When S. Samson was travelling in Cornwall between Padstow and Southill, and visited his cousin Padarn on the way; at a place called Tregear he found the people dancing round an upright stone, and offering it idolatrous worship. He did not smash it in pieces. He contented himself with cutting a cross on it. Now the Celtic saints were mighty choice in their tipple. They insisted on having the purest of water for their drink; and not only did they require it for imbibing, but they did a great deal of tubbing. One day S. Germoe paid S. Piran a visit; after they had prayed together, “It is my tubbing time,” said Piran. “Will you have a bath too?” “With the greatest of pleasure,” responded Germoe. So the two saints got into the tub together. But the water was so cold that Germoe’s teeth began to chatter, and he put one leg over the edge, intending to scramble out. “Nonsense!” said Piran; “bide in a bit, and you will feel the cold less sharply.” Germoe did this. Presently Piran yelled out, “Heigh! a fish! a fish!” and, between them, the two nude saints succeeded in capturing a trout that was in the vat. “I rejoice that we have the trout,” said Piran, “for I am expecting home my old pupil Carthagh, and I was short of victuals. We will cook it for his supper.” Some of the saints had the fancy for saying their prayers standing up to their necks in water. There is a story of S. Erc, the S. Erth of Land’s End district, to the purpose, but I admit it is on late authority. Domnhal, king of Ireland, sent his servants to collect goose-eggs. They found a woman carrying a black basket on her head piled up with the eggs of geese. The king’s servants demanded them, but she answered that they were intended as a present to Erc, who spent the day immersed to the armpits in running water, with his Psalter on the bank, from which he recited the psalms. In the evening he emerged from his bath, shook himself, and ate an egg and a half together with three bunches of watercress. However, regardless of the saint’s necessities, the servants carried the eggs away. When S. Erc came out of the river, dripping from every limb, and found there were no eggs for his supper, he waxed warm, and roundly cursed the rascals who had despoiled him, and those who had set them on, and all such as should eat them. The story goes on to tell how these eggs became veritable apples of discord, breeding internecine strife. But to return to the wells. Whether taught by experience, or illumined by the light of nature, I cannot say, but most assuredly the saints of Ireland, Wales, and Cornwall were vastly particular as to their wells being of the purest and coldest water obtainable.