Given the paucity of physical evidence, other than the church-related spring
sites (which actually form a substantial corpus not so far systematically
investigated), we are forced back on to other categories of evidence. Ingegerd's
own initial research points in one such direction: name analysis.
In one of those infuriating moments of memory loss, I've failed to find a recent
note about a spring that goes under the name of Raven's well in an Old English
set of charter bounds and turns up later as, I think, St Antony's well. (Given
the association between Raven and Odin, conceivably that's a case of
Christianisation - except that a _hrafn_ well might be Hrafn's well and thus
secular.)
I _have_ found, however, my notes on 195 well and spring names in the area of
the pre-Reformation diocese of Worcester, and a striking feature of this group
is that the largest category of names not associated with a specified saint (the
latter accounting for 69 cases) comprises those 22 wells and springs which
allude to divination. I have included 'penny' wells in this category since my
understanding is that coins are taken to represent wishes, but I stand to be
corrected if necessary on that score. More than half the cases are of 'Seven'
wells, the earliest having a date in the eighth century, and I take the sense of
'perfection' to point to 'luck', though it might equally point to 'good',
'healthy', and that leads to a second feature of the corpus.
This is the general absence of names alluding to health (unless 'honey' wells
and suchlike should be so interpreted). Yet the huge number of modern references
to wells being 'good for eyes', 'good for skin', and so on, should surely
convince us that wells with particular medicinal qualities figured strongly in
the most basic rungs of medieval therapeutic strategies. Possibly such wells
were the most likely to be given the names of saints, and that's where they lie
in this Worcester material.
Given the general absence also of onomastic evidence for wells and springs with
saints' names before, say, c. 1100, perhaps the church's strategy until then had
been to leave it to episcopal and conciliar condemnation to deal with well
'worship' while allowing the use of wells for medicinal remedies and divination
to continue unregulated. Certainly an analysis of the titulars of wells points
towards a 'popular' (and relatively late) pattern of naming, not obviously
influenced by an official concern to involve the universal cults (and perhaps
this was the last thing the church wanted, given the robust association between
springs and 'popular' customs). There are numbers of cases in which a saint's
name has been attached to a spring by folk-etymology, but not always in a random
fashion.
Lastly, there's probably a wealth of evidence to be gleaned from a detailed,
comparative investigation of sites associated with saints' beheading. It has
been suggested that Kenelm's cult, to take but one example, was the result of
a tenth-century campaign of Christianisation. But when we get into these
cults, their complexity is daunting. Kenelm's body was translated to Winchcombe
but possesion at the Romsley well-chapel of an image of the saint's head
inevitably prompts comparison with sites where a saint's skull was available for
therapeutic use by the faithful.
Such sites are found in Ireland as well as mainland Britain, and I can't help
asking Meg whether there's any indication in Iceland, given the stable
chronology of Scandinavian settlement and conversion, that some at least of
the later 'holy' wells could be associated, locationally or otherwise, with the
cells of the shadowy (?Irish) monks who are said to have made landfall there before the
Scnadinavians' arrival.
Graham Jones
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Dr Graham Jones
Leverhulme Special Research Fellow
University of Leicester
Department of English Local History
Marc Fitch House
5 Salisbury Road
Leicester LE1 7QR
United Kingdom
Tel: (44)-(0)116-252-2765 (direct)
2762 (department)
e-Mail: [log in to unmask]
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