KISSING THE WATER
OBSERVANCE IN SOUTH-WEST FRANCE. If in Ireland they kiss the Blarney Slone, in the south-west of France, in tne forest of La Double, near Riberac. youths and maids kiss the water of a famous well. They kneel down and kiss the surface of the water in pairs, as a sign that they are betrothed. Often the young man is invited by letter by his sweetheart to go to the well to join in the kissing, and if he does not show up she is sure that the affair is off. Young maids not yet betrothed go to the well to offer up a prayer to Saint Eutrope, asking him to find them a husband who will be true. They place pins on the edge of a rock above the water, and there is quite a ritual in the invocation.
Quaint remedies also have their place in this region, and one firmly believed in and often practised is supposed to be a sovereign cure of rheumatism. The sufferer is put naked into a baker’s cooling oven, only his head protruding. Another affection is curable, it is alleged by the peasants, by the use of nine blades of grass gathered by a person walking backwards before sunrise on the first day of autumn.
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Wairarapa Times-Age, 9 February 1939, Page 5
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214KISSING THE WATER Wairarapa Times-Age, 9 February 1939, Page 5
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