ST CUTHBERT'S OR CUBERT'S WELL.

HAL thus describes this famous place :--" In this parish is that famous and well-known spring of water called Holy-well (so named, the inhabitants say, for that the virtues of this water was first discovered on All-hallows day). The same stands in a dark cavern of the sea-cliff rocks, beneath full sea-mark on spring tides, from the top of which cavern falls down or distils continually drops of water from the white, blue, red, and green veins of those rocks. And accordingly, in the place where those drops of water fall, it swells to a lump of considerable bigness, and there petrifies to the hardness of ice, glass, or freestone, of the several colours aforesaid, according to the nature of those veins in the rock from whence it proceeds, and is of a hard, brittle nature, apt to break like glass.

"The virtues of this water are very great. It is incredible what numbers in summer season frequent this place and waters from counties far distant." [a]

[a] Gilbert, vol. i. p. 291