Severn, and Wye of pleasant mien,

And Rheidol rich in great renown.

To return to the Irish legends, I may mention that Eugene O’Curry has a good deal to say of the mysterious nuts and ‘the salmon of knowledge,’ the partaking of which was synonymous with the acquisition of knowledge and wisdom: see his Manners and Customs of the Ancient Irish, ii. 142–4. He gives it as his opinion that Connla’s Well was situated somewhere in Lower Ormond; but the locality of this Helicon, with the seven streams of wisdom circulating out of it and back again into it, is more intelligible when regarded as a matter of fairy geography. A portion of the note appended to the foregoing legend by Stokes is in point here: he traces the earliest mention of the nine hazels of wisdom, growing at the heads of the chief rivers of Ireland, to the Dialogue of the Two Sages in the Book of Leinster, fol. 186b, whence he cites the poet Néde mac Adnai saying whence he had come, as follows:—a caillib .i. a nói collaib na Segsa … a caillib didiu assa mbenaiter clessa na súad tanacsa, ‘from hazels, to wit, from the nine hazels of the Segais … from hazels out of which are obtained the feats of the sages, I have come.’ The relevancy of this passage will be seen when I add, that Segais was one of the names of the mound in which the Boyne rises; so it may be safely inferred that Bóand’s transgression was of the same nature as that of Sinand, to wit, that of intruding on sacred ground in quest of wisdom and inspiration which was not permitted their sex: certain sources of knowledge, certain quellen, were reserved for men alone.

Before I have done with the Irish instances I must append one in the form it was told me in the summer of 1894: I was in Meath and went to see the remarkable chambered cairns on the hill known as Sliabh na Caillighe, ‘the Hag’s Mountain,’ near Oldcastle and Lough Crew. I had as my guide a young shepherd whom I picked up on the way. He knew all about the hag after whom the hill was called except her name: she was, he said, a giantess, and so she brought there, in three apronfuls, the stones forming the three principal cairns. As to the cairn on the hill point known as Belrath, that is called the Chair Cairn from a big stone placed there by the hag to serve as her seat when she wished to have a quiet look on the country round. But usually she was to be seen riding on a wonderful pony she had: that creature was so nimble and strong that it used to take the hag at a leap from one hill-top to another. However, the end of it all was that the hag rode so hard that the pony fell down, and that both horse and rider were killed. The hag appears to have been Cailleach Bhéara, or Caillech Bérre, ‘the Old Woman of Beare,’ that is, Bearhaven, in County Cork[26]. Now the view from the Hag’s Mountain is very extensive, and I asked the shepherd to point out some places in the distance. Among other things we could see Lough Ramor, which he called the Virginia Water, and more to the west he identified Lough Sheelin, about which he had the following legend to tell:—A long, long time ago there was no lake there, but only a well with a flagstone kept over it, and everybody would put the flag back after taking water out of the well. But one day a woman who fetched water from it forgot to replace the stone, and the water burst forth in pursuit of the luckless woman, who fled as hard as she could before the angry flood. She continued until she had run about seven miles—the estimated length of the lake at the present day. Now at this point a man, who was busily mowing hay in the field through which she was running, saw what was happening and mowed the woman down with his scythe, whereupon the water advanced no further. Such was the shepherd’s yarn, which partly agrees with the Boyne and Shannon stories in that the woman was pursued by the water, which only stopped where she died. On the other hand, it resembles the Ỻyn Ỻech Owen legend and that of Lough Neagh in placing to the woman’s charge only the neglect to cover the well. It looks as if we had in these stories a confusion of two different institutions, one being a well of wisdom which no woman durst visit without fatal vengeance overtaking her, and the other a fairy well which was attended to by a woman who was to keep it covered, and who may, perhaps, be regarded as priestess of the spring. If we try to interpret the Cantre’r Gwaelod story from these two points of view we have to note the following matters:—Though it is not said that the moruin, or damsel, had a lid or cover on the well, the word golligaut or helligaut, ‘did let run,’ implies some such an idea as that of a lid or door; for opening the sluices, in the sense of the later version, seems to me out of the question. In two of the Englynion she is cursed for the action implied, and if she was the well minister or well servant, as I take finaun wenestir to mean, we might perhaps regard her as the priestess of that spring. On the other hand, the prevailing note in the other Englynion is the traha, ‘presumption, arrogance, insolence, pride,’ which forms the burden of four out of five of them. This would seem to point to an attitude on the part of the damsel resembling that of Bóand or Sinand when prying into the secrets of wells which were tabu to them. The seventh Englyn alludes to wines, and its burden is gormođ, ‘too much, excess, extravagance,’ whereby the poet seems to lend countenance to some such a later story as that of Seithennin’s intemperance.

