On a recent trip to Cornwall, I took the chance to visit two faery wells in the far west of the county.
The first well is called Venton Bebibell, a name that is a much degraded version of the original Cornish, Fenten Byghan Bobel– the well of the little people (I have often used the phrase pobel vean in postings on Cornish faeries; this is a slightly more modern version of the same term). This well is on the Penwith moors near to famous Men an Tol holed stone. Men an Tol, however, is very easy to find, a straight walk down a very wide, clear track. It took us three attempts to locate the little people’s well (perhaps a case of being pixie-led), so- in case any readers are inspired to follow me- I’ll try to give a better description.
If you follow the track past the turn to Men an Tol, you’ll pass the inscribed stone Men Scryfa on your left a little while later. The track then descends to a green grassy space where several bridle ways meet. If you proceed straight ahead, up a rather narrower path, you’ll get to the Nine Maidens stone circle (well worth a visit). However, at the grassy space there’s a very clear grassy path running north-south , coming down from the distinctive Carn Galver. This crosses the route you’ve been following at a nice new metal gate. Go through the gate and follow the wide path across the sward. You’ll see three quite large hawthorn bushes, each standing alone and each separated by several tens of metres (or yards). When you’re level with the third, turn left off the wide path and follow a much narrower trail through the bracken to the thorn. When you’re there, you’ll see ahead of you, at the foot of the slope, an old wooden gate through a Cornish hedge. Go down and through this gate. The path here seems to vanish entirely (my mistake the first time I searched). It doesn’t- turn right and follow a much fainter way through the bracken towards a small, rather stunted and (possibly) dead hawthorn. The well is very well concealed just to the right of this bush, down in a dip beside the hedge wall.
When we visited the spring was almost dry, given the long dry summer we’d had, but the site is distinctively marked with stone laid around the basin. Someone had left a purple quartz crystal as an offering, just to confirm that we were in the right place. The old tradition was that children would visit on Easter day to ‘baptise’ or dip their dolls in the water. It’s recently been revived and you can watch a video on YouTube. The person leading this pilgrimage is Cornish author Cheryl Straffon, who’s written a very handy guide to Cornish wells (Fentynyow Kernow).
The second well is the ‘Fairy Well’ at Carbis Bay, on the north-east coast of Penwith just a mile or two east of St Ives. This is much easier to find. Turn off the main A3074 St Ives to Lelant road in Carbis Bay at Porthrepta Road. This descends pretty steeply towards the beach; turn right into Headland Road and head to the end. Here, a footpath goes straight ahead along the cliff top; ignore this. Instead, there is a steep path and steps on the left, heading down between some houses. Follow this, which will bring you out by the railway line. You cross the line on foot (no bridge- take care!) and, through the gate on the other side, turn immediately right. Some steep steps lead down to a muddy path that clings to the sharply inclining slope of the cliffs. Follow this for about a quarter of a mile until a rather less well marked path turns off to the left. Some steps show you you’re going the right way, as you head down precipitously through hazel trees (these seemed meaningful to me, given their link in Irish myth to the gift of wisdom and prophecy, received at a spring). At the end of the path, right on the cliff edge, there is a square, rock cut basin, full of water. There’s no mistaking you’ve arrived. It’s a wishing well, as demonstrated by the small offerings scattered around. In addition, the view is impressive, over a huge and little visited beach.
Whilst in Cornwall, we also revisited two other ‘holy’ wells. The first, at Madron, just outside Penzance, is notable for the clooties, the strips of cloth that are tied to trees around the spring to represent wishes or requests made. This compares to the practice seen on Doon Hill at Aberfoyle.
The second well was at Carn Euny. This is a very impressive site. It’s a low hill, topped by a huge natural carn of outcropping boulders. There’s an Iron Age village, the remains of a medieval chapel and its silted up well- and the older and far more atmospheric ‘holy well.’ This was full of flowing water and was surrounded (significantly in my mind) by elders and hawthorn trees. It’s always memorable to visit.
See too the records of my earlier trips to the ‘fairy well’ at Sennen and to Sancreed well.
For more on faeries, wells and water, see my Faery (Llewellyn, 2020) and Faeries and the Natural World (Green Magic, 2022).
British Fairies 
Hi Everyone,
Until I started reading this blog site, I had never heard of the term clootie. And even after reading John’s learned discourses on the subject, I would not say that it is a term that ‘trips off the tongue’. Quite the opposite, actually, as though I felt some passing acquaintance with the word, I still found that I had to go and look it up. Why do I say all this?
They say that our Good Neighbours can warn us of the onset of storms and other such natural events. Being ‘Of Nature’, this, perhaps, is hardly surprising. But there has always been a suspicion that they are also able to see beyond the immediate future also.
Having been the recipient of certain ‘pointers’ from them in the past, I have come to view these indications with a mixture of appreciation for sending them to me in the first place (as they are not obliged to do so) and trepidation as to what they might portend. All I will know for sure is that there is a message wrapped up in the sign which I will only be able to divine, sometimes, after the event.
And what of Clootie? Clootie Wells or Clootie Trees? As I said before, this is not a term I am likely to be thinking of any time soon unless the thought is purposefully put there. And that seems to have been the case.
I had had two dreams on successive nights with a distinct ‘Irish Flavour’. I was sure they were both fairy-inspired because I was able to recall bits and pieces from each. Not so the third dream that followed. It seemed like any other non-descript dream (which, sometimes, I feel sure, can mean that they and I were up to something, but they don’t wish me to remember. After all, I can’t ‘blab’ about what I don’t know, though many would say I do just that – ha! ha!). I was just about to wake up, still in that limbo between dreaming and wakefulness, when, completely unexpectedly, I clearly heard the word CLOOTIE uttered.
