A Book of North Wales

by S. Baring-Gould

The intelligent tourist, knowing that the chief study of mankind is man, will find endless amusement in observing his fellow-Englishmen and women when out on a spree. The bow must at times be relaxed, but when it is, it does not invariably take a graceful form.

How the North Welsh coast has changed within a century in its aspect may be gathered from a letter of Mr. Gladstone, which describes it some eighty years ago.

“I remember,” he says, “paying my first visit to North Wales, travelling along the North Wales coast as far as Bangor and Carnarvon, when there was no such thing as a watering-place, no such thing as a house to be hired for the purpose of those visits that are now paid by thousands of people to such multitudes of points all along the coast. It was supposed that if any body of gentlemen could be found sufficiently energetic to make a railway to Holyhead, that railway could not possibly pierce the country, and must be made along the coast, and if carried along the coast, could not possibly be made to pay. So firm was the conviction that—I very well recollect the day—a large and important deputation of railway leaders went to London and waited on Sir Robert Peel, who was then Prime Minister, in order to demonstrate to him that it was totally impossible for them to construct a paying line, and therefore to impress upon his mind the necessity of his agreeing to give them a considerable grant out of the consolidated fund. Sir Robert Peel was a very circumspect statesman, and not least so in those matters in which the public purse was concerned. He encouraged them to take a more sanguine view. Whether he persuaded them into a more sanguine tone of mind I do not know. This I know, the railway was made, and we now understand that this humble railway, this impossible railway, as it was then conceived, is at the present moment the most productive and remunerative part of the whole vast system of the North-Western Company.”

Prestatyn, Rhyl, Abergele, Colwyn, Llandudno, Penmaenmawr, Aber—what a string it forms of bathing-places, ever extending and threatening in time to run a continuous line of lodging-houses and hotels along the entire coast!

S. Elian’s Well is a little beyond Colwyn. It is now filled up, and the structure over it has been destroyed, for the place was in bad repute, and was resorted to for no good purpose. The spring was a Cursing Well, and here from time immemorial a guardian ministered to the resentments of the ill-disposed. Anyone who bore a grudge against another, and believed himself to have been wronged, would resort to this well to “throw in” his adversary. A writer of the beginning of last century says:—

“The well of S. Elian lies in a dingle near the high road leading from Llanelian to Groes yn Eirias. It was surrounded by a wall of 6 feet high, and embosomed in a grove; but the trees have fallen and the wall is thrown down. It was resorted to by the Welsh to call imprecations and the vengeance of the saint on any who had done them an injury. Mr. Pennant says that he was threatened by a person he had offended with a journey to the well to curse him with effect. The ceremony was performed by an old woman, who presided at the font, in the following manner. After having received a fee, the name of the offender was marked on a piece of lead; this she dropped into the water, and mumbled imprecations, whilst taking from and returning into the water a certain portion of it. It frequently happened that the offending party who had been the subject of her imprecations sought through the medium of a double fee to have the curse removed; and seldom was this second offer refused by her. On this occasion she took water from the well three times with the new moon, select verses of the psalms were read on three successive Fridays, and a glass of the well water drunk whilst reading them.”

The well became such an occasion for ill-feeling that a former incumbent of the parish had it destroyed.

In 1818, at the Flintshire Great Sessions, the “priest” of the well was sent to gaol for twelve months for obtaining money under false pretences, by pretending to put some into the well, and to fetch some out whom others had put in.

The last “priest” of the well was John Evans, who died in 1858. Doctor Bennion, of Oswestry, once said to him, “Publish it abroad that you can raise the devil, and the country will believe you.” Evans took the advice offered in jest, and confessed afterwards, “The people in a very short time spoke much about me; their conduct when they thought I held converse with the devil fairly frightened me.”

In Ireland there are several cursing wells. There boulders are placed on the low wall that surrounds the well, and he who wishes to call down a curse upon another turns the stone against the sun thrice whilst repeating the curse and the name of the person on whom he desires it to fall.