A spring of water issuing from the hillside, or from clefts in the rocks—leaping and sparkling, as if in joyance at having from the dark womb of the earth come into the light and freedom of open day—has often been the parent of mystery, of myth, and tradition. The knowledge, common in older times, did not enable the people to see that the spring was merely the outflow by natural gravitation of the rainfall on the more or less distant uplands. The licking up of portions of all the strata through which the water had percolated, and which portions, unseen by the eye, but present in the taste, it now held in solution, was thought to be a natural quality of the particular water. And as ordinary medicines are always associated with unpleasantness of taste, so in waters impregnated with mineral ingredients, the harsher the taste, the greater medicinal properties were attached to them. And the higher temperature of many mineral springs was also considered to be an innate property of the mystical, almost miraculous, particular waters. We now know that this is caused by the waters, in following rifts and fissures in the strata, in their passage to their outlet, having had to descend to lower depths, and being thus warmed by the internal heat of the globe: acquiring one additional degree of temperature for about every seventy feet of descent. As the old Greeks had in their pantheon of the powers of Nature, Naiads— nymphs of the fountain—so in our older folk-lore the streams had their Kelpies or other guardian spirits. When the Christian Church became paramount, the Catholic Canon of saints and angels took the places of the Teutonic and Scandinavian sprites: each spring was dedicated to, or became the property of, a particular saint; and it was he or she who gave the waters their special qualities. At some of these holy springs or wells it was customary for ailing persons to go, for the cure of their diseases, on the first Sunday in May; they washed in the streams, and left presents to the tutelar saints; pieces of money were put in the waters, or poor people would place needles and pins, or other small articles, therein. On a hill near Stirling was the well of St. Corbet, to which pilgrimages were thus made. To drink its waters was a safe and easy insurance of life throughout the twelve months ensuing. Up to a hundred years ago crowds of persons—including a large proportion of lads and lasses—came to the blessed well, drinking copious draughts of its waters, but too often mixing these with the strong waters of Kilbagie, of Glenlivat, or other such brand. The wise saint evidently did not approve of this adulteration, for with the practice his well lost its life-preserving reputation.