S. Senan had settled for a while by a well in Inis Caorach, and one day
his disciple Setna--our Cornish Sithney--found a woman washing her
child's dirty clothes in the fountain. He flew into a fury, and his
companion Liberius was equally abusive in the language employed.
Shortly after the boy tumbled over the rocks into the sea. The
distracted mother ran to S. Senan, and when he heard the circumstances,
assuming that this was due to the imprecations called down on the woman
and her child by his two pupils, he bade both of them depart and not
see his face again, unless the child should be produced uninjured.
Setna and Liberius sneaked away very disconsolate, but as they happily
found the lad on the beach uninjured, they were once more received into
favour.
It is unnecessary here to repeat all the hackneyed references to the
cult of fountains among the Celts; they may be taken for granted. We
know that such was the case, and that the same cult continues very
little altered among the Irish and Breton peasantry to the present day.
In Cornwall there is now little or none of it. "When I was a man I put
away childish things," says S. Paul, and the same applies to peoples.
When they are in their cultural childhood they have their superstitious
beliefs and practices; but they grow out of them, and we pity those who
stick in the observance of usages that are unreasonable.
In pagan times money was dropped into wells and springs, and divination
was taken from the rising of bubbles. Now the only relic of such a
proceeding is the dropping in of pins or rush crosses.
Wells were also sought for curative purposes, and unquestionably some
springs have medicinal qualities, but these are entirely unconnected
with the saints, and depend altogether on their chemical constituents.
It is said that rags may still be seen on the bushes about Madron well
as they are about holy wells in Ireland and about the tombs of fakirs
and Mussulman saints. I doubt if any Cornish people are so foolish as
to do such a thing as suspend rags about a well with the idea of these
rags serving as an oblation to the patron of the spring for the sake of
obtaining benefits from him.
In Pembrokeshire till quite recently persons, even Dissenters, were
wont to drink water from S. Teilo's well out of a portion of the
reputed skull of S. Teilo, of which the Melchior family are the
hereditary custodians.
The immersing of the bone of a saint in water, and the drinking of the
water thus rendered salutary, is still practised in Brittany. This was
done when Ireland was pagan; but the bones soaked were those of Druids.
There is a curious illustration, as I take it, of this practice in S.
Clether's well chapel, recently restored. Here the stone altar remains
_in situ_; it has never been disturbed.
[Illustration: WELL-CHAPEL OF S. CLETHER]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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