As the dressers of the different wells vied with each other
which should have the best show, the children and young people had a
busy time in collecting the flowers, plants, buds, and ferns necessary
to form the display. The festival was held on Holy Thursday, and was
preceded with a service in the church followed by one at each of the
wells, and if the weather was fine, hundreds of visitors assembled to
criticise the work at the different wells. The origin of well-dressing
is unknown, but it is certainly of remote antiquity, probably dating
back to pagan times. That at Tissington was supposed to have developed
at the time of the Black Plague in the fourteenth century, when,
although it decimated many villages in the neighbourhood, it missed
Tissington altogether--because, it was supposed, of the purity of the
waters. But the origin of well-dressing must have been of much greater
antiquity: the custom no doubt had its beginnings as an expression of
praise to God from whom all blessings flow. The old proverb, "We never
know the value of water till the well runs dry," is singularly
appropriate in the hilly districts of Derbyshire, where not only the
wells, but the rivers also have been known to dry up, and when the
spring comes and brings the flowers, what could be more natural than to
thank the Almighty who sends the rain and the water, without which they
could not grow.
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