Lastly, the question of priest or priestess of a sacred well has been alluded to once or twice, and it may be perhaps illustrated on Welsh ground by the history of Ffynnon Eilian, or St. Elian’s Well, which has been mentioned in another context, p. 357 above. Of that well we read as follows, s. v. Ỻandriỻo, in the third edition of Lewis’ Topographical Dictionary of Wales:—‘Fynnon Elian, … even in the present age, is frequently visited by the superstitious, for the purpose of invoking curses upon the heads of those who have grievously offended them, and also of supplicating prosperity to themselves; but the numbers are evidently decreasing. The ceremony is performed by the applicant standing upon a certain spot near the well, whilst the owner of it reads a few passages of the sacred Scriptures, and then, taking a small quantity of water, gives it to the former to drink, and throws the residue over his head, which is repeated three times, the party continuing to mutter imprecations in whatever terms his vengeance may dictate.’ Rice Rees, in his Essay on the Welsh Saints (London, 1836), p. 267, speaks of St. Elian as follows: ‘Miraculous cures were lately supposed to be performed at his shrine at Ỻanelian, Anglesey; and near to the church of Ỻanelian, Denbighshire, is a well called Ffynnon Elian, which is thought by the peasantry of the neighbourhood to be endued with miraculous powers even at present.’

Foulkes, s. v. Elian, in his Enwogion Cymru, published in Liverpool in 1870, expresses the opinion that the visits of the superstitious to the well had ceased for some time. The last person supposed to have had charge of the well was a certain John Evans, but some of the most amusing stories of the shrewdness of the caretaker refer to a woman who had charge of the well before Evans’ time. A series of articles on Ffynnon Eilian appeared in 1861 in a Welsh periodical called Y Nofelyđ, printed by Mr. Aubrey at Ỻanerch y Međ, in Anglesey. The articles in question were afterwards published, I am told, as a shilling book, which I have not seen, and they dealt with the superstition, with the history of John Evans, and with his confessions and conversion. I have searched in vain for any account in Welsh of the ritual followed at the well. When Mrs. Silvan Evans visited the place, the person in charge of the well was a woman, and Peter Roberts, in his Cambrian Popular Antiquities, published in London in 1815, alludes to her or a predecessor of hers in the following terms, p. 246:—‘Near the Well resided some worthless and infamous wretch, who officiated as priestess.’ He furthermore gives one to understand that she kept a book in which she registered the name of each evil wisher for a trifling sum of money. When this had been done, a pin was dropped into the well in the name of the victim. This proceeding looks adequate from the magical point of view, though less complicated than the ritual indicated by Lewis. This latter writer calls the person who took charge of the well the owner; and I have always understood that, whether owner or not, he or she used to receive gifts, not only for placing in the well the names of men who were to be cursed, but also from those men for taking their names out again, so as to relieve them from the malediction. In fact, the trade in curses seems to have been a very thriving one: its influence was powerful and widespread.

Here there is, I think, very little doubt that the owner or guardian of the well was, so to say, the representative of an ancient priesthood of the well. That priesthood dated its origin probably many centuries before a Christian church was built near the well, and coming down to later times we have unfortunately no sufficient data to show how the right to such priesthood was acquired, whether by inheritance or otherwise; but we know that a woman might have charge of St. Elian’s Well.

