a sacred spring to which the priest went in times of great drought to procure rain. This he effected by touching the water in the holy well with a branch of oak; a vapour would then be seen to arise from it and go on forming till the country round had been blessed with the wished-for showers.[1] The means adopted to get the god to grant rain were borrowed from the arsenal of ancient magic, which relied to a great extent on a sort of association of ideas, solemn mimicry of the action wished for being regarded as forcing the god whom the worshipper intended to influence, to put forth the activity desired.
With the sacred Arcadian well I would now compare a Breton one to which recourse is had with the same object: I allude to the Fountain of Baranton in the forest of Brécilien, so famous in the romances. Thither the people of the country resorted in the early Middle Ages; when they wanted rain, they would take up the tankard always at hand and throw some of the water from the spring on a slab near it. Rain would then fall in abundance, and one romancer[2] makes this the means of bringing on a terrific storm of thunder and lightning. Now the water, on the brink of which fairies loved to disport themselves, issued near the perron or tomb in which Merlin had been incarcerated, and the whole was overshadowed by a mighty tree.[3] This is all the more to the point, since the enchanter as the youth Merlin Ambrosius expelling the old duke Vortigern from
