62 Legends of Parishes, etc. of his kind, and will continue the best part of a yeere without alteration or sent or taste, only you shall see it represent many colours, like the Rain-bowe which (in my conceite) argueth a running throu some minerall veine and therewithall a possessing of some vertue." I must give one more quotation from Carew before I finish with him, about a well at Saltash : — " I had almost forgotten to tell you that there is a well in this towne whose water will not boyle peason to a seasonable softnes." The holy wells in Cornwall are very numerous ; the greater part were in olden times enclosed in small baptisteries. Luckily the poor people believe that to remove any of the stones of the ruins of these chapels would be fatal to them and to their children, and for that reason a great number yet remain. It is considered unlucky, too, to cart away any of the druidical monuments (" pieces of ancientcy"), and many are the stories told of the great misfortunes that have fallen on men who have so done. The innocent oxen or horses who drag them away are always sure to die, and their master never prosper. Persistent ill-luck also follows any one defiling these wells ; and a tradition is current in one of the " West Country" parishes, of a gentleman, who, after he had washed his dogs, afflicted with the mange, in its holy well, fell into such poverty that his sons were obliged to work as day labourers. Mr. T. Q. Couch, in Notes and Queries, vol. x., gives this legend in connection with St. Nunn's well in Pelynt : — "An old farmer once set his eyes upon the granite basin and coveted it ; for it was not wrong in his eyes to convert the holy font to the base uses of the pig's stye ; and accordingly he drove his oxen and wain to the gateway above for the purpose of removing it. Taking his beasts to the entrance of the well, he essayed to drag the trough from its ancient bed. For a long time it resisted the efforts of the oxen, but at length they succeeded in starting it, and dragged it slowly up the hill-side to where the wain was standing. Here, however, it burst away from the chains which held it, and, rolling back again to the well, made a sharp turn and regained its old position, where it has remained ever since. Nor will any one again attempt its removal, seeing that the farmer, who was previously well-to-do in the world.
