St Keyne’s Well

St Keyne’s Well in Cornwall was roofed by the roots of four trees of different kinds, withy, oak, elm and ash. Carew’s Survey of Cornwall gives rhymes on its quality: whichever of a newly married couple first drank of the water would be master in the marriage. Southey turned the belief into a ballad, in which a Cornishman tells a traveller that he hurried to the well as soon as the wedding was over, leaving his bride in the church porch, only to find she had been wiser and taken a bottle of the water to church with her.