So, too, it has been with the ‘ducking’ of the divinity. When the modern French peasant throws the image of his saint into the water, he believes himself to be doing it, not as a mimetic rain-charm, but as a punishment to compel a power obdurate to prayer to grant through fear the required boon. The rain-charms took place, doubtless, at such wells, springs, or brooks as the lustral procession passed in its progress round the village. It is also possible that there may have been, sometimes or always, a well within the sacred grove itself and hard by the sacred tree. The sanctity derived by such wells and streams from the use of them in the cult of the fertilization spirit is probably what is really intended by the water-worship so often ascribed to the heathen of western Europe, and coupled closely with tree-worship in the Christian discipline-books. The goddess of the tree was also the goddess of the well. At the conversion her wells were taken over by the new religion. They became holy wells, under the protection of the Virgin or one of the saints. And they continued to be approached with the same rites as of old, for the purpose of obtaining the ancient boons for which the fertilization spirit had always been invoked. It will not be forgotten that, besides the public cult of the fertilization spirit for the welfare of the crops and herds, there was also a private cult, which aimed at such more personal objects of desire as health, success in love and marriage, and divination of the future. It is this private cult that is most markedly preserved in modern holy well customs. These may be briefly summarized as follows[402]. The wells are sought for procuring a husband or children, for healing diseases, especially eye-ailments or warts, and for omens, these too most often in relation to wedlock. The worshipper bathes wholly or in part, or drinks the water. Silence is often enjoined, or a motion _deasil_, that is, with the sun’s course, round the well. Occasionally cakes are eaten, or sugar and water drunk, or the well-water is splashed on a stone. Very commonly rags or bits of wool or hair are laid under a pebble or hung on a bush near the well, or pins, more rarely coins or even articles of food, are thrown into it. The objects so left are not probably to be regarded as offerings; the intention is rather to bring the worshipper, through the medium of his hair or clothes, or some object belonging to him, into direct contact with the divinity. The close connexion between tree-and well-cult is shown by the use of the neighbouring bush on which to hang the rags. And the practice of dropping pins into the well is almost exactly paralleled by that of driving nails ‘for luck’ into a sacred tree or its later representative, a cross or saintly image. The theory may be hazarded that originally the sacred well was never found without the sacred tree beside it. This is by no means the case now; but it must be remembered that a tree is much more perishable