Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 18, 1907.djvu/318

 282 Children and Wells.

In order to account for the sanctity attaching to wells as creators and begetters of children, we may suppose, to take one further step into the region of probabilities, that if one of our forebears, his mind already tinged with the natural association of water and babies, lost one of his children by drowning in a well, it would be very natural for him to suppose that in that well there abode a Being who gave and took children as he saw fit, and who, therefore, must be propitiated by gifts of that which he loved the best. Finally, it would be easy for the savage to suppose, that as the spirit of life of the well was also the spirit of life of children, then immersion in a well would renew the life of ailing and weakly children.

Here, at last, is the answer we set out to find.

Dan M'Kenzie.