It stayed with me into consciousness as, no doubt, it was intended to. I promptly went away to look up this word and ascertain its usage. Sure enough, I quickly discovered its Celtic connection in relation to wishes for healing left at certain trees and wells. I was puzzled about the ‘healing aspect’ as nobody that I knew of needed healing or wishes being expressed for healing to take place. I concluded, therefore, that I was misreading the meaning, and it was just another instance of ‘Her Celtic Ancestry’ connected to whatever we had been doing in the dream that I was forbidden to recall …
A month or more later, after repeated efforts to contact my mum by phone, I was answered by one of her helpers. Mum had taken a bad fall landing heavily on her arm. Nothing broken, fortunately, but the resultant bruising (exacerbated by using ‘rat poison’) would take weeks to heal up.
Only then did I wonder whether CLOOTIE had had a different message all along. I had always known it was some kind of a message. Since it was verbal rather than the customary visual signs of the past, I was hopeful it might have a happier meaning, whilst all the time knowing that there could be a darker significance.
Phil
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Clootie II – on the other side
Many of the things we humans like, so do the Fae, so much so that they think nothing of ‘making use of them’ as the need arises. Writers emphasise how different their customs are from human ones and that this is one of the reasons why relations between our two races are so fraught. All true enough.
But some customs, like that of the Clootie Well, seem to be as much present in their realm as in ours. Perhaps, not so surprising if the Clootie Well has Celtic origins and the type of Fae who keeps you company shares the same origins. My understanding is that what they do is similar to what we do, but with something extra which may be closer to the Celtic origins of the practice.
If you have ever been short-sighted or are short-sighted, you will know only too well how all your other faculties remain unimpaired except for your sight. Without your glasses or lenses, the clarity of vision is lost and everything around you tends to be blurred and indistinct. Where once you discerned individuals, now all you see are the blurry outlines of individuals. The vividness of your surroundings still comes through, it’s just the level of detail you are accustomed to is absent. And why do I labour this point?
A fairy or pixie who takes you as their own will understandably not be content with simply meeting you on an astral plane where you go in your dreaming state. On this ‘plane of contact’ you can see and hear with the same degree of clarity as you can when awake. Your companion, or companions in the case of a trooping fairy such as Pixies, don’t need to see our world. They are in and out of it 24/7 in performance of their Nature duties.
Once they decide the time has come to take you into into their secret world (which may be Fairie) because they wish you to be as comfortable with them in their home as outside, you can, initially, find yourself stumbling around like a short-sided person without their visual aids. I am encouraged in that I notice what’s around me more than previously, but frustrated that it seems to be taking its time! All part of my education, no doubt.
Speaking of which, it is in just this environment that they took me, not for the first time, to visit their Clootie Well. I knew I had been taken there on more than one occasion. I was unclear on those previous visits as to the purpose of our visits but was dimly aware of some ritual that needed to be observed to get the best out of it.
My latest visit was the culmination of a day spent in their benevolent presence. I was aware of having more good luck than I had a right to. I was anxious about finding the ward my mother had been relocated to in the vastness of our local hospital. I had time to spare before visiting hours to do a trial run which simply confirmed my worst fears. I settled down with a coffee and biscuit asking ‘for guidance’. I need not have worried. They had my back! I flew to her bedside like a homing pigeon and, just as surprisingly, left with equal ease with strangers opening doors just at the right time to smooth my passage.
Hospital visits on your own are never fun at the best of times and the feeling that my invisible companions were with me was very comforting. I have already made a few such visits without it resulting in a Clootie Well dream – appropriate as it was.
I was unsure how I got there. I remember it was a very verdant part of a forest. The greenery was too vividly-green to be on earth. There was a clearing in which there was some kind of large circular structure that I knew to hold water. As I said above, the place was familiar to me and was a sacred place because of the ritual that required performing. This time, though, I found myself sufficiently emboldened to declare out aloud that I understood what was required to gain the expected outcome. I couldn’t see my companions but, since I could not have been admitted to that place without their help, it was most likely to them I was making this declaration, and to one other …
For, high up, sitting atop the structure, I was, for the very first time, aware of another being. I could only make out an outline but I knew it was there and felt that it was ‘The Keeper of The Well’. A kind of Genius Loci. I didn’t feel it was of the same race as my companions but I did know that this was the person I was here to see and in whose honour the ritual was to be conducted.
It is difficult to transcribe dream content accurately at the best of time. What I am left with is a collection of feelings. The best way I can describe it is to say that once the heart-felt wishes for recovery had been offered up (just like here), the ritual seemed both to be to elicit that being’s help and almost a prophetic utterance. There was this sense of expectation that if I did and said X and Y as part of the ritual, I would be shown or given Z. What the ‘Z’ was supposed to be, I am unclear. I just knew that that ‘was how it worked’ from my previous visits. In all likelihood, this was probably the first time I was at the ‘required level’ to conduct the ritual on my own behalf. It’s hard to say.
As a human, it’s natural to focus all your attention on your companions because they are the ones you wish to interact with. They are the ones who have decided to support and stand by you. Loyalty is beyond price in their eyes.
Outside their world, I feel more in my comfort zone. I can take on human form wearing human garb. They, of course, do the same to match. I am still the student and will always be so in whatever realm I find myself.
Inside their world, however, it’s my turn to take on their guise. Here is where I am but a child learning my way in their world. It’s all quite new. And, of course, they are no longer alone. Not for the first time, other entities begin to appear with whom they share their world.
Hope you enjoyed.
Phil
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