470
NOTES AND QUERIES. m s. m. JUNE 17, mi.
SIB PETER WYCHE. I should be very glad
if airy of your readers could put me on the
track of a portrait of Sir Peter Wyche,
who was ambassador to Constantinople
temp Charles I. I can find no engraved
portrait of this worthy in the Hope Collec-
tion here, but it is not improbable that a
painting is somewhere to be found.
B. H. BLACKWELL.
Oxford.
RAGS AND OLD CLOTHES LEFT AT
WELLS. (US. iii. 409.)
THIS old practice may be said to extend all over the world. Invalids visited wells and fountains for healing purposes ; a coin might be left with the monk or hermit, keeper of the place, but an important func- tion was leaving a piece of the clothing of the devotee on some adjacent tree or bush. We read that in Scotland, fifty years after the Reformation, the wells " were all tapes- tried about with old rags " ; it was so in Ross-shire as late as 1860 (Proc. of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, iv. 209). For the custom at St. Colman's Well in Ross- shire and at St. Fillan's Well in Renfrew- shire see ' Old Stat. Account of Scotland,' i. 284, 316. For a well in Banffshire see Robertson's ' Antiquities of Aberdeen and Banffshire,' ii. 310. The practice is described in a long article in Brand's ' Popular Anti- quities,' entitled ' Customs and Super- stitions concerning Wells and Fountains,' pp. 516-20.
I have not all my notes by me, but there are further references in S. Carter Hall's 'Ireland: its Scenery,' &c. ; Mitchell's 'The Past in the Present,' pp. 149-51 ; and Folk- lore, iv. 451-70. It would take up too much space to give references, which are very numerous. A. RHODES.
In a paper by Professor '(now Sir John) Rhys on ' Manx Folk-lore and Superstitions,' which appeared in Folk-lore (vol. ii. pp. 284- 313 ; and vol. iii. 74-91), he says (iii. 76) :
" There is another point to which I should like to draw attention, namely, the habit of writing about rags as offerings, which they are not in all cases. The offerings are the coins, beads, buttons, or pins thrown into the well, or placed in a re- ceptacle for the purpose close to the well. The rags may belong to quite a different order of things : they may be the vehicles of the diseases which the patients communicate to them when
ihey spit out the well-water from their mouths.
The rags are put up to rot, so that the disease
supposed to cling to them may also die ; and
so far is this believed to be the case, that any one
who carries awiy one of the rags may expect to
attract the disease communicated to it by the
one who left it near the holy well. So it is highly
desirable that the distinction between the offer-
ings and the accursed things should be observed,
at any rate in writing of holy wells in the Isle of
Man. How far the same distinction is to be found
elsewhere I am unable to say ; but the question
is one that deserves attention."
S. Thomas, Douglas.
ERNEST B. SAVAGE.
There is a reference to the above custom
in ' The Evil Eye,' by Frederick Thomas
Elworthy (John Murray, 1905), on p. 59 :
" We may easily find instances of the use [of sympathetic magic] for beneficent or at least harmless purposes. The idea prevails in various parts of South Wales, where at certain holy wells, each having a separate reputation of its own for specific diseases, the faithful hang a piece of rag, after having rubbed it over the part diseased, upon some special tree or bush near the well, in the belief that the rag absorbs the ailment and that the sufferer will be cured. One or more of these trees are covered with pieces of rag placed on it by the believers."
The paragraph goes on to refer to the accompanying practice of dropping pins into the well, and in a note cites as an authority ' Sacred Wells in Wales,' by Prof. Rhys, read before the Cwmrodorian Society,- 11 January, 1893. gj C. W. FIREBBACE.
Mr. R. C. Hope in the introduction to his book entitled ' Holy Wells, their Legends and Traditions ' (London, 1893), states that " the hanging of rags and scraps of clothing on branches of trees and on bushes about the holy wells is probably a remnant of the old tree- worship ; it obtains all over the globe ; it is very common in Great Britain. In the Church- prohibitions this tree- worship is variously men- tioned as ' vota ad arbores facere ' ; ' arborem colere ' ; ' votum ad arborem persolvere,' &c."
A. H. ARKLE.
- The practice noted in the query is not confined to Ireland and Scotland. It pre- vails to an equal if not greater extent in England and Wales. A somewhat detailed account of the customs observed at holy wells will be found in Chambers' s * Book of Days,' ii. 6-8.
The superstitious belief in wells, once pretty prevalent all over Britain, is no longer entertained, so far, at least, as Scotland is concerned. When rags are still seen on bushes adjoining wells the reason for their presence is due to a cause quite other than superstition. The wandering tribes | *
