Wishing Wells
Few people can resist a wishing well, a place where their unspoken, undisclosed desires supposedly manifest with the toss of a coin into the water. In 2006, The “Fountain Money Mountian” revealed that tourists to Britain alone toss three million pounds a year into the nation’s wishing wells. So what is the origin of the idea that throwing money into water will bring you good fortune?
The inhabitants of prehistoric Europe believed that bogs, lakes, and springs were sacred places where they could easily commune with the gods- and so make petitions and offerings. This belief arose because such sites were hinterlands between one element and another and thus nexus points between the material world and that of the gods. However, the gods required gratitude for the prayers they answered, and no request could be made empty-handed. So it became customary to make offerings to the waters.
Such offerings were often metallic and purpose made. In Lake Neuchatel, Switzerland the iron age population made numerous votive offerings to these unnamed deities between 450-50BC. Deposits including 166 swords and 2500 objects, many brand new and of such a unique style and craftsmanship that they gave rise to a whole specific Celtic subculture known as La Tene culture. At the site of Llyn Cerrig Bach on Anglesey, Wales, similar deposits were made. Here, archaeologists discovered 138 objects consisting of weapons, currency bars, chariot and horse fittings in the peat at the side of a lake. These items were deposited over two centuries from the second century BC until the second century AD.
The Sacred Spring at Bath formed the source of the famous Roman baths built in southern England not long after the Roman conquest of Britain. However, it had long been a ritual center of the Celtic goddess Sul. The spring maintained this significance into the Roman period- but now the nature of the offerings changed. Now, pilgrims offered coins rather than swords and jewelry to the waters. Archaeologists have found 17 Iron Age coins and 13000 Roman coins deposited in the spring in return for the hope of the goddess’s healing powers- or in gratitude for cures already received.
The custom of watery offerings continued into the Christian era. Stories of saints were ‘invented’ to rebrand formerly pagan water sources- such as the well of St Sidwell in Exeter, Devon. For the local people, the spring had long been renown for its curative powers. However, sometime in the tenth century, it became associated with Sidwell, a Christian virgin whose martyred blood gave rise to the spring- or so the new story went. Springs and wells such as St Sidwell’s allowed the folk customs of the locals to continue unabated- while the church made money from a sanitized version of the pagan past- and formed the basis for modern wishing wells.
The ancient origins of other old superstitions are much more rooted in commerce than religion.