Then, drinking again, they
departed whole, if faith sufficiently mighty had supported them. Norden
remarks of the water that "its fame was great for the supposed vertue of
healinge, which St. Maderne had thereunto infused; and maine votaries made
anuale pilgrimages unto it...." In connection with the custom of immersion
here indicated, we find there obtained the equally venerable practice of
hanging votive rags upon the thorn bushes round about the chapel. This
conceit is ancient as Japan, and one not only in usage to this day among
the Shintoists of that land, but likewise common throughout Northern Asia
and, nearer home, in the Orkneys, in Scotland, in Ireland. Older far than
Christianity are these customs; the megalithic monuments of the pagan
witness similar practices in remote corners of the earth; rag-trees,
burdened with the tattered offerings of the devout, yet stud the desert of
Suez, and those who seek shall surely find some holy well or grave hard at
hand in every case. To mark and examine the junction of these venerable
fancies with Christian superstition is no part of our present purpose, but
that ideas, pagan in their birth, have lent themselves with sufficient
readiness to successive creeds and been knit into the dogmas of each in
turn, is certain enough. Thus, through Cornwall, the imaginings of wizard
and wonder-worker in hoary time come, centuries later, to be the glory and
special power of a saint.
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