Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 18, 1907.djvu/293

 Childi^en and Wells. 257

bathing. Hither children, also, are brought to drink the water mixed with oatmeal and sugar.^

At the Dropping Well, near Tideswell in the same county, on Easter Day, young people and children used to assemble, " with a cup in one pocket and a quarter of a pound of sugar or honey in the other, and having caught in their cups as much water as they could from the droppings of the Tor-spring, they dissolved the sugar in it," 2 and I have no doubt, although the report does not actually say so, they drank it.

At St. Helen's Well, near Eshton in Yorkshire, in the eighteenth century, the younger folk used to gather on the Sunday evenings and drink the water mixed with sugar, but the custom has now died out.^

Next follow one or two instances of springs or waters about which tales, legends, or sayings are prevalent among the folk, and in which child-characters figure.

In Cornwall there is a well called after St. Levan. Now this saint was a fisherman, and it was so, that he caught only one fish a day. On a certain day his sister and her child came to visit him, and the only fish the saint caught that day was a chad. Chagrined at his bad luck, and trembling for his reputation as a host, the holy man threw the chad back into the sea, and tried his luck again. But, alas ! the same fish per- sisted in being caught three times in succession ; so St. Levan, seeing it was to be the chad or nothing, gave in. Finally, when the fish was cooked and served up, the child was choked " on the first mouthful." *

Perhaps it may seem to be straining the imagination unduly to see in this tale any connection between a well and the death of a child, seeing that the well-saint got the fish from the sea. But the association of the

^Hope, R. C., I.e., p. 53. ^Hope^ j^ q^ /^^ p g^


 * Hope, R. C, I.e., p. 204. ■'Hope, I.e., p. 27.