south-east of the island. This is pronounced in Manx approximately[1] Santane or Sanðane, and would have yielded an early inscriptional nominative Sanctagnus, which, in fact, occurs on an old stone near Llandudno on the opposite coast : see Rhys's Lectures on Welsh Philology, p. 371. To return to the well, it would seem to have been associated with an old cell, but it has no tree growing by it. Mr. Savage and I were told, nevertheless, that a boy who had searched a short time previously had got some coins out of it, quite recent ones, consisting of halfpennies or pennies, so far as I remember. On my observing to one of the neighbours that I saw no rags there, I was assured that there had been some ; and, on my further saying that I saw no tree there to which they could be tied, I was told that they used to be attached to the brambles, which grew there in great abundance. Thus it appears to me that, in the Isle of Man at any rate, a tree to bear the rags was not an essential adjunct of a holy well.
There is another point to which I should like to call attention, namely, the habit of writing about the rags as offerings, which they are not in all cases. The offerings are the coins, beads, buttons, or pins thrown into the well, or placed in a receptacle for the purpose close to the well. The rags may belong to quite a different order of things : they may be the vehicles of the diseases which the patients communicate to them when they spit out the well-water from their mouths. The rags are put up to rot, so that the disease supposed to cling to them may also die ; and so far is this believed to be the case, that anyone who carries away one of the rags may expect to
- ↑ I say 'approximately', as, more strictly speaking, the ordinary pronunciation is Snðắen, almost as one syllable, and from this arises a variant, which is sometimes written Stondane, while the latest English development, regardless of the accentuation of the Anglo-Manx form Santon (pronounced Sántn), makes the parish into a St. Ann's ! For the evidence that it was the parish of a St. Sanctan (or Sanctagnus see Moore's Surnames, p. 209.
