Eoin,
The Starwell in the Tanner's 'Wiltshire Village' is based on a real
place: Holywell between Biddestone and Chippenham. See my web page
http://www.bath.ac.uk/~liskmj/wellsweb/wellstxt/starwell.htm for a full
writeup.
In this case the stars are there for anyone to find - tiny fossils
called crinoids - you can pick them up from the sandy bed of the
spring. Locals say they are petrified elderflowers. I have a small
collection of them, and a friend who grew up in nearby Box remembered
family outings on Sunday afternoons to hunt for stars. She had great
stem columnals of large stars, but I have only found tiny ones, smaller
than sequins. The crinoids are of a particular kind local to Wiltshire,
perfect five-pointed stars.
Last time I visited I was prevented from entering the field by an
imposing well-guardian - a large bull!
Katy
Eoin Mackay Ross wrote:
> Hi and greetings from Alba of the mists. This is my first posting to
> the List andhopefully not my last!
>
> Michael Newton in his excellent and scholarly books Bho Chluaidh
> gu Calasraid (from the Clydeto Callander) Acair, 1999 relates a
> traditional Gaelic account of a battle between the Stewarts of Appin
> and the Grahams of Menteith. The fight occurredat a well called Tobar
> na Reil (the well of the stars) which lies on a pathcalled Lairig an
> Tiobairt between the Lake of Menteith and Loch Venachar in
> theTrossachs.
> According to Newton,the tradition associated with Tobar na Reil was
> that if one drank from the wellon a certain night and at a certain
> hour and when a particular star was shiningone would gain knowledge of
> the speech of all the creatures of the earth andsea and so understand
> everything they said. Clearly important information if one lived in
> the Trossachs an areawhich had more than its share of kelpies,
> uruisigs and water horses not tomention the odd wolf or two!
> Unfortunately, but sadly not surprisingly, thestar itself is not
> named.
>
> Are star wells at all common elsewhere? Do such wells havesimilar
> traditions attached to them? Heather and Robin Tanner in their book
> Wiltshire Village mention a star well in their fictionalepitome
> of Kington Borel. This was rather a serendipitous finding andis the
> only other reference to such wells that I have located.
>
> Welly anthologists can find a delightful modern poem aboutan Irish
> well in Gabriel Fitzmaurices A wren boys carnival Peter Loo
> Poets, 2000. This book is a greatmaking in celebration of
> dinnsheanchasand the genius of rural Ireland.
>
> Eoin
>
>
>
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