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THE HOLY WELLS OF WALES

By Francis Jones and published by the University of Wales Press, 6 Gwennyth Street, Cardiff, CF2 4YD at £8.99

This is a relatively new paperback edition of this important work which was out of print for decades. This definitive study lists every known and extant holy well in Wales when the book was compiled in 1954 and deals extensively with the well cult from the Middles Ages onwards, folk practices and beliefs connected with wells and springs, analyses the attributions of wells for healing, divination and their assocations with saints, and then catalogues and maps them in terms of their assocations withchurches, megaliths, trees and rag and pin offerings.

Jones is not necessary sympathetic to a pagan interpretation of much of his material but this is probably due at least in part to the time in which he was writing and can be overcome by the reader. Indispensible for holy well freaks and those who regularly spend their hols in Wales.