Note 178.1 — Chapter X · WITCHCRAFT: PHILTRES—PREVENTIVE AND REMEDIAL LEECHCRAFT.

In England the custom is well known of throwing pins into the water or hanging rags torn from the devotee’s clothing upon the neighbouring bushes and trees.178.1 But without pausing on English examples we pass at once to Ireland. There sacred wells and other places of pilgrimage are numerous and interesting. Mr. W. C. Borlase, quoting from the manuscripts of the late Mr. Windele of Cork, mentions the cromlech of Maul na holtora, in Kerry, as reputed to contain a well to which a legend of a sacred fish attached. It was a place of pilgrimage every Saturday. “The brambles are tied with rags, and there is a deposit of pins as offerings.” The ritual prescribed at this and similar places of pilgrimage is the performance of a circuit from point to point, right-hand-wise, or in the direction of the sun, the recital of a certain number of paternosters and aves, just as at the stations of the Cross in a Roman Catholic church, and finally the deposit of the offering of a rag or pins. A well at Finmagh, in Roscommon, in which a Druid was said to be buried, was regarded as a deity. Here, however, the offerings, thrust through a hole or cleft in the roof, were of gold and silver.178.2 This is a rare case. Quite recently Professor Haddon and Dr. Browne found, in the Aran Islands, Galway, rags attached to sprays of the bramble or ivy at most of the holy wells. Buttons, fish-hooks, iron nails, shells, pieces of crockery and other things are deposited in the holy well at Tempulan-Cheathruir-aluinn, or the Church of the Four Comely Ones.178.3 Turish Lyn, a pool in the stream a little below Kilgort Bridge, in County Derry, is still resorted to for the cure of various diseases. Among the offerings left on a bush beside the stream are enumerated a piece of cloth, a lock of hair and three stones picked up from the pool.179.1 A number of other instances are cited by Mr. Gomme from various authorities.179.2 What seems an analogous custom is declared by Sir Ralph Payne-Gallwey to be practised at the Large Skellig, off the coast of Kerry. This island contains the ruin of an ancient monastery, and is accounted a holy place. When workmen from the mainland have been employed on the buildings on the Skellig and are bidding farewell to the island, “they invariably cast some well-worn article of clothing, oftener than not a pair of shoes, at a solitary rock, known as the Blue Man, which stands abruptly out of the ocean.”179.3