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[Book J.
The Britons and Picts did the same. Scot. Gael, 258. Mezeray, in hisHistory of France, when speaking of the church in the third and fourthcenturies, remarks, ‘ Hitherto very few of the French had received thelight of the gospel ; they yet adored trees ,fountaim, serpents, and birds.’i, 4. In the eighth Century, the council of Soissons condemned a heretic,who built oratories and set up crosses near fountains, &c. Ib. 113.
Ancient superstitions with regard to water are still practised more orless over a great part of the World. At the first new moon in October,the Hindoos hold a great celebration to their Deities. “ The next moon,their women flock to the sacred wells.” Fryer, 110. Many of the cere-monies performed in old times by women in honor of Wells and fountains,are yet practised in some of the Grecian islands. There the females stilldance round the wells, the ancient Callichorus, accompanied with songs inhonor of Ceres. Dr. Clarke. “ I have just returned this morning,” (says Mr.Campbell in his Letters from the South, Phila . Ed. 1836, 102,) “from wit-nessing a superstitious ceremony, which, though unwarranted by the Ko-ran, is practised by all Mahometans here, [Algiers ] black, brown, andwhite, nay by the Jews also. It consists in sacrificing the life of someeatable animal to one of the devils who inhabit certain fountains near Al giers . The victims were fowls, they were dipped in the sacred sea, asHomer calls it, after which the high priest took them to a neighboringfountain, and having waved his knife thrice around the head of an old wo-man, who sat squatting beside it, cut their throats,” &c.
The custom was probably a common One in ancient Nineveh ; for oncea year the peasants assemble and sacrifice a sheep at Thisbe ’s well, withmusic and other festivities. The Greeks are so much attached to grottoesand wells, that “ there is scarcely one in all Greece and the islands, whichis not consecrated to the Virgin, who seems to have succeeded the ancientnymphs in the guardianship of these places. a
The supposed sanctity of wells also led to the custom of interring thebodies of saints or holy persons near them; tbus in all parts of Egypt ,the tombs of saints are found in the vicinity of those places, “ where thewandering dervishes stop to pray, and less pious travelers to quench theirthirst.” Some, says Fryer, are buried with“ their heels upwards, likeDiogenes .”
Worship of wells, like many other superstitions of Pagan origin, wasearly incorporated with the ceremonies of the Christian church, and carriedto an idolatrous excess. A schism took place in Persia among the Arme-nians, in the tenth Century; one party was accused of ‘ despising the holywell of Fagarsciebat.’ In Europe it was at one time universal. In En-gland, in the reigns of Canute and Edgar, edicts were issued prohibitingwell worship. When Hereward the Saxon hero, held the marshes ofEly against the Norman conqueror, he said he heard his hostess conversingwith a witch at midnight! he arose silently from his bed, and followedthem into the garden, to a ‘ fountain of water,’ and there he ‘ heard themholding converse with the spirit of the fountain.’ From a Collection ofAnglo Saxon remains, the following example is taken. “ If any one ob-serve lots or divinations, or keep his wake, [watch] at any wells, or atany other created things, except at God ’s church, let him fast three years;the first one on bread and water,” &c. In a Saxon homily against witch-craft and magic, in the library of the University of Cambridge , it is said,“ some men are so blind, that they bring their offerings to immovable roeks,and also to trees and to wells, as witches do teach.” b The Hindoos still wor-
»Rieh’s Nar. ofaResidence in Koordistan. ii, 42. b Foreign Quarterly. July, 1838.