> From: Madeleine Gray [SMTP:[log in to unmask]]
>
> I think what the locals would *say* is that they don't want the well to
> have the publicity which a restoration would bring. The owner's idea was
> for a major restoration scheme partly funded by the Sacred Land Project
> (from whom I first heard about it), which would have meant media attention
> &c.
>
Ah, I see.
> But there is also the aspect that the well was still being used for
> cursing in the late 19th century so there may still be people about whose
> relatives suffered from being cursed there.
>
Tangentially, I found a story of a deliberate suppression of a
cursing site in Ireland. MacNeill tells a story of a slab of
rock--supposedly a saint's tombstone--that was used to "curse on." The local
clergyman was so incensed that he supposedly ordered the stone to be put
inside the walls of the new church being built, making it inaccessible.
> My friend Chris Buckley is working on correlations with trees. I would
> like
> to think there was something - FfynnonnElian is surrounded by ash trees,
> for instance - but trees do tend to grow by wells anyway.
>
It's difficult to be sure when a tree was considered "sacred" or
not. If there's a living folk tradition or a documented earlier one, that
helps, of course.
Francine
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