On Fri, 21 Jun 2002 10:28:25 +0100 Alison Maloney <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> It's interesting tho that folk persist in chucking coins ?> into flowing water/wells - but, when you ask most people > why they do it the response is generally vague & to do
> with it being "lucky" in an unspecified way.
Does the fact that almost all of us, in the UK, US, and Europe at least, will at some time or other almost reflexively throw coins into wells (and pins on Anglesey), somehow testify to the universality of water veneration by the casting of votives, in the distant past?
Does the fact that something that is so normal, even unconsciously done, today support the notion that in the past it was also a very, very common practice?
This could work the other way, too. If a practice is ubiquitous and carried out with rationalisation now, then one must ask if it was ever special, or religious, or ritualised, and not just about the fact that humans seem to get some innate pleasure for throwing things into water.
I would come down on the side of conferred meaning from ancient water veneration, as evidenced by the many hoards, but I'm wondering what any sceptics out there might have to say about the psychology of casting-things-into-water.
--
Graham Mallaghan
Department of Classics (SECL)
Darwin College
University of Kent at Canterbury
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