“Possibly even in Syria an old pagan drawing of water became veiled under new Christian meanings. In Germany other circumstances point undisguisedly to a heathen consecration of water: it was not to be drawn at midnight, but in the morning _before sunrise down stream_ and _silently_, usually on _Easter Sunday_, to which the above explanations do not so well apply: this water does not spoil, it restores youth, heals eruptions, and makes the young cattle strong. Magic water, serving for unchristian divination, is to be _collected before sunrise on a Sunday_ in one glass from _three flowing springs_; and _a taper is lighted_ before a glass, as before a divine being. Here I bring in once again the Hessian custom mentioned at page 58: On Easter Monday youths and maidens walk to the Hollow Rock in the mountains, draw _water from the cool spring in jugs to carry home_, and throw flowers in as an offering. Apparently this water-worship was Celtic likewise. The water of the rock spring Karnant makes a broken sword whole again. Curious customs show us in what manner young girls in the Pyrenees country _tell their own fortunes in the spring water_ on May-day morning.”[95] Water Securing Immunity from Disease. Sacred water as a means of lustration and of immunity from disease is yet a prominent characteristic of Northern European water-worship. GRIMM thus describes it: “In a spring near Nogent men and women bathed on St. John’s eve: Holberg’s comedy of _Kilde-reisen_ is founded on the Copenhagen people’s practice of pilgriming to a neighboring spring on _St. Hans aften_ to heal and invigorate themselves in its waters. On Midsummer-eve the people of Ostergötland journeyed according to ancient custom to Lagman’s bergekälla near Skeninge, and drank of the well. In many parts of Germany some clear fountain is visited at Whitsuntide, and the water drunk in jugs of a peculiar shape. Still more important is Petrarch’s description of the annual bathing of the women of Cologne in the Rhine; it deserves to be quoted in full, because it plainly proves that the cult prevailed not merely at here and there a spring, but in Germany’s greatest river. From the Italian’s unacquaintance with the rite, one might infer that it was foreign to the country whence all Church ceremonies proceeded, and therefore altogether unchristian and heathenish. But Petrarch may not have had a minute knowledge of all the customs of his country; after his time, at all events, we find even there a lustration on St. John’s Day (described as ancient custom then dying out). And long before Petrarch, in Augustine’s time, the rite was practised in Libya, and is denounced by that Father as a relic of paganism. Generally sanctioned by the Church it certainly was not, yet it might be allowed here and there, as a not unapt reminder of the Baptizer in the Jordan, and now interpreted of him, though once it had been