An oak and an elm tree stand behind, And beside does an ash-tree grow; And a willow, from the bank above, Droops to the water below. A trav’ller came to the Well of St. Keyne; Pleasant it was to his eye, For from cock-crowing he had travelling been, And there was not a cloud in the sky. He drank of the water so cool and clear, For thirsty and hot was he; And he sat down upon a bank All under the willow tree. There came a man from the neighbouring town, At the Well to fill his pail; So on the well side he rested it, And bade the stranger hail. “Now art thou a bachelor, stranger?” quoth he, “For if thou hast a wife, The happiest draught thou hast drank to-day That ever thou didst in thy life. “Or has your good woman, if one you have, In Cornwall ever been? For, and if she have, I’ll venture my life She has drank of the Well of St. Keyne.” “I left a good woman who never was here,” The stranger he made reply, “But that my draught should be better for that, I pray you answer me why.” “St. Keyne,” quoth the countryman, “many a time Drank of this crystal Well; And before the angel summon’d her hence, She laid on the water a spell:―― “If the husband of this gifted Well Shall drink before his wife A happy man thenceforth is he, For he shall be master for life. “But if the wife should drink of it first, God help the husband then!”―― _The stranger stoopt to the Well of St Keyne, And he drank of the water again!!_ “You drank of the Well, I warrant, betime?” He to the countryman said; But the countryman smiled, as the stranger spoke, And sheepishly shook his head. “I hasten’d, as soon as the wedding was done, And left my wife in the porch; But i’ faith! she had been wiser than me,―― For she took a bottle to church.” It is almost unnecessary to observe, that the stones said to originate from serpents petrified at the intercession of St. Keyne or St. Kenna, and supposed by Mr. Tonkin, according to the philosophy of his day, to be _Lusus Naturæ_, are the shells of extinct Nautili, called Cornua Ammonis, from their resemblance to the horns sculptured on the statues of Jupiter Ammon, found in abundance throughout the neighbourhood of Kainsham, and in most of the formations intermediate between the iron sand and red marle. Transforming serpents into stone, seems to have been an achievement as appropriate to Saints as was the encountering of dragons to knights errant. St. Hilda cleared her favourite Island from these venomous reptiles; and St. Patrick, more powerfully gifted, swept them from the whole of Ireland at once. It was at last observed, with no small degree of wonder, that those metamorphosed snakes invariably wanted a head, and the times of fabricating legends having passed by, this phenomenon never received a solution from the cloister.