Fairy Beliefs in Galloway. 239 



between Coychurch and Bridgend, near Tremains. It is 

 twelve or fifteen yards off the high road, just where the 

 pathway begins. People suffering from rheumatism go there. 

 They bathe the part affected with water, and afterwards tie 

 a piece of rag to the tree, a very old thorn, which overhangs 

 the well. Sir John Rhys visited this well in 1893, and found 

 the thorn tree overhanging it, also another thorn, not so 

 decayed, standing a little further back with about fourteen 

 rags suspended on it ; some had been only recently placed 

 there, and among them were portions of a woman's clothing. 

 Another method for curing a wound was that the patient 

 would go and stand in the well within the wall, and there he 

 would untie the rag that had been used to tie up the wound, 

 and would wash the wound with it ; then he would tie up the 

 wound with a fresh rag, and hang the old one on the tree. 



The wife of Sir John Rhys, when a very small child, 

 remembers going with a servant girl to her parents' homC; 

 and among the things the little girl saw was one of the ser- 

 vant's sisters having a bad leg dressed : when the rag which 

 had been on the wound was removed the mother made one 

 of her other children take it out and fix it on the thorn grow- 

 ing near the door. The little girl, being inquisitive, asked 

 why it was done, and she was told that it was in order that 

 the wound might heal all the faster. She was not satisfied 

 with this answer, but she afterwards noticed the same sort 

 of thing done in her own neighbourhood (that of the Lllan- 

 berris side of Snowdon).* 



To leave something on the tree or bush near by the well 

 was an essential : this bound one's offering to the habitation 

 of the deity ; it took the tree-spirit to witness. Primitive man 

 was arboreal. A hollow tree was his home, its branches his 

 place of refuge, its fruit his sustenance. Naturally the tree 

 became associated with his earliest religious thoughts. It 

 represented his protecting deity ; he would not willingly 

 injure it. The Teutons and the Celts and other peoples seem, 

 with regard to the tree-soul, to think alike, t 



* Celtic Fulfc-lorc, p. 604. 

 t Celtic Fulk-lure, p. 193. 



