his property. If, however, the river prove him innocent and he be not drowned his accuser shall surely be put to death, and the dead man’s property shall become the portion of him who underwent the ordeal.” The fundamental idea of the immaculate purity of water, which here destroys—or, as was more generally believed rejects—all that is unholy, is found throughout the world. This element has almost a divine character. It is present in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass; it is an integral of the great Sacrament of Baptism; Holy Water availeth to cleanse from venial sin, it is often proved to have curative properties, it fills the heart with heavenly longings, and drives away the devil and his hosts, be they of earth or of hell. Sunday after Sunday the priest asperges his people with lustral purification. We cannot be surprised that at all times and in all places mankind has extolled the exceeding great virtue of fair water. The poet speaks of “waters at their priest-like task,” and during the Eleusinian mysteries the initiate plunged into the sea to attain ritual purity, for as Euripides tells us: Θάλασσα κλύζει πάντα τἀνθράπων κακά. (Iphigeneia in Tauris, 1193.)
In his Religion of the Semites (1889), Robertson Smith says: “Of all inanimate things that which has the best marked supernatural association among the Semites is flowing, or as the Hebrews say, ‘living water.’ … Sacred wells are amongst the oldest and most ineradicable objects of reverence among all the Semites.” A little later (p. 163) mention is actually made of the practice of “swimming the witch.” “In Hadramaut, according to Macrizi, when a man was injured by enchantment, he brought all the
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