[10] The Athenæum for April 1, 1893, p. 415. I may here remark that Mr. Borlase’s note on do fhagaint is, it seems to me, unnecessary: let do fhagaint stand, and translate, not ‘I leave’ but ‘to leave.’ The letter should be consulted for curious matter concerning Croagh Patrick, its pagan stations, cup-markings, &c. [↑]
[11] Since this paper was read to the Folk-Lore Society a good deal of information of one kind or another has appeared in its journal concerning the first-foot: see more especially Folk-Lore for 1892, pp. 253–64, and for 1893, pp. 309–21. [↑]
[12] This was written at the beginning of the year 1892. [↑]
[13] With this compare what Mr. Gomme has to say of a New Year’s Day custom observed in Lanarkshire: see p. 633 of the Ethnographic Report referred to at p. 103 above, and compare Henderson, p. 74. [↑]
[14] Old-fashioned grammarians and dictionary makers are always delighted to handle Mrs. Partington’s broom: so Kelly thinks he has done a fine thing by printing guee, ‘prayer,’ and gwee, ‘cursing.’ [↑]
CHAPTER VI
The Folklore of the Wells
… Iuvat integros accedere fontes.—Lucretius.
It is only recently[1] that I heard for the first time of Welsh instances of the habit of tying rags and bits of clothing to the branches of a tree growing near a holy well. Since then I have obtained several items of information in point: the first is a communication received in June, 1892, from Mr. J. H. Davies, of Lincoln College, Oxford—since then of Lincoln’s Inn—relating to a Glamorganshire holy well, situated near the pathway leading from Coychurch to Bridgend. It is the custom there, he states, for people suffering from any malady to dip a rag in the water, and to bathe the affected part of the body, the rag being then placed on a tree close to the well. When Mr. Davies passed that way, some three years previously, there were, he adds, hundreds of such shreds on the tree, some of which distinctly presented the appearance of having been very recently placed there. The well is called Ffynnon Cae Moch, ‘Swine-field Well,’ which can hardly have been its old name; and a later communication from Mr. Davies summarizes a conversation which he had about the well, on December 16, 1892, with Mr. J. T. Howell, of Pencoed, near Bridgend. His notes run thus:—‘Ffynnon Cae Moch, between Coychurch and Bridgend, is one mile from Coychurch, one and a quarter from Bridgend, near Tremains. It is within twelve or fifteen yards of the high-road, just where the pathway begins. People suffering from rheumatism go there. They bathe the part affected with water, and afterwards tie a piece of rag to the tree which overhangs the well. The rag is not put in the water at all, but is only put on the tree for luck. It is a stunted, but very old tree, and is simply covered with rags.’ A little less than a year later, I had an opportunity of visiting this well in the company of Mr. Brynmor-Jones; and I find in my notes that it is not situated so near the road as Mr. Howell would seem to have stated to Mr. Davies. We found the well, which is a powerful spring, surrounded by a circular wall. It is overshadowed by a dying thorn tree, and a little further back stands another thorn which is not so decayed: it was on this latter thorn we found the rags. I took off a twig with two rags, while Mr. Brynmor-Jones counted over a dozen other rags on the tree; and we noticed that some of them had only recently been suspended there: among them were portions undoubtedly of a woman’s clothing. At one of the hotels at Bridgend, I found an illiterate servant who was acquainted with the well, and I cross-examined him on the subject of it. He stated that a man with a wound, which he explained to mean a cut, would go and stand in the well within the wall, and there he would untie the rag that had been used to tie up the wound and would wash the wound with it: then he would tie up the wound with a fresh rag and hang the old one on the tree. The more respectable people whom I questioned talked more vaguely, and only of tying a rag to the tree, except one who mentioned a pin being thrown into the well or a rag being tied to the tree.