We called by the Virtuous Well at Trellech the other day. We wanted to go and greet the spring. The Christian version of death and rebirth at Eastertide seems rather over-dramatic, what with all the beating-oneself-up about the Passion, then the celebration of the Resurrection. I mean, it's not as though we didn't know it was going to be a happy ending.Still, whatever floats your boat.
B and I floated our boats, as it were, by celebrating the spring with a bit of well dressing. Look, here is a well dressed.
...the first time I came here, twenty years ago-ish, there was none of This Kind Of Thing going on here. I'd read descriptions of offerings to Welsh wells in Jan Morris' book on Wales; and of similar things in Ireland, elsewhere. It seemed like a nice thing to do. So I tore off some of the rags I always kept in the pannier of my motorbike (for you always need that sort of thing with motorbikes, at least my kind of motorbikes) and tied them up in the hawthorn over the well, wondering if the local population would take fright at the thought of frenzied paganism on the loose.
Time marches on, and there is now a lot of That Kind Of Thing about. The tree is quite heavy with textiles, as you can see in the first photo, including some rather eccentric offerings; there was a bra there, for one thing... and they are looking a bit past their best now after the winter's weathering and the sun's bleaching. Still...
...Ignoring my image, I peer down
to the quiet roots of it, where
the coins lie, the tarnished offerings
of the people to the pure spirit
that lives there, that has lived there
always, giving itself up
to the thirsty, withholding
itself from the superstition of others, who ask for more.
Ffynnon Fair RS Thomas
It is a well dressed well. Ot would be lovely to see all of the candles lit up in the eveing.
ReplyDeleteI loved 'Hazel and the Well Dressing' when I was a girl. They dress their well with a picture made from flower petals pressed into a clay background. While they are preparing the well they discover it was just blocked and that there is still water and they won't have to do fund raising to get water for the new hospital (1950s)after all, but they go ahead with it anyway. (Sorry about that, but I loved that book so much)
There was a well dressing event a few years back around Malvern way - as usual I missed it because we were going home the day before.
This dressing of wells is news to me (here in the States), as is your blog and many wondrous gifts therein. R.S. Thomas, for one. Thanks for pointing him out!
ReplyDeleteAh, one more reason to love you Dru..
ReplyDeleteI have done plenty of this sort of thing, crazy paganism on the loose all around Somerset, Gloucester, Devon, etc.. There's a lot of it about. You'd be surprised..
We are a thinly veiled pagan nation.
Another book to keep an eye out for, Anji... it sounds a bit like a variant on the plot of Manon des Sources, too.
ReplyDeleteHello, Larry! I like RS Thomas' poetry lots. I was fortunate to see him read, in a church in South Wales. He nodded austerely at the altar before reading; that gesture seemed to encapsulate his difficult relationship with his God.
It seems a bit odd, thinking about it (if only briefly) if there is no similar veneration of springs among Native Americans, as water must have been traditionally precious to them...
I might be surprised, Chandira, but not entirely surprised :-)
I was convinced to order a collection of Thomas's poetry on the strength of your quote, one Amazon review with lines from "The Bright Field", and another with the quote: "Poetry is that / which arrives at the intellect / by way of the heart."
ReplyDeleteI have no doubt that various sorts of veneration of springs persist in the vastness of the States, especially in places most favored by pagans, but even among those Christians who might enjoy RS Thomas. I remember my parents stopping the car at roadside springs to give us all a little refreshment, just prior to the interstate era. In '69-'71 I worked in fire towers in New York, lived in a mountaintop cabin and hauled water a mile or more up a steep trail from a spring, stopping at a smaller one on the way where a cup was kept nearby. Here in Iowa springs were often marked on early maps, but with "rural water" piped from distant reservoirs and abandoned farmsteads on the rise, what veneration there may have been for the local spring either ceased or became a well-guarded secret. Of course, most wells are not springs and they are in many counties now legally required to be properly plugged to avoid contamination of aquifers, and other dangers. A friend died several years ago when she fell into an unmarked well while foraging for berries for her locally famous pies. So, if not used or plugged, wells should be at least well marked, and the dressing of springs...considered.
If you get on with the poems, Larry, as I'm sure you will, you may like Byron Rogers' biography of the man. It's terrifically good and funny too.
ReplyDeleteYou fire tower experience reminds me of the Dharma Bums. I am rather envious.
The Man Who Went Into the West is an intriguing title for Rogers' biography of Thomas, and the one review of it on Amazon, by John L Murphy, is a good one. Meanwhile, both Becoming Drusilla and the Thomas Collected Poems 1945-1990 arrived today, and of course I'm reading BD first, with occasional dips into the other possible and likely. Several library books in progress will wait.
ReplyDeleteI had read and loved both the Dharma Bums and especially Gary Snyder's back country poetry from my early teens, so when I, married with a child on the way, was offered a fire tower job as alternative service during the Vietnam War, I humbly took it. My actual experience of it was not especially enviable. With regard to "all that", I'm struck again tonight by a passage from Adi Da's autobiography:
"I saw that Truth, or Reality, was not actually being lived, and that the entire world of my future was not a field of free consciousness and love, but a field of ignorance, conflict, and seeking."