Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 18, 1907.djvu/317

 Children and Wells. 281

Taken singly, any one of these facts would only arouse that slight and transient interest we experience when we meet with any curious circumstance, but taken together in a mutually supporting series, they form, in my opinion, insurmountable evidence that in the minds of the earlier inhabitants of the world a close bond subsisted between infants and water, particularly in wells, ponds, and rivers. Several German archaeologists are inclined to refer the folk-sayings about the origin of children from wells, springs, etc., to the idea that what was really meant was, that children came from the clouds,^ the source of all water. And although there are some places where this idea of cloudland seems predominant in the folk- mind, yet I am inclined to the opinion that it would be more correct to say that the connection was not between children and clouds, so much as between children and water generally, whether in the clouds, in the sea, in rivers, or in wells.

I have, I think, conclusively demonstrated that the bond was not forged by the practice of baptism. And it only remains for me to state what I think to be the most natural explanation of the origin of all these beliefs about wells and children.

It is true that the explanation I am about to offer is purely theoretical, but it has at least the merit of simplicity.

I should say that the origin of the connection between water and children, in early times supposed to be actual and physical, in later days mystic only, was two-fold, being based upon two natural facts, viz, :

(i) That children in the pre-natal period do actually live in water ; and,

(2) That there is a natural association between fertility and water, seen plainly in the vegetable world.

^ Ploss, quoting Adolf Wuttke, I.e., vol. i., p. ii. T