they were offerings,
pure and simple, to the spirit of the well, and referred to examples
in confirmation. Among other items, I have come across an account of
an Irish "station," as it is called, at a sacred well, the details of
which fully bear out my view as to the nature of the rags deposited at
the shrine being offerings to the local deity. One of the devotees, in
true Irish fashion, made his offering accompanied by the following
words: "To St. Columbkill--I offer up this button, a bit o' the
waistband o' my own breeches, an' a taste o' my wife's petticoat, in
remimbrance of us havin' made this holy station; an' may they rise up
in glory to prove it for us in the last day."[221] I shall not attempt
to account for the presence of the usual Irish humour in this, to the
devotee, most solemn offering; but I point out the undoubted nature of
the offerings and their service in the identification of their
owners--a service which implies their power to bear witness in
spirit-land to the pilgrimage of those who deposited them during
lifetime at the sacred well.[222]

Now, in all these cases there is an original and a secondary, or
derivative, form of the superstition, and it is our object to trace
out which is which. Do the rags deposited at wells symbolise offerings
to the local deity? If so, they bring us within measurable distance of
a cult which rests upon faith in the power of natural objects to harm
or render aid to human beings. Does the question of first-foot rest
upon the colour of the hair or upon the sex of the person? I think,
looking at all the examples I have been able to examine, that colour
is really the older basis of the superstition, and, if so,
ethnological considerations are doubtless the root of it. Again, if
the eldest son of the deceased owner of bees appears in the earliest
form of the death-telling ceremony, we have an interesting fragment of
the primitive house-ritual of our ancestors.

When, however, we come upon the worship of local deities, when we can
suggest ethnological elements in folklore, and when we can speak of
the house-father, and can see that duties are imposed upon him by
traditional custom, unknown to any rules of civilised society, we are
in the presence of facts older than those of historic times. It is
thus that folklore so frequently points back to the past before the
age of history. Over and over again we pause before the facts of
folklore, which, however explained, always l