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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY
[ May, 1926
"In North Wales there was a holy well called the Holy Well or St. Winifride's Well, Pennant in his account of this well says : After the death of that saint the waters were as sensitive as those of the pool of Bethesda : all infirmities incident to the human body met with relief: the votive crutches, the barrows, and other proofs of cures to this moment remain as evidences pendent over the well. The resort of pilgrims to these fontanalia has, of late years, been considerably decreased. In the summer still a few are to be seen in the water in deep devotion up to their chins for hours sending up their prayers or performing a number of evolutions round the polygonal well, or threading the arch between well and well a number of times' (Brand's Popular Antiquities, II, 367).
"In the curious manuscript account of the customs in North Wales by Pennant he says: About two hundred yards from the church in a quillet called Gwern Dugla, rises a small spring. The water is under the tutelage of the saint, and to this day held to be extremely beneficial in the falling sickness. The patient washes his limbs in the well, makes an offering into it of four pence, walks round it three times, and thrice repeats the Lord's prayer. Those ceremonies are never begun till after sunset, in order to inspire the votaries with greater awe (Brand's Popular Antiquities, II, 375).
"In England people offered pins, shells, needles, pebbles, coins, and rags to sacred wells (Chamber's Book of Days, II, 7), and on Holy Thursday people used to throw sweet garlands and wreaths of pansies, pinks and gaudy daffodils into the streams (Dyer's Foll: Lore, 4). In some parts of North England it has been a custom from time immemorial for the lads and lasses of the neighbouring villages to collect together at springs or rivers on some Sunday in May to drink sugar and water where the lasses give the treat: this is called Sugar-and-water Sunday. They afterwards adjourn to the public-houses, and the lads return the compliment in cakes, ale and punch. A vast concourse of both sexes assemble for the above purpose at the Giant's Cave near Eden Hall in Cumberland on the third Sunday in May (Brand's Popular Antiquities, II, 375).
"Hutchinson in his History of Cumberland (II, 323), speaking of the parish of Bromfield and a custom in the neighbourhood of Blencogo, says : On the common to the east of that village not far from Ware-Brig, near a pretty large rock of granite called St. Cuthbert's Stane, is a fine copious spring of remarkably pure and sweet water which is called Helly Well, that is, Holy Well. It formerly was the custom for the youth of all the neighbouring vil. lages to assemble at this well carly in the afternoon of the second Sunday in May, and there to join in a variety of rural sports' (Brand's Popular Antiquities, II, 37)."
On the connected question of Water Spirits, Campbell is equally explicit (op. cit., pp. 149 f.): "The most important and widely known of the Konkan spirits that are supposed to live in water are Asras, Bapdev, Gird and Hadal or Hedali. Asras are the ghosts of young women who after giving birth to one or more children, committed suicide by drowning themselves. They always live in water, and attack any person who comes to the place of their abode at noon, in the evening, or at midnight. When they make their rounds they generally go in groups of three to seven. Their chief objects of attack are young women, and when a woman is attacked by the Asras generally, a female exorcist is called in to get rid of them.
“Their favourite offerings are cooked rice, turmeric, red powder, and green bodice cloths Bapdev is the ghost of a sailor or mariner drowned in a channel or sea. He is much feared by the mariners, who please him with the offerings of fruits and cocoanuts. Gird is the spec. tre of a man drowned in a well, tank, channel, river or sea. He has his feot turned backwards. Whomsoever the Gird attacks, the feet of that person become crooked. He is said
