Several wells are believed to harbour spirits possessing occult powers and faculties for giving omens. One such oracular well may be seen in Ghoga Street, Fort. The owner of the house, a Parsi, was allowed, in the first instance, to stock the well with fish so as to clear it of the malaria mosquitoes. This, however, failed to give satisfactory results and there was no alternative but to demand a covering. The owner on the other hand pleaded that the well had been held in great veneration by all classes of people and had so high a reputation for divination that many persons visited it at midnight to “enquire about their wishes.” “About eight to twelve ladies (of whom none should be a widow) stand surrounding the well at midnight and ask questions. If any good is going to happen, fire will be seen on the surface of the water.” The owner assured Dr. Shroff that he himself had been an eye-witness to these phenomena. Indian folklore abounds in stories belonging to the same group. Neither are such stories unknown to the European folklorist. We shall notice in due course several oracular and wishing wells in India and other countries, but the ceremony described by the Parsi owner is purely local and typical. So far as I have been able to ascertain, there is no parallel for it in the literature of well-worship. Peculiar also is the hour fixed for the ceremony. Generally, visiting wells in the midnight or even midday is believed to bring disasters. It seems, however, from an account of a rite described by Miss Burne in Shropshire Folklore that anyone wishing to resort to St. Oswall’s Well at Oswestry had also to go to the well at midnight. The ceremony was of course different. It simply required that the votary had to take some water up in the hand and drink part of it, at the same time forming a wish in the mind, and to throw the rest of the water upon a particular stone at the back of the well. If he succeeded in throwing all the water left in his hand upon that stone without touching any other spot, his wish would be fulfilled. CHAPTER III. PENALTY FOR DEFILEMENT. A tenant of the same house in Ghoga Street informed Dr. Shroff that a cooly spat on the pavement surrounding the oracular well with the result that he died instantly on the spot for having defiled the holy ground. This reminds me of a story related to me about three years ago of a European girl who took suddenly ill and died within a day or two after she had kicked aside a stone kept near the pavement of a well in Loveji Castle at Parel. On this stone people used to put their offerings to the saintly spirit of the place known by the name of Kaffri Bâwâ. Many are the stories I have heard of this spirit from a lady who spent her youth in Loveji Castle, but as this was a tree-spirit and not a well-spirit, those tales would be out of place here.