‘Great was the practice formerly of spells and sorceries in this island; for there used to be there women making wind for sailors, which wind they confined within three knots made on a thread. And when they had need of wind they would undo a knot of the thread.’
This was written in the sixteenth century, and based probably on Higden’s Polychronicon, book I, chap. xliv. (= I. 42–3), but the same practice of wind making goes on to this day, one of the principal practitioners being the woman to whom reference was made at p. 299. She is said to tie the breezes in so many knots which she makes on the purchasing sailor’s pocket-handkerchief. This reminds one of the sibyl of Warinsey, or the Island of Guernsey, who is represented by an ancient Norse poet as ‘fashioning false prophecies.’ See Vigfusson and Powell’s Corpus Poeticum Boreale, i. 136; also Mela’s first-century account of the virgins of the island of Sena, which runs to the following effect:—‘Sena, in the Britannic Sea, opposite the coast of the Osismi, is famous for its oracle of a Gaulish god, whose priestesses, living in the holiness of perpetual virginity, are said to be nine in number. They call them Gallizenæ, and they believe them to be endowed with extraordinary gifts to rouse the sea and the wind by their incantations, to turn themselves into whatsoever animal form they may choose, to cure diseases which among others are incurable, to know what is to come and to foretell it. They are, however, devoted to the service of voyagers only who have set out on no other errand than to consult them[5].’ It is probable that the sacrosanct[6] inhabitants of the small islands on the coasts of Gaul and Britain had wellnigh a monopoly of the traffic in wind[7].
In the last chapter I made allusion to several wells of greater or less celebrity in the Isle of Man; but I find that I have a few remarks to add. Mr. Arthur Moore, in his book on Manx Surnames and Place-Names, p. 200, mentions a Chibber Unjin, which means the Well of the Ash-tree, and he states that there grew near it ‘formerly a sacred ash-tree, where votive offerings were hung.’ The ash-tree calls to his mind Scandinavian legends respecting the ash, but in any case one may suppose the ash was not the usual tree to expect by a well in the Isle of Man, otherwise this one would scarcely have been distinguished as the Ash-tree Well. The tree to expect by a sacred well is doubtless some kind of thorn, as in the case of Chibber Undin in the parish of Malew. The name means Foundation Well, so called in reference probably to the foundations of an ancient cell, or keeill as it is called in Manx, which lie close by, and are found to measure twenty-one feet long by twelve feet broad. The following is Mr. Moore’s account of the well in his book already cited, p. 181:—‘The water of this well is supposed to have curative properties. The patients who came to it, took a mouthful of water, retaining it in their mouths till they had twice walked round the well. They then took a piece of cloth from a garment which they had worn, wetted it with the water from the well, and hung it on the hawthorn tree which grew there. When the cloth had rotted away, the cure was supposed to be effected.’
I visited the spot a few years ago in the company of the Rev. E. B. Savage of St. Thomas’ Parsonage, Douglas, and we found the well nearly dried up in consequence of the drainage of the field around it; but the remains of the old cell were there, and the thorn bush had strips of cloth or calico tied to its branches. We cut off one, which is now in the Pitt-Rivers Museum at Oxford. The account Mr. Savage had of the ritual observed at the well differed a little from that given by Mr. Moore, especially in the fact that it made the patient who had been walking round the well with water from the well in his mouth, empty that water finally into a rag from his clothing: the rag was then tied to a branch of the thorn. It does not appear that the kind of tree mattered much; nay, a tree is not, it seems to me, essential. At any rate, St. Maughold’s Well has no tree growing near it now; but it is right to say, that when Mr. Kermode and I visited it, we could find no rags left near the spot, nor indeed could we expect to find any, as there was nothing to which they might be tied on that windy headland. The absence of the tree does not, however, prove that the same sort of ritual was not formerly observed at St. Maughold’s Well as at Chibber Undin; and here I must mention another well which I have visited in the island more than once. It is on the side of Bradda Hill, a little above the village of Bradda, and in the direction of Fleshwick: I was attracted to it by the fact that it had, as I had been told by Mr. Savage, formerly an old cell or keeill near it, and the name of the saint to which it belonged may probably be gathered from the name of the well, which, in the Manx of the south of the island, is Chibbyrt Valtane, pronounced approximately Chŭ́vurt Voltáne or Olđáne. The personal name would be written in modern Manx in its radical form as Boltane, and if it occurred in the genitive in Ogam inscriptions I should expect to find it written Boltagni or Baltagni[8]. It is, however, unknown to me, though to be placed possibly by the side of the name of the saint after whom the parish of Santon is called in the south-east of the island. This is pronounced in Manx approximately[9] Santane or Sanđane, and would have yielded an early inscriptional nominative SANCTANVS, which, in fact, occurs on an old stone near Ỻandudno on the Welsh coast: see some notes of mine in point in the Archæologia Cambrensis, 1897, pp. 140–2. To return to the well, it would seem to have been associated with an old cell, but it has no tree growing by. Mr. Savage and I were told, nevertheless, that a boy who had searched the well a short time previously had got some coins out of it, quite recent ones, consisting of halfpennies or pennies, so far as I remember. On my observing to one of the neighbours that I saw no rags there, I was assured that there had been some; and, on my further saying that I saw no tree there to which they could be tied, I was told that they used to be attached to the brambles, which grew there in great abundance. Thus it appears that, in the Isle of Man at any rate, a tree to bear the rags was not an essential adjunct of a holy well.
Before leaving these well superstitions the reader may wish to know how they were understood in Ireland not long ago: so I venture to quote a passage from a letter by the late Mr. W. C. Borlase on Rag Offerings and Primitive Pilgrimages in Ireland, as follows:—
‘Among the MSS. of the late Mr. Windele, of Cork, … I find a passage which cannot fail to interest students of folk-lore. It relates to the custom of affixing shreds of rag to the hawthorn tree, which almost invariably stands by the brink of the typical Irish “holy well,” and it gives us the meaning of the custom as understood, some half-century since, by the inhabitants of certain localities in the province of Munster. The idea is, says the writer, that the putting up these rags is a putting away of the evils impending or incurred by sin, an act accompanied by the following ritual words: Air impide an Tiarna mo chuid teinis do fhagaint air an ait so; i. e. By the intercession of the Lord I leave my portion of illness on this place. These words, he adds, should be uttered by whoever performs the round, and they are, no doubt, of extreme antiquity. Mr. Windele doubtless took down the words as he heard them locally pronounced, though, to be correct, for Tiarna should be read Tigerna; for teinis, tinneas; and for fhagaint, fhagaim[10].’
From the less known saints Boltane and Santane I wish to pass to the mention of a more famous one, namely, St. Catherine, and this because of a fair called after her, and held on the sixth day of December at the village of Colby in the south of the island. When I heard of this fair in 1888, it was in temporary abeyance on account of a lawsuit respecting the plot of ground on which the fair is wont to be held; but I was told that it usually begins with a procession, in which a live hen is carried about: this is called St. Catherine’s hen. The next day the hen is carried about dead and plucked, and a rhyme pronounced at a certain point in the proceedings contemplates the burial of the hen, but whether that ever takes place I know not. It runs thus:—
Kiark Catrina marroo:
Gows yn kione as goyms ny cassyn,
As ver mayd ee fo’n thalloo.