Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 18, 1907.djvu/292

 256 Children and Wells.

Passing to foreign countries, we find that in Slavonia the holy wells are resorted to for the cure of children's diseases by the people, who may be seen, gorgeously attired as if for a feast, making regular pilgrimages to these wells in caravans of waggons.^

In the next instance no particular well is mentioned, but as it is, nevertheless, an undoubted cure by water, I have included it in the series.

Among the Servians, a peevish and constantly whining child is said to be suffering from a special disorder known as " Wriska," for which the following ceremony is recommended. The mother must wait until she sees a fire on the other side of a water, river, or lake. Then the crying baby is brought out to the water, while some one fetches a green plate and a piece of burning wood. Quenching the fiery wood in the water, the mother says : " Wila," who is a kind of water-fairy in these parts, " Wila is having her son married, and has invited my baby to the wedding. I do not send her the baby, however ; only its crying." This is said three times, and the baby is made to drink as much as possible of the water from the green plate.^

In modern Syria ^ there is a custom of "making a sick child that is thought to be bewitched drink from seven wells, or cisterns." *

The foregoing are examples of cures. Here follows some account of springs or wells of which children are made to drink, presumably for the benefit of their health.

At Belper, in Derbyshire, there is a well where con- tracted and stiff limbs may be successfully restored by

^ Ploss, H., Das Kind in Branch und Sitte der Volker, ii. 214. Leipzig, 1884.

^Ploss, I.e., ii. 215.

^ Smith, W. Robertson, Lectures on the Religion of the Semites., London, 1894, p. 182, footnote.


 * These cisterns are, properly speaking, reservoirs.