78 PRIMITIVE PATERNITY 



ritual dip themselves nine times under water. 1 An 

 Ottoman Jewess who desires children takes her bath 

 holding in her arms a young girl whose future fecundity 

 thus passes directly to her. 2 Saint Verena, one of the 

 illustrious obscure of mediaeval mythology, bathed 

 in the Verenenbad at Baden in the Aargau, and thereby 

 conferred on it such virtue that pregnant women or 

 such as wish for children, if they bathe there, soon 

 attain their desire. 3 The reference to pregnant women 

 must no doubt be understood of those who wish to 

 avoid miscarriage and to be safely delivered. German 

 tales and popular saws used to speak perchance 

 they still do of a Kinderbrunnen, or Children's Well, 

 whence babies were fetched. I have already mentioned 

 some of which the water was drunk for the purpose 

 of procuring issue ; and we may perhaps infer that 

 similar rites were practised at the rest. The Bride's 

 Well, in Aberdeenshire, was at one time the resort 

 of every bride in the neighbourhood on the evening 

 of her marriage. Her maidens bathed her feet and 

 the upper part of her body with water drawn from it ; 

 and this bathing, we are told, " ensured a family." 4 



Of the Cupped Stones of Scotland two may be 

 mentioned as having the same property. The first is 

 a stone basin called Saint Columba's Font, said to 

 have been used by Saint Columba himself for baptism 

 when he visited King Brude in his castle near 

 Inverness. It lies in the old graveyard of Killianan 

 at the mouth of the burn of Abriachan, on the shores 

 of Loch Ness. Rain-water collects in the hollow, and 

 generally remains even in the hottest weather. 



1 Am Ur quell, iv. 187. 2 Mel. viii. 270. 



3 Kohlruscb, 324. 4 Rev. W. Gregor, F. L. iii. 68. 



