Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 23, 1912.djvu/357

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still visited by patients, who take home some of the water in a bottle. At "Tibby Well," down "Tibbywell Lane," Painswick, an elderly woman, drawing the water for household use, told me she had mixed some of it with bread and made a poultice which cured her husband's eyes ; the virtue was more in the water than in the bread. At Bisley, where the fame of the old well on Rose Hill is being eclipsed by a well-dressing at another spring, — a modern fake dating from 1863, — I talked with an old native on the day of the well-dressing. She was most emphatic about the virtue of the old well. " 'Tis splendid water for the eyesight ; 'tis against the siinrising." An unnamed well at Avening, which cures sore eyes, has its water "over against the sun." 2 At Minchinhampton, " Drooper's Stream" is a small spring (now almost, if not quite, dried up by drainage of the higher land), which lies just outside the village, at the foot of Well Hill. It was used for sore eyes as recently as 1906. An old man in an adjoining cottage told me that patients used to leave bits of rag in the adjacent wall. At Malmesbury, on the very edge of the Cotswold country, "St. Aldhelm's Well" breaks out under a cottage just below the Abbey, The cottager told me that Roman Catholics still visit and revere it, and also " Daniel's Well," lower down the slope. "Box Well," near Boxwell Church, is famous for the cure of rheumatism ; the water is taken home in bottles. There was a healing well on the lower slope of Kings- down, Bristol, in the Barton, outside the old city walls. " Tinker's Well," Frocester; "Holy Well," Sheepscombe ; "Cox Well," Cirencester (now quite built over); "Holy Well," on Haresfield Beacon ; " IMussell's Well," Churchdown ; and a well for sore eyes at Cherrington, are other noteworthy springs.

Foots. — In this high and dry district I have met with only one other bit of water-lore. At Cherrington Pool, which is said to be of unfathomed depth, there used to be the ghost of a man fishing. He was identified with a local gentleman of bad reputation. " We did look for him many a time by the pool when I was a child," said the old dairywoman who told me.

^ So Rev. \V. E. Frost of Avening. Mr. Frost thinks it is a general belief in this district that any water on which the sun shines at dawn is good for the eyes. I have not yet been able to verify this.