Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 18, 1907.djvu/316

 2 8o Children and Wells,

In the Middle Ages the wells we know as holy were frequently resorted to by people for the restoration of youth.^

We remember the myth of Achilles being rendered invulnerable by his mother dipping him, while an infant, in the river Styx.

Homer's heroes were mostly children of the river-gods, like the Tweedies of the Scottish border, who trace their descent from the river Tweed.^ I am scarcely bold enough to add the finding of Moses in the bulrushes of the Nile to this list. But I can safely include the ballad of Hugh of Lincoln, who was enticed by a Jewess, murdered, and thrown into a well, out of the depths of which, however, he was able to describe his misfortune.

We have been able to show then that the cure of children's diseases at wells is but one of many links binding little children and water in a close and mystic communion. Let us recapitulate these links :

(i) Little children are taken to wells and springs for the cure of disease, and in order to prevent disease.

(2) According to the folk-beliefs of Germany and elsewhere, babies come from wells.

(3) The deities of rain and water in many parts of the world were also the deities of fertility and birth.

(4) .Sterility among women is often treated by bathing.

(5) The water-spirit assumes at times the form of a child or a small person.

(6) Water-spirits show their fondness for children by stealing them.

(7) There is a certain amount of evidence to show that in some parts of the world children used to be sacrificed to water and wells.

' Grimm, I.e., vol. ii., p. 588. * Hope, I.e., xiv.