CHAPTER XVIII

SPRINGS AND WELLS Milton, in his noble "Ode on the Nativity," sings that, with the advent of the Saviour, "From haunted spring and dale, Edged with poplars pale, The parting genius is with sighing sent." Is this a statement of fact? Largely so, if the reference is to the river gods, the Naiads, and water sprites, of classical mythology. But not true if the vaguer belief in spirits who preside over mossy wells and bubbling springs be taken into account, or if the faith in the healing or other virtues of the waters that issue from them be included in the underlying idea. No, not even in the most Christian countries of to-day is such faith extinct. One has but to remember the famous well at Auray, or the sacred fountain in the crypt of the church at St. Melars, to which whole crowds of pilgrims still resort, to realise how far this is from being the case. Scotland herself, for all her centuries of Puritanism, has not wiped her slate quite clean; still less the countries like Ireland and Brittany, which are so retentive of the past. Nay, the present age is not content with its liberal supply of sacred springs, it must be adding new ones of its own! Let Lourdes be witness. And who shall say how many more are yet to come? Very remarkable, both as illustrating Milton's Ode, and also the persistency of this particular form of superstition, is the story of the only real spring close to Jerusalem--Enrogel. It is identified by high authorities with the Dragon's Well, mentioned in a romantic passage of the book of the patriot, Nehemiah. Assuming the validity of this identification, we have a glimpse of times far earlier than the Hebrew occupation of the land. Primitive peoples often associated serpents with springs and wells, as incarnations of the spirit of the waters. A link is thus supplied which carries back the history to the animistic and mythological periods, in this case, prehistoric. Retracing our course, we arrive at the time of the Hebrew occupation of the country. A purer form of religion has rejected most of the mythological material. But the old name of the spring remains, and, what is still more pertinent, the old belief in its healing power. We have evidence of this belief in St. John's Gospel, which contains the peculiar story of the healing at the pool of Bethesda, most probably connected with this same spring. The popular view that at times an angel came to trouble the water is perhaps an attempted explanation of its intermittent action. Now should have come the time, according to Milton, for the departure of the sighing genius--the dying out of the superstition. But those who anticipate such a _dénouement_ will be grievously disappointed. For the Jews still bathe in its waters, at the times of overflow, for cure of various maladies. And on the Christian side of the history, it has gained the name of the Virgin's Pool! Similar stories might be found in any part of the globe where tradition is sufficiently continuous to preserve them, testifying to the almost astounding persistency of belief in the power of springing water. No doubt simple faith healing has played its part--but that part is very subsidiary; the strongest influence has been that exercised by the movement of the water itself, suggesting as it does the idea of spontaneous life. Not less surprising is the hold such springs retain upon the imagination and affections. Pathetic proof of this meets the traveller at every turn on the west coast of Ireland. As he tramps the byways and unfrequented paths of County Clare, his eye is caught from time to time by an artless array of shelves on the sloping banks of some meadow spring. On the shelves are scanty votive offerings, piteous to see. Piteous, not on the score of the superstition which prompts them--that is a matter to be dealt with in a spirit of broad sympathy, on its historic and social merits--but because of the dire poverty they reveal. Even its of broken crockery are held worthy of a place at these little shrines; so bereft are the peasantry of the simplest accompaniments of civilised life. How thoroughly natural is the growth of such sentiments and beliefs! Jefferies felt the charm. "There was a secluded spring" (he writes) "to which I sometimes went to drink the pure water, lifting it in the hollow of my hand. Drinking the lucid water, clear as light itself in solution, I absorbed the beauty and the purity of it. I drank the thought of the element; I desired soul-nature pure and limpid." Nor has the charm ceased to be potent for the new man in the new world. Walt Whitman knew it. Here is a delightful paragraph from his notes of "Specimen Days": "So, still sauntering on, to the spring under the willows--musical and soft as clinking glasses--pouring a sizeable stream, thick as my neck, pure and clear, out from its vent where the bank arches over like a great brown shaggy eyebrow or mouth roof--gurgling, gurgling ceaselessly--meaning, saying something of course (if one could only translate it)--always gurgling there, the whole year through--never going out--oceans of mint, blackberries in summer--choice of light and shade--just the place for my July sun-baths and water-baths too--but mainly the inimitable soft sound-gurgles of it, as I sit there hot afternoons. How they and all grow into me, day after day--everything in keeping--the wild, just palpable, perfume, and the dapple of leaf-shadows, and all the natural-medicinal, elemental-moral influences of the spot." If these two passages be taken together, there will be few elements of mystic influence left unnoted. And how deeply significant the fact that each author instinctively and spontaneously associates with the limpid flow of the water the ideas of life and health! Were the old mythologists so very far from the truth? Is it so very hard to understand why wells and springs have had their thousands of years of trust and affection? Was it mere caprice that led our Teutonic fathers to place under the roots of the world-tree the three wells of force and life and inspiration? A fine example of a more definitely mystic use of the ideas prompted by the sight of springing water, is found in Dante's "Earthly Paradise"--an example the more interesting because of its retention of what may be called the "nature-elements" in the experience. "The water, thou behold'st, springs not from vein, Restored by vapour, that the cold converts; As stream that intermittently repairs And spends his pulse of life; but issues forth From fountain, solid, undecaying, sure: And, by the will omnific, full supply Feeds whatsoe'er on either side it pours; On this, devolved with power to take away Remembrance of offence; on that, to bring Remembrance back of every good deed done. From whence its name of Lethe on this part; On the other, Eunoe: both of which must first Be tasted, ere it work; the last exceeding All flavours else." This passage, say the authorities, is linked on to the old Proserpine mystery, and is parallel to the Teutonic conceptions described in the last chapter. Of quite exceptional character, yet best treated in the present connection, are the "wells" of eastern lands. Where the sources of springing water are rare and far distant from one another, the supply of water has to be supplemented by that from artificial pits, sunk with hard toil, often into the solid rock, and valued accordingly. Such "wells," in the stricter sense, are too directly associated with human labour in historic times, to allow much mythical material to accumulate around them. Still, from the simple fact of their dispensing water in arid and thirsty lands, they possess not unfrequently a rich store of family and tribal legends. And further, by reason of their very freedom from the cruder superstitions, the intuitions they prompted were from the first transparent and spiritual. Under such conditions the water is literally "life." And as the conception of life deepened, so did intuition become more delicate. We have the early freshness of the feeling stimulated in an ancient strain, delightful in its naive spontaneity. "Then sang Israel this song: Spring up, O well, sing ye unto it: The well which the princes digged, Which the nobles of the people delved, With the sceptre and with their staves." The deepening of the feeling came rapidly, and took exquisite form in the prophet's assurance that his people should "draw water out of the wells of salvation." But here mysticism was beginning to blend with symbolism, and the later developments of the idea pass over almost wholly into the sphere of reflective analogy. So far as the nature-mystic is concerned, he emphasises the continuity of the feeling, from the earliest ages to the present, that in the phenomena of water gushing from a source we have a manifestation of self-activity, as immanent Idea and concrete will. And convinced of the validity of his contention, he is not surprised, as some may be, at the influence which wells and springs have wielded, and still do wield, over the human soul.