One can understand why holy wells retained their popularity. Even though they did not always effect a cure, people continued to believe in them and to seek their aid. Consecrated springs might throw cold water (metaphorically) on many a cherished hope; but, for all that, they remained, as of old, objects of reverence. The secret of their power lay in their appeal to the imagination. Understanding might say, it is absurd to expect that my ailment can be removed in this way; but imagination protested that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in my philosophy. The rites to be gone through--the choice of the fitting season, the keeping of silence, the leaving of a gift--all conduced to throw a halo of romance around the practice. There was thus an appeal to the unknown and mysterious, that gave to well-worship a strange charm. It stirred up any latent poetry in a man's nature, and linked him to something beyond himself. Springs have a double charm. They are interesting for their own sake, and for the sake of the folklore that has gathered round them. They are "like roses, beautiful in themselves, that add to their own perfection the exquisite loveliness of a mossy dell." In conclusion, take away what is distinctively mediæval in well-worship, and paganism is left. We find this paganism entering like a wedge into the substance of a Christian civilisation. It may have changed its colour, but it is paganism notwithstanding. Well-worship has a definite value as a survival. It serves to unite our own age of science with one in the far past, when laws of nature, as we understand them, were unknown. As a cult it has forsaken the busy haunts of men, but lingers still in quiet places, especially among the mountains. Superstitions die hard. The epitaph of this one has still to be written. Those who are waiting for its last breath need not be surprised if they have to wait yet a while. End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Folklore of Scottish Lochs and Springs, by James M. Mackinlay