View N of Ffynnon Degla holy well, Llandegla, Denbighshire, Wales, UK, renowned for rituals & cures of King's Evil (scrofula) & epilepsy (Clwyf Tecla)
View N of Ffynnon Degla holy well, Llandegla, Denbighshire, Wales, UK, renowned for rituals & cures of King's Evil (scrofula) & epilepsy (Clwyf Tecla). Visit the well after sunset on a Friday. Wash hands & feet in the water. Make three circumambulations of the well carry a live cock in a basket while repeating the Lord's Prayer. Prick the fowl with a pin, throw the pin in the well. Give a groat to the parish clerk. Repeat circumambulations at Llandegla church. Put a groat in the Poor Box. Sleep overnight in the church under the Communion Table using the Church Bible as a pillow, a carpet as a blanket. At daybreak transfer disease to the cock by breathing into its beak. Place a piece of silver into the Poor Box. Leave the fowl in church & walk around well a final three times. If the cock died in the church the patient would be cured. The well was excavated in 1935 by Alwyn D. Rees, finds included C18th & C19th coins, pins & pottery fragments. At a deeper level covering the underlying rock were "dozens of pieces of quartz and ". The use of white stones in burials, healing rituals & folklore is well known from both pagan & Christian contexts in Celtic Britain & Ireland. Six carved stone heads, formerly kept at a local farmhouse, may have been used at the well as long ago as the Iron Age.
Size: 3776px × 4938px
Location: Ffynnon Degla, Llandegla, Ruthin, Denbighshire, Wales, UK
Photo credit: © Mick Sharp / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
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