Pennant in his account of St. Winefride’s well says: “Near the steps, two feet beneath the water is a large stone, called the wishing stone. It receives many a kiss from the faithful who are supposed never to fail in experiencing the completion of their desires, provided the wish is delivered with full devotion and confidence.”
Another famous wishing well is in Cornwall, named the Fairy Well, Carbis Bay. After the enquirer has formed his wish with his back to the well, he throws a pin over his left shoulder. If it strikes the water he obtains his wish, if it falls on the bank, he is disappointed. “The little well,” says Mr. Colin Bennett in the Good Words Magazine, “is much resorted to at the present day by tourists and all those who have a sense of the quaintness or romance of such ancient observances.”
The priestess of Gulval Well in Fosses Moor was an old woman who instructed the devotees in their ceremonial observances. They had to kneel down and lean over the well so as to see their faces in the water and repeat after their instructor a rhyming incantation, after which, the reply of the spirit of the well was interpreted by the bubbling of the water or its quiescence.
Just as there are wishing wells, there are cursing wells also, scattered through Europe, particularly in Celtic countries. The Kelts of Bretagne, says Major-General Forlong,[35] still fear not only “our Lady of Hate,” but also the “Well of Cursing.” The belief was, and perhaps still is, that if certain evil rites are performed, and a stone inscribed with the enemy’s name is thrown into such a well, the victim will pine away and die, unless he who has inflicted the curse relents, and removes the baneful charm ere it be too late.[36]
Near the well of St. Aelian, not far from Betteas Abergeley in Denbighshire, resided a woman who officiated as a kind of priestess. Any one who wished to inflict a curse upon an enemy resorted to this priestess, and for a trifling sum she registered in a book kept for the purpose the name of the person on whom the curse was intended to fall. A pin was then dropped into the well in the name of the victim and the curse was complete.[37]
Varied indeed are the virtues of Holy Wells and the wonders connected with them. A peculiar property of the water of St. Keyne is that whoever first drinks of it after marriage becomes the ruler in the household. “I know not,” says Fuller, “whether it be worth the reporting, that there is in Cornwall, near the parish of St. Neots, a well, arched over with the robes of four kinds of trees, withy, oak, elm, and ash, dedicated to St. Keyne. The reported virtue of the water is this, that whether husband or wife come first to drink thereof, they get the mastery thereby.” After his visit to Cornwall Southey celebrated this well in the famous poem, “The Well of St. Keyne.”
“St. Keyne,” quoth the Cornish-man, “many a time
Drank of this crystal Well,
And before the Angel summon’d her,