398 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[No. 264. 



stone, and what the meaning was of the yet more sin- 

 gular custom of sticking rags on tlie branches of sucli 

 tree, and spitting on them, his answer, and the answer of 

 the oldest men was, that their ancestors always did it ; 

 that it was a preservative against Gaesa-DraoidacJit, i. e. 

 the sorceries of the Druids ; that their cattle were pre- 

 served by it from infectious disorders ; that the daoini 

 maethe, i. e. the fairies, were kept in good humour by it ; 

 and so thoroughly persuaded were they of the sanctity 

 of those pagan practices, that they would travel, bare- 

 headed and barefooted, from ten to twenty miles for the 

 purpose of crawling on their knees round these wells and 

 upright stones, and oak trees, westward as the sun travels, 

 some three times, some six, some nine, and so on in un- 

 even numbers, until their voluntary penance was com- 

 pletely fulfilled." 



" Hundreds of votive rags and bandages," saj's Crofton 

 Croker, " are nailed against (the cross) and hung upon it, 

 by those whose faith has made them whole. Hanway, 

 speaking of a similar Oriental custom, says that the rags 

 were left ' in a fond expectation of leaving their diseases 

 also on the same spot.' " — Travels into Persia, vol. i. 



The practice of throwinpr in pins is observed by 

 those who visit the beautiful Gothic well at the 

 foot of Menacuddle Grove, near St. Austle, Corn- 

 wall: 



" On approaching the margin, each visitor, if he hoped 

 for good luck through life, was expected to throw a 

 crooked pin into the water, and it was presumed that the 

 other pins which had been deposited there by former de- 

 votees might be seen rising from their beds to meet it 

 before it reached the bottom." — Hitchin and Drew's 

 History of Cornwall, vol. ii. 



In these customs, as observed 'at the latter'well 

 and others in Cornwall, we may notice some re- 

 mains of the practice of hydromancy, which was 

 probably one of the departments of augury among 

 the Druids (Borlase, Antiq. of Corn., p. 140.). 

 Intimations of the future are given by the pre- 

 sence or absence, &c. of bubbles which may follow 

 the dropping of the pin. 



Many of our Cornish wells, especially those 

 under the protection of their saints, have, as in the 

 case of St. Nun's, connected with them some tra- 

 dition, intended by those who first gave it cur- 

 rency to protect their structures from injury. 

 The fine old well of St. Cleer, its ruined bap- 

 tistry, and venerable cross, though no longer the 

 object of superstitious regard, have been so spared, 

 that it would not be difficult to elTect an almost 

 entire restoration ff-om the ruins which lie scat- 

 tered round. I learnt from a native of the parish 

 that some of the stones of the well have been, at 

 various times, carted away to serve meaner pur- 

 poses, but that they have been, by some mys- 

 terious agency, brought back again during the 

 night. 



The reputed virtues of Saint's Well, near Pol- 

 perro, have survived the entire destruction of the 

 edifice which inclosed the spring, for it is still 

 resorted to by those afllicted with inflamed eyes 

 and other ailments, and, if "ceremonies due" are 

 done aright, *_with great benefit. It must be 



visited on three mornings before sunrise, fasting ; 

 a relic of a veritable ceremony, as witnesseth 

 Chaucer's Pardoner : 



" If that the goode man that the beest oweth, 

 Wol every wike, er that the cok him croweth, 

 Fastynge, drynke of this welle a draught. 

 As thilke holy Jew oure eldres taught. 

 His beestes, and his stoor schal multiplie." 



Prologe of the Pardoner. 



T. Q. C. 



Polperro, Cornwall. 



ETYMOLOGIES. 



Etymology is not much cultivated In this 

 country. It has however some votaries, to whom 

 the following etyma may prove acceptable. 



Cobweb. In the last edition of The Fairy 

 Mythology I gave, with more dogmatism than is 

 my wont, a derivation of this word which was 

 most decidedly erroneous. Cob or cop seems to 

 have been the original Teutonic name of the 

 spider* Thus we have in Anglo-Saxon uttorcoppa, 

 venomous spider, a word still retained in the pro- 

 vincial atercop, and the Welsh adai-gop; and in 

 Danish, eddergop has the same meaning. Spinne- 

 hop is a spider In Dutch, and kobse In some parts 

 of Germany. As the Swedes call a cobweb Dver- 

 genat, and the Bretons connect it in a similar 

 manner with their korrig, it is not impossible that 

 there may be some connexion between Kob and 

 Kob-old, goblin. 



Pismire. I have never seen any attempt at a 

 derivation of this word ; so perhaps the following 

 may be received. The second syllable is the 

 name of the emmet in a number of languages. 

 Thus we have fjLvp-fir)^, and for-mica (this last a 

 remarkable instance of the commutation of the 

 labials m and /) ; muravei, Russian ; 7naur, Ice- 

 landic ; mire, Ang.-Saxon ; myre, myra, Dan. and 

 Swed. Now, as in this last language etter-myra, 

 venomous ant. Is the name of the red ant (Formica 

 rufd), may we not suppose that our ancestors 

 called this Insect dttor-mire ; and that the Nor- 

 mans thence named It poison (pr. pyson) mire, 

 which gradually became pys-mire, pismire f Or 

 may not the Normans have called the red ant 

 poison-mire directly ? I cannot recollect an in- 

 stance of this kind of translation of common 

 words ; but it was not unusual in the names of 

 places. Thus Waterford was the name of the 

 town when the English invaded Ireland, as we see 

 in Giraldus Cambrensis ; and this was the trans- 

 lation of the Vatnfiordh of the Northmen. There 

 is a part of Dublin named Oxmantown, i. e. Ost- 

 mantown ; but in a charter of King John's It is 

 called Ostmanbye, its proper Scandinavian name. 

 On the bay of Dublin Is a place called Bullopk, a 

 corruption of Blowick, its name in the Middle 

 Ages. I think, however, that the original was 



