Celtic Lore & Legend (12 page)

In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost
”.

[
Editor’s Note
: As with all the other charms and spells mentioned here, apart from the first, the charmer must touch the infected part with his or her finger. This is perhaps harking back to the ancient Celtic shamans who could reputedly heal with a touch. The later Celtic Church, with its emphasis on miracles and healing, encouraged its clergy to do the same.]

The transition from the pagan to Christian traditions in Celtic lands was not an easy one. Ancient traditions had become so embedded in the Celtic way of life that they were practically impossible to erase. These traditions included charms and spells that had been used for centuries by local shamans and had been passed down from one generation to the next. Dotted throughout the landscape too were sacred streams and wells in which spirits and ancient gods were said to dwell, and over the years many of these sites had become associated with healing and protection. Consequently, they had attracted pilgrims who came in the hope of receiving cures or some form of good fortune from the spirit that lived there. The druids—the near-shamanistic religious leaders of the Celtic world—were the guardians of such places and received offerings for the spirits in these places. When the Church asserted itself and the druids began to fade away, the wells still retained their former reputations as magical places, and indeed some were places of pilgrimage for a nominally Christian but still largely pagan
people. The Church moved quickly to take these places over, replacing their old pagan names with those of Christian saints, many of whom had nothing at all to do with the sites involved. The miraculous powers of the waters, formerly attributed to the pagan spirits, were now attributed to these holy men and women. Even the power to foresee the future in the well’s depths (often a pagan attribute) was now ascribed to holy intervention.

Cornish folklorist William Bottrell visited and cataloged a number of these wells all dedicated to saints but which had pagan associations. The most famous of his accounts of such places concerns a site widely known as St. Madron’s Well. Who St. Madron was is unknown, and, indeed, the saint may not even have existed at all. The name may actually be a corruption of the name of some ancient pagan deity associated with the well itself. The account is taken from Bottrell’s pamphlet “West Country Superstitions” (1874-75).

by William Bottrell

“On passing over a stile and entering the moor in which the well is situated, cross the moor at right angle to the hedge and a minute’s walk will bring one to the noted spring which is not seen until very near, as it has no wall above the surface, nor any mark by which it can be distinguished at a distance.

Much has been written of the remarkable cures affected by its holy waters and the intercession of St. Madron or Motran, when it was so famous that the maimed, halt and lame made pilgrimages from the distant parts to the heathy moor.

It is still resorted to on the first three Wednesdays in May, by some few women of the neighbourhood, who bring children
to be cured of skin diseases by being bathed in it. Its old reputation as a divining fount has not yet quite died out, though many young people visit it now to drop pebbles or pins into the well, more for fun and the pleasure of each other’s company than through any belief that the falling together or the separation of pins or pebbles will tell how the course of love will run between the two parties indicated by the objects dropped into the spring; or that the number of bubbles which rise in the water or stamping near the well, mark the years in answer to any question of time; but there was not such want of faith, however, half a century ago.

A short time since, I visited an elderly dame of Madron who was a highly reputed charmer for the cure of various skin ailments; I had known her from my childhood; and my object was to glean what I could about the rites practised within her remembrance at Madron Well, the Crick-stone and elsewhere.

She gave the following account of the usages at Madron Well about fifty years ago. At that time when she lived in Lanyon, scores of women from Morvah, Zennor, Towednack and other places brought their children to be cured of the shingles, wild-fires, tetters and other diseases as well as to fortify against witchcraft or being blighted with an evil eye.

An old dame called An’ Katty, who mostly lived in the Bossullows, or some place near, and who did little but knitting-work picked up a good living in May by attending at the well, to direct the high country folks how they were to proceed in using the waters.

First, she had the child stripped as naked as it were born; then it was plunged three times against the sun; next the creature was passed quickly nine times around the spring, going from east to west, or with the sun; the child was then dressed, rolled up in something warm and laid to sleep near the water; if it slept and plenty of bubbles in the well; it was a good sign. I asked if a prayer, charm or anything was spoken during the
operations. ‘Why no, to be sure’ my old friend replied ‘don’t ‘e know any better, there musn’t be a word spoken all the time they are near the water, it would spoil the spell; and a piece rented not cut, from the child’s clothes or from that of anybody using the well must be left near it for luck; ever so small a bit will do.’ This was mostly placed out of sight between the stones bordering the brooklet or hung on a thorn that grew on the chapel wall.

Whilst one party went through their rites at the spring, all the others remained over the stile in the higher enclosure or by the hedge because “if a word were spoken by anybody near the well during the dipping, they had to come again”. The old woman An’ Katty was never paid in money but balls of yarn and other things she might want were dropped on the road outside the well moors for her; she also had good pickings by instructing young girls how to “try for sweethearts” at the well. “Scores of maidens”—the dame’s words—“used, in the summer evenings, to come down to the well from ever so far, to drop into it pins, gravels, or any small thing they could sink”. The names of the persons were not always spoken whom the objects which represented them were dropped into the water; it sufficed to think of them and as the pins or pebbles remained together or separated, such would be the couples’ fate. It was only when the spring was working (rising strongly) that it was of any use to try the spells: and it was unlucky to speak when near the well at such times.

The old woman that I visited said she had never heard that any saint had anything to do with the water, except from a person who told her that there was something about it in a book; nor had she or anybody also heard the water called St. Madron’s Well except by the new gentry who go about now naming places and think they know more about them than the people who have lived there ever since the world was created. She never heard of any ceremony being performed at
the old Chapel, except that some persons hung a bit of their clothing on a thorn tree that grew near it. High Country folks, who mostly resort to the spring, pay no regard to any saint, or to anyone else, except some old women who may come down with them to show them how everything used to be done.