Let me cite another instance, which I unexpectedly discovered some years ago in the course of a ramble in quest of early inscriptions. Among other places which I visited was Ỻandeilo Ỻwydarth, near Maen Clochog, in the northern part of Pembrokeshire. This is one of the many churches bearing the name of St. Teilo in South Wales: the building is in ruins, but the churchyard is still used, and contains two of the most ancient post-Roman inscriptions in the Principality. If you ask now for ‘Ỻandeilo’ in this district, you will be understood to be inquiring after the farm house of that name, close to the old church; and I learnt from the landlady that her family had been there for many generations, though they have not very long been the proprietors of the land. She also told me of St. Teilo’s Well, a little above the house: she added that it was considered to have the property of curing the whooping-cough. I asked if there was any rite or ceremony necessary to be performed in order to derive benefit from the water. Certainly, I was told: the water must be lifted out of the well and given to the patient to drink by some member of the family. To be more accurate, I ought to say that this must be done by somebody born in the house. Her eldest son, however, had told me previously, when I was busy with the inscriptions, that the water must be given to the patient by the heir, not by anybody else. Then came my question how the water was lifted, or out of what the patient had to drink, to which I was answered that it was out of the skull. ‘What skull?’ said I. ‘St. Teilo’s skull,’ was the answer. ‘Where do you get the saint’s skull?’ I asked. ‘Here it is,’ was the answer, and I was given it to handle and examine. I know next to nothing about skulls; but it struck me that it was the upper portion of a thick, strong skull, and it called to my mind the story of the three churches which contended for the saint’s corpse. That story will be found in the Book of Ỻan Dâv, pp. 116–7, and according to it the contest became so keen that it had to be settled by prayer and fasting. So, in the morning, lo and behold! there were three corpses of St. Teilo—not simply one—and so like were they in features and stature that nobody could tell which were the corpses made to order and which the old one. I should have guessed that the skull which I saw belonged to the former description, as not having been much thinned by the owner’s use of it; but this I am forbidden to do by the fact that, according to the legend, this particular Ỻandeilo was not one of the three contending churches which bore away in triumph a dead Teilo each. The reader, perhaps, would like to take another view, namely, that the story has been edited in such a way as to reduce a larger number of Teilos to three, in order to gratify the Welsh weakness for triads.

Since my visit to the neighbourhood I have been favoured with an account of the well as it is now current there. My informant is Mr. Benjamin Gibby of Ỻangolman Mill, who writes mentioning, among other things, that the people around call the well Ffynnon yr Ychen, or the Oxen’s Well, and that the family owning and occupying the farm house of Ỻandeilo have been there for centuries. Their name, which is Melchior (pronounced Melshor), is by no means a common one in the Principality, so far as I know; but, whatever may be its history in Wales, the bearers of it are excellent Kymry. Mr. Gibby informs me that the current story solves the difficulty as to the saint’s skull as follows:—The saint had a favourite maid servant from the Pembrokeshire Ỻandeilo: she was a beautiful woman, and had the privilege of attending on the saint when he was on his death-bed. As his end was approaching he gave his maid a strict and solemn command that in a year’s time from the day of his burial at Ỻandeilo Fawr, in Carmarthenshire, she was to take his skull to the other Ỻandeilo, and to leave it there to be a blessing to coming generations of men, who, when ailing, would have their health restored by drinking water out of it. So the belief prevailed that to drink out of the skull some of the water of Teilo’s Well ensured health, especially against the whooping-cough. The faith of some of those who used to visit the well was so great in its efficacy, that they were wont to leave it, he says, with their constitutions wonderfully improved; and he mentions a story related to him by an old neighbour, Stifyn Ifan, who has been dead for some years, to the effect that a carriage, drawn by four horses, came once, more than half a century ago, to Ỻandeilo. It was full of invalids coming from Pen Clawđ, in Gower, Glamorganshire, to try the water of the well. They returned, however, no better than they came; for though they had drunk of the well, they had neglected to do so out of the skull. This was afterwards pointed out to them by somebody, and they resolved to make the long journey to the well again. This time they did the right thing, we are told, and departed in excellent health.

Such are the contents of Mr. Gibby’s Welsh letter; and I would now only point out that we have here an instance of a well which was probably sacred before the time of St. Teilo: in fact, one would possibly be right in supposing that the sanctity of the well and its immediate surroundings was one of the causes why the site was chosen by a Christian missionary. But consider for a moment what has happened: the well paganism has annexed the saint, and established a belief ascribing to him the skull used in the well ritual. The landlady and her family, it is true, neither believe in the efficacy of the well, nor take gifts from those who visit the well; but they continue, out of kindness, as they put it, to hand the skull full of water to any one who perseveres in believing in it. In other words, the faith in the well continues in a measure intact, while the walls of the church have long fallen into utter decay. Such is the great persistence of some primitive beliefs; and in this particular instance we have a succession which seems to point unmistakably to an ancient priesthood of a sacred spring.