Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 3, 1892.djvu/83

I visited the spot a few years ago in the company of the Rev. E. B. Savage of St. Thomas's Parsonage, Douglas, and we found the well nearly dried up in consequence of the drainage of the field around it; but the remains of the old cell were there, and the thorn-bush had strips of cloth or calico tied to its branches. We cut off one, which is now in the Pitt-Rivers Museum at Oxford. The account Mr. Savage had of the ritual observed at the well differed a little from that given by Mr. Moore, especially in the fact that it made the patient who had been walking round the well with water from the well in his mouth, empty that water finally into a rag from his clothing: the rag was then tied to a branch of the thorn. It does not appear that the kind of tree mattered much; nay, a tree was not, it seems to me, essential. At any rate, St. Maughold's Well has no tree growing near it now; but it is right to say, that when Mr. Kermode and I visited it, we could find no rags left near the spot, nor indeed could we expect to find any, as there was nothing to which they might be tied on that windy headland. The absence of the tree does not, however, prove that the same sort of ritual was not formerly observed at St. Maughold's Well as at Chibber Undin; and here I must mention another well which I have visited in the Island more than once. It is on the side of Bradda Hill, a little above the village of Bradda, and in the direction of Fleshwick: I was attracted to it by the fact that it had, as I had been told by Mr. Savage, near it formerly an old cell or keeill, and the name of the saint to which it belonged may probably be gathered from the name of the well, which, in the Manx of the south of the Island, is Chibbyrt Valtane, pronounced approximately Chilvurt Valtane or Alðáne. The personal name would be written in modern Manx in its radical form as Baltane, and if it occurred in the genitive in old inscriptions I should expect to find it written Baltagni. It is, however, unknown to me, but to be placed by the side of the name of the saint after whom the parish of Santon is called in the