There is a spring, not far from Bosporthenes in Zennor which was said to be as good as Madron Well; and children were often taken thither and treated in the same way.

Such is the substance of what the dame related; and she regarded the due observance of ancient customs as a very solemn matter.

In answer to the questions of ‘What was the reason for going round the well nine times? Leaving bits of clothing? Following the sun etc.?’ It was always the same reply. ‘Such were the old customs and everybody know it was unlucky to do any such work and many things beside against the sun’s course; no woman who know anything, would place pans of milk in a dairy, so as to have to unream (skim) them, in turn, against the sun, nor stir cream in that direction to make butter’.

The fairies are often central in Irish folklore, existing alongside humankind as an independent and separate race. Indeed, it has often been argued that the name “fairy” comes from an early Celtic description, “fah-ri” (the spirit race); but, because they objected to that name, they were frequently referred to as “the Good People” or “the Other Crowd” to avoid angering them. The only day on which anyone was allowed to talk about them was Tuesday, and any remark regarding them had to be prefaced with “may their heels be turned toward us,” hoping that they were looking the other way!

Despite these prohibitions, it was believed that humans and fairies lived cheek by jowl across the Celtic landscape. However, there was only limited contact between the two for the fairies were a secretive species and greatly mistrustful of Men.

For the most part, the fairy kind remained invisible to the human eye, going about their business, unseen by their mortal neighbors. Occasionally, of course, there was contact
between the two races—sometimes accidental, sometimes deliberate on the part of the fairies. Some mortals had the fortune (or sometimes misfortune) to either see the Good People or to visit them where they lived. Occasionally, too, certain mortals might be taken away for a time to be the with fairies, perhaps to return later with their wits all but gone and little recollection as to where they’d been. Some had been away a long time, as an hour in the fairy world was said to be more than a hundred years in its human counterpart; some had been away no time at all.

One of those who had been “away” with the fairy kind was a lady from County Sligo who was interviewed at the end of the 19th century by Lady Augusta Gregory (1859–1931), a fairy abductee whom she refers to as “Mrs. Sheridan.” This lady had benefited from her time amongst the fairy kind in several ways. First, though poorly sighted, she was nevertheless able to see the fairy kind around her; and second, on her return from the fairy country, she had become a great healer. A contemporary of the famous County Clare wise woman, Biddy Early, Mrs. Sheridan may even have at one time challenged that famous wise women as the most famous in Ireland. Describing this “fairy woman,” Lady Gregory writes:

“Mrs Sheridan, as I call her was wrinkled and half blind and had gone barefoot through her lifetime. She was old for she had once met Raftery, the Gaelic poet at a dance and he died well before the famine of ‘47. She must have been comely then for he said to her ‘Well planed you are; the carpenter that planed you knew his trade’ and she was ready of reply and answered him back ‘Better than you know yours’ for his fiddle had two or three broken strings”. It was to Lady Gregory that Mrs. Sheridan recounted some of her experiences with the fairies. Her stories contain a number of interesting elements, including the strong association in the Irish west
between the fairies and the dead. This account is taken from Lady Gregory’s “Visions and Beliefs in the West of Ireland” (published 1920).

by Lady Augusta Gregory

“Come here close and I’ll tell you what I saw at the old castle there below (Ballinamantane). I was passing there in the evening and I saw a great house and a grand one with screens (clumps of trees) at the ends of it and the windows open—Coole house is nothing like what it was for size or grandeur. And there were people inside and ladies walking about and a bridge across the river. For they can build up such things all in a minute. And two coaches driving up and across the bridge to the castle, and in one of them I saw two gentlemen and I knew them well and both of them had died long before. As to the coaches and the horses I didn’t take much notice of them for I was too much taken up with looking at the two gentlemen. And a man came and called out and asked me would I come across the bridge, and I said I would not. And he said “It would be better for you if you did, you’d go back heavier than you came”. I suppose they would have given me some good thing. And then two men took up the bridge and laid it against the wall. Twice I’ve seen that some thing, the house and the coaches and the bridge and I know well that I’ll see it a third time before I die.”

“One time when I was living at Ballymacduff there were two little boys drowned in the river there, one was eight years old and the other eleven years. And I was out in the fields, and the people looking in the river for their bodies and I saw a man coming away from it, and the two boys with him, he holding a hand of each and leading them away. And he saw me stop
and look at them and he said “Take care, would you bring them from me, for you have only one in your own house and if you take these from me she’ll never come home to you again”. And one of the little chaps broke from his hand and ran to me and the other cried out to him, “Oh Pat, would you leave me!” So he went back and the man led them away. And then I saw another man, very tall he was, and crooked and watching me like this with his head down and he was leading two dogs the other way and I knew well where he was going and what he was going to do with them.

And when I heard the bodies were laid out, I went to the house to have a look at them and those were never the two boys that were lying there but the two dogs that were in their places. I knew this by a sort of stripes on the bodies such as you’d see in the covering of a mattress; and I knew that the boys couldn’t be in it, after me seeing them being led away.

And it was at that time I lost my eye, something came on it, and I never got the sight again. All my life, I’ve seen
them
and enough of them. One time I saw one of the fields below full of them, some were picking up stones and some were ploughing it up. But the next time I went by, there was no sign of it being ploughed at all. They can do nothing without some live person is looking at them, that’s why they were always so much after me. Even when I was a child I could see them, and once they took my walk from me and gave me a bad foot, and my father cured me, and if he did, in five days after he died.