One point may be mentioned here, viz., the power possessed by wells
of removing to another place. St. Fillan's Spring, at Comrie, in
Perthshire, once took its rise on the top of the hill Dunfillan,
but tradition says that it quitted its old site for the present one,
at the foot of a rock, a quarter of a mile further south. In the
article on Comrie in the "Old Statistical Account of Scotland,"
the well is described as "humbled indeed, but not forsaken." A
more striking instance of flitting is mentioned by Martin as having
occurred in the Hebrides. In his account of Islay, he says, "A mile
on the south-west side of the cave Uah Vearnag is the celebrated well
Toubir-in-Knahar, which, in the ancient language, is as much as to say,
'the well has sailed from one place to another'; for it is a received
tradition of the vulgar inhabitants of this isle, and the opposite isle
of Colonsay, that this well was first at Colonsay until an impudent
woman happened to wash her hands in it, and that immediately after,
the well, being thus abused, came in an instant to Islay, where it is
like to continue, and is ever since esteemed a catholicon for diseases
by the natives and adjacent islanders." Perhaps the instance that
puts the greatest strain on credulity is that of the spring dedicated
to St. Fergus on the hill of Knockfergan, in Banffshire. Tradition
reports that this spring came in a miraculous manner from Italy,
though how it travelled to its quiet retreat in Scotland we do not
know. There must have been some special attraction about the well,
for a market known as the Well-Market used to be held beside it every
year. On one occasion a fight took place about a cheese. In consequence
the market was transferred to the neighbouring village of Tomintoul,
where it continues to be held in August, under the same name.
In his "Romances of the West of England," the late Mr. Robert Hunt
puts in a plea for the preservation of holy wells and other relics
of antiquity, though he allows "that it is a very common notion
amongst the peasantry that a just retribution overtakes those who
wilfully destroy monuments, such as stone circles, crosses, wells,
and the like," and he mentions the case of an old man who altered a
holy well at Boscaswell, in St. Just, and was drowned the following
day within sight of his house. Mr. Hunt is speaking of Cornish wells;
but the same is doubtless true of those north of the Tweed. Springs
that can fly through the air and go through certain other wonderful
performances can surely be trusted to look after themselves.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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