Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 7, 1896.djvu/62

 52 Presidential Address.

is imparted in infant baptism." ^ Whoever thus argues that the combined gases whose symbol is HgO, or that any other materials, are a vehicle of supernatural efficacy, writes himself the lineal descendant of the " medicine man." For what else have we in this episcopal utterance but the barbaric conception of water as a living thing ; as a god, call we it Poseidon, Neptune, Manannan Mac Lir, or Nodens ; or as the dwelling-place of godlings, demons, or of the quasi-human beings of the mermaid or kelpie type ? None can quarrel with the Church which, in bygone days, adopting what it could not abolish, consecrated to saint or Madonna the springs and wells dedicated to pagan deities. They who made that change made a wise concession, not to perpetuate the old ideas, but to invest them with a beautiful symbolism ; whereas these modern materialists who advocate the doctrine of the regeneration of a human soul by Avater are heathens in thin disguise, offering the folklorist excellent subject for analysis and comparison.

Passing from font to healing spring, those who are curious to see how water which perhaps has medicinal virtue is assumed to be an agent of miraculous recovery can travel in a few hours to the shrine of St. \\'ini- fred in Flintshire. Pennant the antiquary, describing the well in the last century, tells of the votive offerings, in the shape of crutches and other objects, which were hung about it, and to this day the store is receiving additions. The sick crowd thither as of old they crowded into the temples of ^sculapius and Serapis ; mothers bring their sick children as in Imperial Rome they took them to the Temple of Romulus and Remus. A draught of water from the basin near the bath, or a plunge in the bath itself, is followed by prayers at the altar of the chapel which encloses the well. When the saint's feast-

' Ilhistratcd London Ncivs, lo August, 1S95.