Commencing with the Teutonic centres of England, Sir Laurence Gomme shows that the middle and south-eastern counties almost fix the boundary of one form of well-worship, a form which has lost all local colour, all distinct ritual, and remains only in the dedication of the well or spring to a saint of the Christian Church, in the tradition of its name as a “holy well,” or else in the memory of some sort of reverence formerly paid to the waters, which in many cases are nameless. Proceeding from small beginnings where the survival of the ancient cult is represented by the simple idea of reverence for wells mostly dedicated to a Christian saint, he takes us through stages where a ceremonial is faintly traced in the well-dressing with garlands decked with flowers and ribbons, where shrubs and trees growing near the well are the recipients of offerings by devotees to the spirit of the well, where disease and sickness of all kinds are ministered to, where aid is sought against enemies, where the gift of rain is obtained, where the spirits appear in general forms as fairies and in specific form as animal or fish, and finally, it may be in anthropomorphic form as Christian saints, where priestesses attend the well to preside over the ceremonies. With the several variants overlapping at every stage and thus keeping the whole group of superstition and custom in touch, one section with another, he shows that there is every reason to identify this cult as the most widespread and the most lasting in connection with local natural objects. He points out, moreover, that it is in the Celtic-speaking districts where the rudest and most uncivilised ceremonial is extant, and further, that it is in the country of the Goidelic or earliest branch of the Celts, where this finds its most pronounced types. To show how this may be translated into terms of ethnology he has given us the following table showing where the survivals of the cult are the most perfect, that is to say, less touched by the incoming civilisations which have swept over them:—