Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 2 1884.djvu/158

 loO THE FOLK-LORE OP DRAYTON.

fashion to carry about on the person. The poet gives the legend of chaste Winifred,* who, when endeavouring to evade the amatory attentions of Caradoc, a seventh-century Prince of Wales, was cruelly beheaded by him. Her tears into a fountain turned —

" The pure vermilion blood, that issued from her veins, Unto this very day the pearly gravel stains." f

and her hair was changed into the moss aforesaid. Whatever living thing may be thrown into this well will float, and with its waters diseases may be washed away. The, probably, real story of this lady, as given by Mr. Baring-Gould,J is not quite as marvellous as the one just told; he says the so-called blood-streaks are caused by iron § in the stone, and declares that the moss has lost its savour. Moreover. " it is remarkable that in the Survey of Domesday Book which includes the county of Flint, neither church, chapel, nor well of S. Winifred is mentioned; affording the presumption that the story and celebrity of the saipt are of later date than the Norman Conquest." James the Second came on a pilgrimage to S. Winifred's Well, and touched for the Evil on its steps, the curative power of regal hands, having been left, as Drayton chronicles, an heirloom to the English throne by Edward the Confessor. || An intermittent spring at Giggles- wick,^ which sometimes falls and rises three times within an hour, and, though thirty miles from the sea, has a range of three-quarters of a yard between high and low water-mark, was, teste Drayton, originally a nymph, who, like S. Winifred, fled from a lover until being fairly out of breath she was pitied by " the topick gods " and turned into water, to ebb and flow —

" Even as the fearful nymph then thick and short did blow."


 * Pol. X. [iii. 846, 847].

t When wet the earth at Hastings is still red (Pol. xviii. [iii. 981]); and at Borough bridge no grass gi'ows where the Barons were defeated (T/te Baronn Warn, book ii. v. 51 [i. 120]). Nature has a good memory.

X Lives of the Saints, part i. pp. 69-72.

§ Mr. Askew Roberts, well-known as the author of A Oogsijnng Ghade to Wales, attributes them to the growth of Byssus loUthus, and says the moss is Jungerma nnia asplenitim,

II Pol xi. [iii. 870]. ^ Pol. xxviii. [iii. 1197].