THE DIVINING ROD

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 563, 16 January 1929, Page 13

THE DIVINING ROD

The earliest of civilised people employed water-diviners. The rod which in the hands of the magician could find water, or would tremble in the hands of the diviner where treasure was to be found, or would single out a guilty man from among the innocent, was familiar to ancient peoples who have left us written history, and they must have inherited their belief in the diviner and his rod from peoples older still. Everywhere when ancient history is searched this idea of the divining-rod peeps out. Marco Polo found it in the unchanging East, while on his travels; tribes used branches of fruit trees for divining-rods when they felt the power of Roman rods of another kind, and the Frisians, who were the descendants of the first trekkers of the Asiatic world to Europe, used the rod to detect murderers. The belief in a twig’s susceptibility to the presence of water is perhaps born in a person. Life came from the sea. The water of the primitive ocean floats in man’s veins. It 'would not be astonishing if unconsciously he responded to the near presence of water, even though invisible to him. A great physician used to say that one of his patients could detect the presence of water blindfolded. Moreover, the sense of smell, much more sensitive than most of us realise, may assist. There is, in fact, ground for supposing that people who handle the divining-rod can tell when water is near; but science cannot and will not agree that the rod itself can perform such miracle^. Many of the inhabitants of the Irish counties of Down and Antrim speak a form of old Scots with little sign of the Irish tongue.