Water. A Special Substance
"Running water is a holy thing" - Old Somerset saying.Rivers, lakes, waterfall, the sea have all special mystical and religious connections. Water has been seen as the gateway to the otherworld by many peoples and even today wells are thought to be holy with natural springs seen as a source of power and healing.
For my self, even though I tend to feel sea sick on the isle of white ferry, perhaps the most mystical times, the times when I am closest to the lady and the powers of the earth are when I am near water. Whether it is watching a stormy sea lash the coast line, reminding us of its power and majesty, or sitting with my back to the trees, listening to the river talk watching for visions in the flowing ever changing water, water never fails to connect me to somewhere else.
All running water (not just spring water) can prove to be the haunt of faeries, for crossing over (or through) running water is one of the ways to enter their realm. Here, one still finds country folk who avoid running water by dusk or dark, for the spirits who inhabit water can be troublesome, even deadly. The water spirit of the River Dart, for instance, is believed to demand sacrificial drownings, leading to the well-known local rhyme
"Dart, Dart, cruel Dart, every year she claims a heart."The spirit of place, genius loci, seems to be much stronger where there is water. The feeling of something different being there, a place of power where wishes may come true seems to be felt even by those who normally show little, if any, attachment to the spirits of the otherworld. It is difficult to walk past a well, public water feature or even river without finding small coins that people have thrown in for luck.
| Why the penguins of Bristol Zoo, say, need coins chucked in their water is still an unanswerable question, but the phenomena is widespread. |  |
The wishing well has been around for some time in the form we now know it. The Romano-British shrine of the water goddess Coventina, at Carrawburgh on Hadrian's Wall, was a temple with a well at its centre. In the well were deposited over 13,000 Roman coins.
But this was not all: pots, altars, carvings, pearls and a skull were among other objects found, the majority of these gifts to the goddess
This description of the source of an Italian river, from Pliny the Younger, shows that far from being a culturally specific activity throwing coins into the water is almost universal.
'Several separate springs...converge into a broad still pool. There the water, clear as glass, allows you to see gleaming pebbles on the bottom and the coins that people have thrown in...'In almost all cases the deposit of a coin or other valuable object is accompanied with a wish.
Such a gift is known as a votive offering. Votum is the past participle of the Latin verb vovere, 'to vow', and it can mean a prayer, a dedication, a wish or longing.
The principle behind votive offerings are that (a) If I give this object to the deity (or the fairies or Lady Luck) then in return I hope that (b) they will grant me my wish.
One can still find numerous holy wells buried in the English countryside, many of them now named for the Saints and associated with their miraculous lives. But scratch the surface of these legends and older stories emerge like a palimpsest, stories of faery creatures, the knights of Arthur, and the old gods of the land.
Wells of course are seen as much more than simply places where such a bargain can be made. Wells have been seen as holy and powerful places through out history.
Early Christian bishops even felt the need to specifically ban people form worshiping at wells. In the Canons of Edgar, written about 1005 by Wulfstan (d. 1023), Archbishop of York, we read
“And riht is žęt preosta gehwylc cristendom geornlice lęre and ęlcne hęžendom mid ealle adwęsce, and forbeode wyllweoršunga”Which translated reads
“And right is that priest which Christianity eagerly teach and entirely extinguish and forbid worship at wells.”Unable to stop people from seeing wells as holy places, places of power Christianity ‘took over’ and provided a ‘safe’ set of rituals such as well dressings and mythologies which linked wells to saints.
The tails and stories attached to these holy wells by the Christian people of the land were as colourful and mystical as any found in pagan folklore. Wells were said to have been sites where saints had been beheaded, fought dragons or other mystical creatures or where the virgin Mary appeared and left her small footprints in the stone.
Wells dedicated to St. Anne were called "granny wells" (because, as the mother of the Virgin Mary, she was grandmother of Christ) and were attributed with particular powers concerning fertility and childbirth
Some wells, known as cursing wells, were rather less beneficent; curses were made by dropping special cursing stones into the well, or the victim's name written on a piece of paper, or a wax effigy. At the famous cursing well of Ffynnon Elian (in Wales) one could arrange for a curse by paying the well's guardian a fee to perform an elaborate cursing ritual. A curse could also be removed at this same well, for a somewhat larger fee.
Other bodies of water are also linked to religious and ritual activity. Rivers, marshes and almost any other open body of water seemed to be linked in some way to the otherworld. Offerings were often left in such places and in many cases such offering were of a very high value indeed.
Ritual deposits of precious metalwork were made in rivers, marshes and other aquatic locations during the Bronze and Iron Ages. Rivers such as the Witham and the Thames received swords, daggers, spears, shields and other military equipment over a period covering at least a thousand years.
At Flag Fen in Cambridgeshire, people threw high-status metal objects, including swords, into the water at the fen-edge from about 1200-200 BC. Not all of these offerings were at the fen side however, Some were in deep water and would have had to have been cast from a boat.
Often the objects that were to be given as gifts or votive offerings were ritually destroyed. It is not known why this was the done, perhaps to ensure that nobody could come along behind and fish them out or perhaps in the ritual breaking there was a feeling that it destroying their usefulness in this world the offerings were passing into the otherworld in the same way as they believed the dead did.
In about 600 BC, the lake-site of Llyn Fawr in Mid Glamorgan was the focus for religious activity; in 1911 and 1912, a hoard of metalwork was discovered in peat which had once formed the bed of a natural lake.
The objects cast into the water as offerings included bronze cauldrons, already antique when deposited, and exotic Continental Hallstatt material, imported from Central Europe and including very early examples of iron objects.
All objects of great value at the time they were given to the water gods.
However it was not always high value tools, weapons and artwork that were offered to the water spirits.
At Lindow Moss in Cheshire, the body of a young man was placed in a pool within the marsh after he had been ritually murdered, probably during the first century AD.
The victim was stripped, poleaxed and garrotted before his painted body was thrust face-down in the water.
This is an example of a human sacrifice; the young man may have been offered as a gift to the local gods as a response to a crisis, when a major appeal had to be made to the spirit-world.
The Lindow sacrifice may even also have been associated with Roman incursions into north-west Britain.
It should however be remembered that such a sacrifice does not necessarily have the connotations we associate today with such actions. It is possible, probable even; that the young man willingly went to his death believing that in dieing in that way he could personally take the pleas of his countrymen to the gods. While it is impossible to tell exactly how and why Lindow man died the existence of mistletoe in his stomach does suggest that his death was more likely ritual than a execution.
Because his hands were free from calluses and his body had not previously been injured, he was neither a labourer nor a warrior. It is possible that he was a priest or shaman but in either event he was a person of importance.
It isn’t surprising that water holds such a powerful and mysterious place in the mind of people form all ages.
Life is totally dependant of a source of clean fresh water; it provides both food and hydration. Water has powered industry and been a highway allowing peoples to travel and trade to flourish.
Anybody who works on the water or lives near the sea will testify to its moods and few of us will be unaware of the devastating power then can be unleashed by even a few hours rain.
The words attributed to Suquamish Chief Seattle* upon the forced transfer of tribal lands to the U.S. Government in 1855 perhaps sum up better than I can how sacred water is to us.
"The shining water that moves in the streams and rivers is not just water, but the blood of our ancestors. If we sell you our land, you must remember that it is sacred. Each ghostly reflection in the clear water of the lakes tells of events and memories in the life of my people.
The water's murmur is the voice of my father's father. The rivers are our brothers. They quench our thirst. They carry our canoes and feed our children.
So you must give to the rivers the kindness you would give any brother.
This we know: The earth does not belong to man, man belongs to earth."