Note 229.1 — Chapter XI · SACRED WELLS AND TREES.

But I cannot close this inquiry without referring to one or two other ceremonies not quite so easily deciphered. The first is reported by a German writer whose authority for the statement I have been unable to trace. He says it is the custom in Wales for a bride and bridegroom to go and lie down beside a well or fountain and throw in pins as a pledge of the new relation into which they have entered. And he adds that in clearing out an old Roman well in the Isle of Wight, about the year 1840, some bushels of ancient British pins for the clothes were found.229.1 Whether or not the British pins are to be connected with the alleged custom in Wales, it is difficult to account for a collection of pins in such a situation except upon the supposition that they were purposely thrown into the well. As in the case of the pins found in the Meuse and the Sambre, however, we can only guess at the reason that brought them there. If the alleged Welsh rite be correctly described, no prayer is offered. Could we find an early shape of it, we should probably recognise a solemn consecration of the one spouse to the domestic divinity of the other—a ritual reception into the kin. The analogy with the marriage custom of the Montbéliard Protestants is obvious. An instance in which the same analogy lies even more on the surface is a ceremony in use among the Mohammedan tribes of Daghestan. Imperfectly civilised, they are still organised in gentes, each of which derives its origin from a mythical ancestor. But it is possible for a man to break with his gens, if he desire to do so. The desire must be expressed solemnly and publicly at a meeting in the mosque; and he must announce that every tie is broken between himself and his touchoum, or clan. By way of memorial a nail is then driven into one of the walls of the mosque.230.1 It seems to be unnecessary now to enter another clan in place of the one renounced; and the words employed express no more than the detestatio sacrorum, or renunciation. But, as we shall see in the next chapter, this could only have been half the original ceremony. It must once have been followed by admission into another kin, for no one would be content to be a kinless man. The ceremony now takes place in a mosque. Before the conversion to Islam it must have taken place in the hut or temple where the totem or ancestor-god of the new kin was worshipped. And the driving of the nail into the wall of the mosque may be imagined to be the only remaining relic of the rite of admission into the new gens and of initiation into its cult. If this be so, it probably expressed and effected the neophyte’s union with the divinity into whose kin and worship he was entering.