vain efforts to eradicate all traces of the former beliefs, circumvented the Mammon of Unrighteousness by taking the old pagan practices under their own wing. So they blessed the waters of the holy wells; built chapels, in many instances, over them; turned the old well-spirit into a new church-saint, and took to themselves the credit for the miraculous cures ascribed to these ancient places of worship.[1]
They forgot, however, to secure all the water-spirits, for Peg Powler of the Tees escaped them; and, in like wise, Jenny Greenteeth, the spirit of the Lancashire streams; Peg o' Nell, the lady of the Ribble; Mary Hosies, who controls part of the Avon near my home in Lanarkshire; and others, still survive to carry the memory of the British nature-gods down into modern days. Oddly enough, we are told that in Sweden the old pagan deities, when worsted by Christianity, took refuge in the rivers.
It is interesting to note that in York Minster, Carlisle Cathedral, Glastonbury, and elsewhere, the old holy-wells are still found within the walls of the Christian churches.[2] We may, therefore, safely say, that if the cure of children's diseases at wells was dependent upon these wells being baptismal fonts, the practice must be referred to the pagan and not to the Christian rite. But has well-curing anything whatever to do with baptism? Let us return to the section dealing with the baptismal customs of the world, and let us compare the details of the baptismal ceremony with those of the cure-ceremony. If we do so, we shall find a difference so marked between the two rites that we shall surely be able to say that they are different in origin and in aim—fundamentally different; and that all they possess in common is the accidental circumstance that they have both something to do with water and with young children.
To begin with, the lustration-rite is a washing-rite.
