondness for the county of her birth.
Carew, in his “Survey of Cornwall,” thus describes the practice:—
“The water running from St Nun’s well fell into a square and enclosed walled plot, which might be filled at what depth they listed. Upon this wall was the frantic person put to stand, his back towards the pool, and from thence, with a sudden blow in the breast, tumbled headlong into the pond; where a strong fellow, provided for the nonce, took him, and tossed him up and down, alongst and athwart the water, till the patient, by foregoing his strength, had somewhat forgot his fury. Then was he conveyed to the church, and certain masses said over him: upon which handling, if his right wits returned, St Nun had the thanks; but if there appeared small amendment, he was bowssened again and again, while there remained in him any hope of life or recovery.”
The 2d of March is dedicated to St Nun, and the influence of the water is greatly exalted on that day.
Although St Nun’s well has been long famous, and the celebrity of its waters extended far, yet there was a belief prevailing amidst the uneducated, that the sudden shock produced by suddenly plunging an insane person into water was most effective in producing a return to reason.
On one occasion, a woman of weak mind, who was suffering under the influence of a religious monomania, consulted me on the benefit she might hope to receive from electricity. The burden of her ever-melancholy tale was, that “she had lost her God;” and she told me, with a strange mixture of incoherence and reason, that her conviction was that a sudden shock would cure her. She had herself proposed to her husband and friends that they should take her to a certain rock on St Michael’s Mount, stand her on it, with her back to the sea, when “the waters were the strongest, at the flowing of the tide;” and after having prayed with her, give her the necessary blow on the chest, and thus plunge her into the waters below. I know not that the experiment was ever made in the case of this poor woman, but I have heard of several instances where this sudden plunge had been tried as a cure for insanity.
Mr T. Q. Couch thus describes the present condition of this well in a paper on “Well-Worship:”—[21]