The Ivory and the Horn

Jilly. At work, she kept her books and budgeting perfectly in order. So why couldn't she do the same thing in her private life?

There was only one other customer in the restaurant, so after Jilly had served him his dinner, she brought a pot of herbal tea and a pair of mugs over to Brenda's table. She sat down with a contented sigh before pouring them each a steaming mugful. Brenda smiled her thanks and lit a cigarette.

'So whatever happened with that guy you met at the bus stop?' Jilly asked as she settled back in her chair.

'Didn't Wendy tell you?'

Jilly laughed. 'You know Wendy. Telling her something personal is like putting it into a Swiss bank vault and you're the only person who's got the account number.'

So Brenda filled her in.

'Then when I got home on Friday,' she said as she finished up, 'there was a message from him on my machine. But I decided to take Wendy's advice and play it cool. Instead of calling him back, I waited for him to call me again.'

'Well, good for you.'

'I suppose.'

'And did he?'

Brenda nodded. 'We made a date for Saturday night and he showed up at my door with a huge box of chocolates.'

'That was nice of him.'

'Right. Real nice. Give the blimp even more of what she doesn't need. You'd think he'd be more considerate than that. I mean, all you have to do is look at me and know that the last thing I need is chocolate.'

'Jesus, Brenda. The last thing you are is fat.'

'Oh, right.'

Jilly just shook her head. 'So what did you do?'

'I ate them.'

'No, I meant where did you go?'

'Another movie. I can't even remember what we saw now. I spent the whole time trying to figure out how he felt about me.'

'You should try to just relax,' Jilly told her. 'Let what happens, happen.'

'I guess.' Brenda butted out her cigarette and lit another. Blowing a wreath of blue-grey smoke away from the table, she gave Jilly a considering look, then asked, 'Do you believe in wishing wells?'

Wendy took that moment to arrive in a flurry of blonde hair and grocery bags. She dumped the bags on the floor by the table and pulled up a chair.

'Better to ask, what doesn't she believe in,' she said. 'This woman's mind is a walking supermarket tabloid.'

'Ah,' Jilly said. 'The poet arrives— only fifteen minutes late for her shift.'

Wendy grinned and pointed at Jilly's tangle of brown ringlets.

'You've got paint in your hair,' she said.

'You've got ink on your fingers,' Jilly retorted, then they stuck out their tongues at each other and laughed.

Their easy rapport made Brenda feel left out. Where did a person learn to be so comfortable with other people? she wondered, not for the first time. She supposed it started with feeling good about yourself— like losing a little weight, getting out of debt, putting your love life in order. She sighed. Maybe it started with not always talking about your own problems all the time, but that was a hard thing to do. There were times when Brenda thought her problems were the only things she did have to talk about.

'Earth to Brenda,' Jilly said. Under the table, the point of her shoe poked Brenda's calf to get her attention.

'Sorry.'

'Why were you asking about wishing wells?' Jilly asked.

'Oh, I don't know. I was just wondering if anybody still believes that wishes can come true.'

'I think there are magical things in the world,' Wendy said, 'but hocus-pocus, wishes coming true—' she shook her head '— I doubt it.'

'I do,' Jilly said. 'It just depends on how badly you want them to.'

7

Most wishing wells started out simply as springs or wells that were considered sacred. I found this out a while ago when I was supposed to be researching something else for the paper. I had just meant to look into the origin of wishing wells, but I ended up getting caught up in all the folklore surrounding water and spent most of that afternoon in the library, following one reference which led me to another...

All the way back to primitive times, a lake or well was the place that the sick were taken to be healed. Water images show up in the medicinal rites of peoples at an animistic level, where those being healed are shown washing their hands, breast and head. At the water's edge, reeds grow and shells are found, both symbols of water as salvation— something that Christian symbolism took to itself with a vengeance.

But even before the spread of Christianity, the well of refreshing and purifying water had already gained all sorts of fascinating associations. It was symbolic of sublime aspirations, thought of as a 'silver cord' which attached a human to the center of all things. The corn goddess Demeter or other deities would often be shown standing beside a well. The act of drawing water from a well was like fishing, drawing out and upward the numinous contents of the deeps. Looking into its still waters, like looking into a placid lake, was seen as equivalent to meditation or mystic contemplation. The well symbolized the human soul and was considered an attribute of all things feminine.

It's no wonder the Christians came to include it in their baptismal rituals; Christianity has had a long history of taking popular older beliefs and assimilating into its own— even I knew that. But there was so much here that I had never heard of before; fascinating stuff, even though it ended up taking me way off my initial topic. And anyway, the idea of making a wish at a well is tied up in all those tangled stories.

Throughout Europe sacred wells were given new names after various saints. But as the centuries passed and religious beliefs changed, many of these saints' wells became less esteemed and pilgrims no longer approached them with the same feelings of devotion they once had. People stopped offering prayers to the saints and made a wish instead.

And the associated rituals often survived. In some places the wish-maker had to dip her bare hands into the water up to her wrists, make a silent wish, then withdraw her hands and swallow the water held in them. Other places, one left a pin, often bent, or the ever-popular coin. In some ways, wishing wells are a reversion to paganism, the serious wishes made at them being reminiscent of when people approached the sacred water to make an offering or benediction to some god or other, or to the spirit of the water.

Of course water wasn't seen just as the home of benevolent spirits. Folklore throughout the world relates the dangers of water witches and sirens, kelpies and other malevolent creatures whose sole existence seems to rely on drowning those they manage to snare with their various wiles. Everybody knows the story of how Ulysses confronted the sirens and most have probably heard of the Rhine maiden Lorelei— although, oddly enough, she entered folkloric tradition through Clemens Brentano's ballad 'Lore Lay.' He was so convincing that people just assumed it was based on true folklore.

Among the creepiest of the water witches are the Russian rusalki. They're lake spirits in female form— very beautiful and very deadly. They were supposed to bring a weird kind of ecstatic death when they drowned their victims, although some stories said it wasn't actually death they brought, but rather passage to another world. Another book I read said that before their current place in folklore tradition, they were considered to be fertility spirits. I found one reference where some Russian peasants were quoted as saying that 'where the rusalki trod when dancing, there the grass grew thicker and the wheat more abundant.'

That's the weird thing about folklore. Everything gets stirred up so you don't know which story's the original one anymore. Whatever comes along, be it a church or a new government, usually assimilates into their own the traditions and beliefs that existed before they came, and that's what creates the tangle.