Note 3 — Chapter VI · The Folklore of the Wells

I cannot say for certain whether it was customary in any of the cases to which I have called attention to tie rags to the well tree as well as to throw pins or other small objects into the well; but I cannot help adhering to the view, that the distinction was probably an ancient one between two orders of things. In other words, I am inclined to believe that the rag was regarded as the vehicle of the disease of which the ailing visitor to the well wished to be rid, and that the bead, button, or coin deposited by him in the well, or in a receptacle near the well, formed alone the offering. In opposition to this view Mr. Gomme has expressed himself as follows in Folk-Lore, 1892, p. 89:—‘There is some evidence against that, from the fact that in the case of some wells, especially in Scotland at one time, the whole garment was put down as an offering. Gradually these offerings of clothes became less and less till they came down to rags. Also in other parts, the geographical distribution of rag-offerings coincides with the existence of monoliths and dolmens.’ As to the monoliths and dolmens, I am too little conversant with the facts to risk any opinion as to the value of the coincidence; but as to the suggestion that the rag originally meant the whole garment, that will suit my hypothesis admirably. In other words, the whole garment was, as I take it, the vehicle of the disease: the whole was accursed, and not merely a part. But Mr. Gomme had previously touched on the question in his presidential address (Folk-Lore for 1892, p. 13); and I must at once admit that he succeeded then in proving that a certain amount of confusion occurs between things which I should regard as belonging originally to distinct categories: witness the inimitable Irish instance which he quotes:—‘To St. Columbkill—I offer up this button, a bit o’ the waistband o’ my own breeches, an’ a taste o’ my wife’s petticoat, in remimbrance of us havin’ made this holy station; an’ may they rise up in glory to prove it for us in the last day.’ Here not only the button is treated as an offering, but also the bits of clothing; but the confusion of ideas I should explain as being, at least in part, one of the natural results of substituting a portion of a garment for the entire garment; for thereby a button or a pin becomes a part of the dress, and capable of being interpreted in two senses. After all, however, the ordinary practices have not, as I look at them, resulted in effacing the distinction altogether: the rag is not left in the well; nor is the bead, button, or pin attached to a branch of the tree. So, in the main, it seemed to me easier to explain the facts, taken altogether, on the supposition that originally the rag was regarded as the vehicle of the disease, and the bead, button, or coin as the offering. My object in calling attention to this point was to have it discussed, and I am happy to say that I have not been disappointed; for, since my remarks were published3, a paper entitled Pin-wells and Rag-bushes was read before the British Association by Mr. Hartland, in 1893, and published in Folk-Lore for the same year, pp. 451–70. In that paper the whole question is gone into with searching logic, and Mr. Hartland finds the required explanation in one of the dogmas of magic. For ‘if an article of my clothing,’ he says, ‘in a witch’s hands may cause me to suffer, the same article in contact with a beneficent power may relieve my pain, restore me to health, or promote my general prosperity. A pin that has pricked my wart … has by its contact, by the wound it has inflicted, acquired a peculiar bond with the wart; the rag that has rubbed the wart has by that friction acquired a similar bond; so that whatever is done to the pin or the rag, whatever influences the pin or the rag may undergo, the same influences are by that very act brought to bear, upon the wart. If, instead of using a rag, or making a pilgrimage to a sacred well, I rub my warts with raw meat and then bury the meat, the wart will decay and disappear with the decay and dissolution of the meat …. In like manner my shirt or stocking, or a rag to represent it, placed upon a sacred bush, or thrust into a sacred well—my name written upon the walls of a temple—a stone or a pellet from my hand cast upon a sacred image or a sacred cairn—is thenceforth in continual contact with divinity; and the effluence of divinity, reaching and involving it, will reach and involve me.’ Mr. Hartland concludes from a large number of instances, that as a rule ‘where the pin or button is dropped into the well, the patient does not trouble about the rag, and vice versa.’ This wider argument as to the effluence of the divinity of a particular spot of special holiness seems to me conclusive. It applies also, needless to say, to a large category of cases besides those in question between Mr. Gomme and the present writer.