Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 23, 1912.djvu/356

 334 Collectanea.

that a very large harvest yet remains to be gleaned, even in the narrow area of the mid-Cotswolds which I have tried to explore. To the north of Cheltenham and south of Dursley are stretches of absolutely unexplored country, from which much is to be expected. My informants have been farmers, labourers, village shopkeepers, gardeners, and other working men and their wives, and a few educated persons, — rarely under middle age, and in such cases the children of old natives. I have suppressed the names of uneducated persons, lest by any chance this article should come to their knowledge, and their habitual reserve turn into absolute silence when such topics are broached ; but I have a record of every item and its source. All has been collected since 1905.

Except for a {q\^ trifling scraps of miscellaneous character, the lore which I have gathered is richer in customs than in beliefs. I have met with only one scrap of faith in fairies, — viz. that they cause fairy-rings to come on the grass. In short, the whole of my material groups itself practically under two heads : Place-Lore, with special reference to prehistoric remains, and Calendar Customs.

I. Place-Lore.

Wells. — In the hill country the soil on the higher ground is very shallow, but there is an outbreak of springs wherever the upper stratum of Oolite meets the underlying fuller's earth, at about the 500-ft. level or lower. The primitive Camps found their water supply just under the brow of the hill, and many springs (or "wells," as the countryman calls them) now in use show their connection with early man by having worked flints in their neighbourhood. These wells are in some notable instances valued for the cure of sore eyes.- A well often bears a distinctive name, and one of the village streets may be named after it. At Tetbury, in the low ground commanded by the remains of a ring of earthworks which once enclosed the sites of the church and the "Bartons" (which I think represents the old Manor House), two springs called "Cut Well" and "The World" are

- " The water of the well [of ye Earle of Abington in his Parke at Ricot] is held to be good for the Eies," J. Aubrey, Kemaines of Gentilisme andjudaisme, F.-L. Soc. ed. , p. 121 ; and see R. C. Hope, The Legendary Lore of the Holy Wells of England, pp. 12, 30-1, 34, 77, 123, 140.