Henderson explains in Folklore that “the country girls imagine that the well is in charge of a fairy or spirit who must be propitiated by some offering, and the pin presents itself as the most ready or convenient, besides having a special suitableness as being made of metal.” Miss Marian Cox in her Introduction to Folklore says that the pins, coins, buttons and other objects found in wells, and generally considered to be offerings, may formerly have been vehicles of the diseases which patients have thought thus to throw off. This suggestion is probably based on the theory put forward by Sir John Rhys in regard to the rag-offerings at sacred wells. He believed that the object of placing these scraps of clothing at the wells was for transferring the disease from the sick person to some one else. The same explanation is vouchsafed in regard to the Indian custom of hoisting flags on trees. But whether or not this explanation is partially true in regard to the rag offerings, it is evidently untenable in regard to the presents of pins and buttons which are unquestionably offerings intended to please the well spirits.
In combating the opinion of Sir John Rhys, Sir Laurence Gomme gives in Folklore as an Historical Science a very significant example. “Among other items,” says he, “I have come across an account of an Irish station, as it is called, at a sacred well, the details of which fully bear out my view as to the nature of the rags deposited at the shrine being offerings to the local deity. One of the devotees, in true Irish fashion, made his offering accompanied by the following words:—‘To St. Columbkill—I offer up this button, a bit o’ the waistband o’ my own breeches, an’ a taste o’ my wife’s petticoat, in remimbrance of us havin’ made this holy station; an’ may they rise up in glory to prove it for us in the last day.’”
“I shall not attempt,” says the author, “to account for the presence of the usual Irish humour in this, to the devotee, most solemn offering; but I point out the undoubted nature of the offerings and their service in the identification of their owners—a service which implies their power to bear witness in spirit-land to the pilgrimage of those who deposited them during lifetime at the sacred well.” Mr. Eden Phillpots in one of his Cornish stories, Lying Prophets, confirms this view. In that story rags are offered. “Just a rag tored off a petticoat or some such thing. They hanged ’em up round about on the thorn bushes, to show as they’d a’done more for the good saint if they’d had the power.”
A few more authorities may be cited. These have been referred to in Knowlson’s Origins of Popular Superstitions and Customs. Grose explains the custom in the following extract:—
“Between the towns of Alten and Newton, near the foot of the Rosberrye Toppinge, there is a well dedicated to St. Oswald. The neighbours have an opinion that a shirt or shift, taken off a sick person and thrown into that well, will show whether the person will recover or die; for if it floated, it denoted the recovery of the party; if it sunk, there remained no hope of their life; and to reward the saint for his intelligence, they tear off a rag of the shirt, and leave it hanging on the briers thereabouts where, ‘I have seen such numbers as might have made a fayre rheme in a paper-myll’.”
There is an echo of this theory in the Statistical Account of Scotland: “A spring in the Moss of Melshach, of the chalybeats kind, is still in reputation among the common people. Its sanative qualities extend even to brutes. As this spring probably obtained vogue at first in days of ignorance and superstition, it would appear that it became customary to leave at the well part of the clothes of the sick and diseased and harness of the cattle as an offering of gratitude to the divinity who bestowed healing virtues on its waters. And now, even though the superstitious principle no longer exists, the accustomed offerings are still presented.”
Here is one more extract from the Statistical Account of Scotland:—
“There is at Balmano a fine spring well, called St. John’s Well, which in ancient times was held in great estimation. Numbers, who thought its waters of a sanative quality, brought their rickety children to be washed in its stream. Its water was likewise thought a sovereign remedy for sore eyes, which, by frequent washing, was supposed to cure them. To show their gratitude to the saint, and that he might be propitious to continue the virtues of the waters, they put into the well presents, not indeed of any great value, or such as would have been of the least service to him if he had stood in need of money, but such as they conceived the good and merciful apostle, who did not delight in costly oblations, could not fail to accept. The presents generally given were pins, needles, and rags taken from their clothes.”
Professor Rhys himself suggests that a distinction is to be drawn between the rags hung on trees or near a well and the pins, which are so commonly thrown into the water itself. In his opinion only the rags were meant to be vehicles of disease. “If this opinion were correct”, says Hartland, “one would expect to find both ceremonies performed by the same patient at the same well; he would throw in the pin and also place the rag on the bush, or wherever its proper place might be. The performance of both ceremonies, is, however, I think, exceptional. Where the pin or button is dropped into the well, the patient does not trouble about the rag, and vice versa.” Hartland is therefore inclined to think that the rags stand for entire articles of clothing which used to be deposited at an earlier time and he thinks that on the analogy of the part representing the whole the rags were intended to connect the worshipper with the deity. The reasoning underlying the rag-offerings, then, resolves itself into the following simple syllogism: My shirt or stocking, or a rag to represent it, stands for me; being placed upon a sacred bush or thrust into a sacred well it is in constant contact with divinity; the effluence of divinity, reaching and involving it therefore reaches and involves me.
A curious detail in regard to these rag-offerings is given by Mrs. Evans in reference to the rags tied on the bushes at St. Elian’s well. These rags must be tied with wool. This detail is not mentioned by the various authorities whom we have referred to, and the reason for using wool remains to be explained. We know that with the Hindus as well as with the Parsis the sheep is a sacred animal. The use of woollen clothes is prescribed in certain Hindu rituals and the sacred thread of the Parsis, which he carries round his waist day and night, is made of sheep’s wool. Probably the same idea led to the use of wool in the English custom of hanging up rags. If so, it affords a further ground for concluding that the rag was not a mere vehicle of disease but a grateful offering devoutly presented to the deity of the well or the tree.