The most singular feature of well-worship in Europe is the fantastic custom of offering rags at sacred wells, also pins and buttons, rusty nails and needles, and even shells and pebbles. Rag wells and pin wells abound in Great Britain and Ireland. Many references to these are found in the works of European folklorists. Sir Laurence Gomme has skilfully distributed them geographically and we may adopt his analysis.[55] In the middle and southern countries of England these practices have not survived, but in northern England one comes across several pin-wells. At Sefton in Lancashire it was customary for passers-by to drop into St. Helen’s well a new pin for good luck or to secure the fulfilment of an expressed wish and by the turning of the pin-point to the north or to any other point of the compass conclusions were drawn as to the fidelity of lovers, date of marriage and other love matters. At Brindle is a well dedicated to St. Ellin, where on Patron day pins are thrown into the water. Such pin-wells also existed at Jarrow and Wooler in Northumberland, at Breyton Minchmore, Koyingham, and Mount Grace in Yorkshire. At Great Cotes and Winterton in Lincolnshire, Newcastle and Benton in Northumberland, Newton Kyme, Thorp Arch, and Gargrave in Yorkshire, pieces of rag, cloth, or ribbon take the place of the pins, and are tied to bushes adjoining the wells, while near Newton, at the foot of Roseberry Topping, the shirt or shift of the devotee was thrown into the well, and according as it floated or sank so would the sickness leave or be fatal, while as an offering to the saint a rag of the shirt is torn off and left hanging on the briars thereabouts. Pin wells in Wales are met with at Rhosgoch in Montgomeryshire, St. Cynhafal’s Well in Denbighshire, St. Barruc’s Well on Barry Island, near Cardiff, Ffynon Gwynwy spring in Carnarvonshire, and a well near Penrhos. Reference has already been made to the cursing well of St. Aelian. Anyone who wished to inflict a curse upon an enemy resorted to the priestess of the well and got the name of the person proposed to be cursed registered in a book kept for the purpose. A pin was then dropped into the well in the name of the victim, and the curse was complete. Pin-wells and rag-wells are both represented in Cornwall as, for instance, at Pelynt, St. Austel and St. Roche, where pins are offered, and at Madron Well, where both pins and rags are offered. In Ireland the offering of rags is a universal custom. Among examples of rag-wells may be mentioned Ardclinis, County Antrim; Errigall-Keroge, County Tyrone; Dungiven, St. Bartholomew’s Well at Pilltown, County Waterford; and St. Brigid’s Well at Cliffony, County Sligo.