"for I am expecting home my old pupil Carthagh,
and I was short of victuals. We will cook it for his
supper."
Some of the saints had the fancy for saying their prayers standing up to their necks in water.
There is a story of S. Erc, the S. Erth of Land's End district, to the purpose, but I admit it is on late authority.
Domnhal, king of Ireland, sent his servants to collect goose-eggs. They found a woman carrying a black basket on her head piled up with the eggs of geese. The king's servants demanded them, but she answered that they were intended as a present to Ere, who spent the day immersed to the armpits in running water, with his Psalter on the bank, from which he recited the psalms. In the evening he emerged from his bath, shook himself, and ate an egg and a half together with three bunches of water- cress.
However, regardless of the saint's necessities, the servants carried the eggs away.
When S. Erc came out of the river, dripping from every limb, and found there were no eggs for his supper, he waxed warm, and roundly cursed the rascals who had despoiled him, and those who had set them on, and all such as should eat them.
The story goes on to tell how these eggs became veritable apples of discord, breeding internecine strife.
But to return to the wells.
Whether taught by experience, or illumined by the light of nature, I cannot say, but most assuredly
