Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 5, 1894.djvu/225

 Water and Well- Worship in Man. , 217

of the date of this festival from the first day of August to the first Sunday in that month,^ called in Manxjj^w chied Doonagh ayiis ouyr (" the first Sunday in harvest"-), was due to ecclesiastical influence, which was thus exercised with a view of giving it a semi-religious character.

Let us now inquire what were the objects for which the Manx visited these wells, by what ritual they sought to attain these objects, and what was the meaning of this ritual. The objects were mainly the cure of diseases, but also the acquiring of charms for protection against witches and fairies, and, generally, the securing good luck. The usual rituaF was to walk round the wells one or more times sunways, to drink the water, to wet a fragment of their clothing with it, and to attach this fragment to any tree or bush that happened to be near the wells. Then to drop pins, pebbles,"* beads, or buttons into them, and to repeat a prayer in which they mentioned their ailments. Such was the ritual for the cure of diseases. When the wells were visited for the other purposes mentioned, the only difference in the ritual was that the rags were dis- pensed with. As regards its meaning, it may be considered certain that, though the rags were occasionally offerings, they were not so in all cases, but were " vehicles of the diseases which the patients comm-unicate to them when they spit the well-water from their mouths".^ This view is strengthened by the fact that it was supposed that anyone who was rash enough to take away a rag thus deposited would be sure to catch the disease communi- cated to it by the person who left it. It was thought that when the rag had rotted away the disease would

^ After the change of the calender in 1752, to the first Sunday after the 1 2th of August.

^ The people, however, as we shall see later, spoiled this scheme by visiting the wells during church-time.

^ But it varied somewhat at different wells.

■* The pebbles were sometimes dropped near, instead of in, the wells. ■'' Rhys, FoLK-LoRE, vol. iii, p. 76.