Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 5, 1894.djvu/220

 212 A. W. Moore.

WATER AND WELL-WORSHIP IN MAN.

BY A. W. MOORE, M.A.

1 have entitled my paper "Water and Well-Worship", as I am persuaded that the superstitious use of wells in Man, which cannot be said to be quite extinct even now, had its origin in the worship of water generally, and I think that I can show that this has been the case from still existing superstitions. Water, like earth and fire, was doubtless once worshipped as an animate being having powers which it might exercise either beneficially or the reverse, and it was therefore considered desirable to propitiate it by adoration. One of the powers possessed by it when in the form of a river was that of stopping diseases from crossing it, as is shown by the following story found among the MSS. of the late Robert Gawne of the Rowany, parish of Rushen : —

Small-pox, called in Manx Yn Vreac (" The Spotted One"), being personified in the ghostly likeness of a man, met a member of a well-known insular family on the bank of the Peel river, near St. John's, and, being unable to cross, asked him if he would carry him over, promising that, if he did so, neither he nor any member of his family should ever be afflicted with the disease in question. The man com- plied with his request, and it fell out as " Small-pox" had promised. This meeting with " Small-pox" occurred at a time when the population of the island was decimated at short intervals by that fell disease.

Running water was also supposed to be capable of pre- venting the passage of spirits and ghosts. Was it not on account of this superstition that the dead in Celtic countries were formerly so frequently buried in islands ? Thus, in Man, the islet of St. Patrick, off Peel, was once a favourite place of sepulture. It is significant, too, of the prevalence of this superstition that it was supposed that the Manx fairies were in the habit of celebrating the obsequies of any