Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 5, 1894.djvu/230

 22 2 A. W. Moore.

present Vicar^ assures me that in his time, fifteen years, he has not known the well to be visited for any other reason than curiosity. As, however, it is quite possible to visit this secluded spot without anyone being aware of it, I doubt this being the case. There is evidence, too, that till within the last ten years, if not at the present time, the water of this well was considered to be specially efficacious for the cure of sore eyes.- Prof Rhys was told that, when it was applied for this purpose, it was customary, " after using it on the spot, or filling a bottle with it to take home, to drop a pin, or bead, or button into the well."" " But", he continues, " it had its full virtue only when visited on the first Sunday of harvest, and then only during the hour the books were open at church, which, shifted back to Roman Catholic times, means doubtless the hour when the priest is engaged saying Mass."^ An old man still living in the village of Ballaugh, some eight miles from St. Maughold's Well, told Prof Rhys that he formerly visited it on the first Sunday in harvest to wash his eyes, that people left strips of cotton, with which they washed their eyes, on the bushes'^ close to the well, and that, if anyone picked these strips up, he or she would catch the complaints that those who had left them had been suffering from. He also stated that people at the same time dropped coins into the well, which varied in value from \d. to 6d., and that he himself had done so."" At the date of my visit, the 28th of March in the present year, I found nothing in the well except a brass stud and a hairpin, both of very modern appearance. This is the only well in the parish of Maughold whose sanative qualities are still remembered, but Colgan*" gives

1 Died since the above was written, on the ist of June 1894.

2 Its efficacy for barren women seems to have been forgotten.

3 FOLK-LORE, vol. ii, p. 307.

time mentioned have been a little gorse there.
 * There are now no bushes near the well, but there may at the

^ MS. note from " C", Ballaugh.

^ Writing in the seventeenth century, but seemingly getting his information from an old document.