'The Immortal Fly' by Karen Maitland

'Lord of the Flies'

Artist: Louis Le Breton (1818-186

As part of the research for my medieval thriller, A Gathering of Ghosts, I spent time delving into the many legends attached to holy wells all over Britain. One of the strangest tales I found was recorded in The Statistical Account of Scotland 1794 and concerns the healing well of St Michael’s, Kirkmichael, which the writer notes earlier centuries was thought to be protected by a spirit in form of an immortal fly.

“Near the kirk of this parish there is a fountain, once highly celebrated and anciently, dedicated to St Michael. Many a patient have its waters restored to health, and many more have attested the efficacy of their virtues. But, as the presiding power is sometimes capricious, and apt to desert his charge, it now lies neglected, choked with weeds, unhonoured and unfrequented. In better days, it was not so, for the winged guardian, under the semblance of a fly, was never absent from his duty. If the sober matron wished to know the issue of her husband's ailment, or the love-sick nymph that of her languishing swain, they visited the well of St Michael. Every movement of the sympathetic fly was regarded in silent awe, and as he appeared cheerful or dejected, the anxious votaries drew their presages and their breasts vibrated with correspondent emotions.”

I am still wondering how you can tell when a fly is cheerful or dejected.

But the idea of an immortal fly was not confined to the Middle Ages. Pliny in his Natural History, said that although flies often drown, they can be brought back to life by sprinkling them with ashes and warming them in the sun. Other writers claimed this proved that, like humans, they had an immortal soul, which could re-enter and reanimate the body. There is some suggestion that the ancient Egyptians thought that the souls of ancestors could return in the form of a fly, and fly amulets are frequently found in tombs.

Egyptian Fly Amulet c1550-1295 BCE. Hippo ivory

Metropolitan Museum of Art

In Viking mythology, Loki, the Norse deity of air was able to transform into a fly to create mischief. And right up until the 19th century in Iceland, Scandinavian and Northern European there was a wide-spread belief in a ‘sending’ which took the form of a fly. They believed a person could send out a malicious spirit or curse in the shape of a fly against someone they wanted to harm. This fly, which could not be killed, could travel hundreds of miles in pursuit of its prey and as it approached, the victim would gradually fall into a sleep from which they’d never wake. The victims supposedly killed by these ‘sendings’, were often found in cottages with earth floors or had camped in low-lying ground, so their mysterious deaths were probably caused by marsh-gases or fumes from cess-pits.

Flies, of course, with their attraction to decaying food, excrement and corpses were widely associated with death and decay, and plague of flies descending on a person or town was regarded as a divine punishment. Saints often displayed their holiness by driving them out. In 1121, when St Bernard of Clairvaux was preaching in Foigny, a swarm of flies had the temerity to disrupt his sermon by tormenting his congregation. He excommunicated the flies. The monks entering the church the next day found the inserts all dead and in such large numbers they had to shovel them away.

Madonna and child gazing at a fly

Carlo Crivelli (c1435-1495)

Since, Beelzebub, Lord of the Flies was another name for Satan. It follows that demons were said to take the form of flies and during the 16th and 17th century witch persecutions, women were often accused of having a 'familiar' in the form of a fly, which they could send to spy on their neighbours. Since flies were so common in poor households it was almost impossible to refute. A young girl, Deborah Pacey, testifying at a witchcraft trial in Bury St. Edmunds in 1664 claimed to be tormented by evil spirits in the form of flies that forced her to swallow and regurgitate pins.

In the ancient world, the fly was admired for its courage in attacking foes vastly bigger than itself and for its persistence in returning even when repeatedly driven off. In Egypt, those who displayed such daring in the face of the enemy were rewarded with gold or silver flies. Ahmose-pen-Nekhbet c 1570-1550 BCE boasts that the Pharaoh Thutmose bestowed six such flies on him.

Egyptian String of gold flies c.1600-1070 BCE

Metropolitan Museum of Art

But even in medieval Europe, flies were sometimes thought of as heroes especially, when they were plaguing your enemies rather than you. In 1285, when attackers in Catalonia tried to desecrated the tomb of the Girona’s patron Saint, St Narcissus, a cloud of huge flies rose up from the tomb driving the marauders away. An event which is celebrated now with chocolate flies, called mosques de Girona.

Flies even once achieved celestial recognition. In the late 17th Century there was a separate constellation of stars called first Musca, the fly, and then later Musca Borealis, the northern fly, to distinguish it from the Musca constellation in the Southern hemisphere. But this group of stars is now included in the constellation of Aries.

The Constellations of Aries and Musca Borealis 

The Ram and the Northern Fly

Sidney Hall (1788-1831)

And in England, the Christmas fly, the last fly that was found in the house at the end of December, was never killed. Like a stranger coming to the door at that season, a lone fly appearing then, was said to bring a blessing to the household and it was even thought to help with the housework.

St Narcissus of Girona blessing the flies

'Water, water everywhere...' by Karen Maitland

‘... nor any drop to drink.’ Coleridge wrote in the The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.

Those of us living in the south west of England have been somewhat preoccupied with the over-abundance of water in the last few weeks. One of the effects of the constant rain, has been that springs and wells which haven’t run for years have suddenly started flowing again. Having just learnt there used to be a holy spring in my garden, though no one can remember quite where, I have taken to anxiously pressing my ear to the ground to listen for the sound of rushing water, just in case this holy spring turns out to be under the house!

Long before the Christian era, natural springs where water mysteriously gushed straight out of rock or the earth were sacred places, conduits to the world of the dead. These springs were where the gods of the air met the gods of the underworld. With the coming of Christianity, medieval churches built near these sites or over caverns were often dedicated to St. Michael the archangel, the Christian replacement for the gods of the ‘elder faith’, because he is winged and so can command the air, but was also thought to hold the keys to hell or hades, therefore substituted for the god of the underworld.

Researchers have discovered that down through the centuries there have been proportionally more recorded supernatural events and disturbances, such as graves being opened, in medieval churches dedicated to St Michael than in churches dedicated to any other saint. Although this may be due to the fact there are over 600 churches in England dedicated to St Michael.

During the medieval period many ancient sacred springs themselves became associated with saints. Legend often had it that they gushed out when saints such as St Edith had, like Moses struck a rock, to provide water for her workmen. A number of holy wells are said to have sprung up on spot where a saint’s head had been struck from their body, such as St Justinian, presumably because the gush of water resembled the arch of blood which would pour from a severed neck.

More unusually, the feisty St Medana was so fed up with the attentions of a persistent suitor that she flung her own eyeballs at him to make him go away. She then brought forth a holy spring from the rock, so she could restore her sight. (Brings a whole new meaning to giving someone a dirty look.)

People came to these holy wells, they had in pre-Christian times, with a bent pin, a coin or flowers to offer to the saint, instead of the water deity, in the hope of a cure. That generated a lively trade in the selling of ampulla in which to carry water home to keep in the house or wear as an amulet to protect against sickness or the perils of childbirth.

Incidentally, superstition has it that if you are obliged to walk around a holy well or spring to pass it, you must always walk around it deiseil that is in a clockwise direction, with the sun. To turn to the left, and walk widdershins around the water will strengthen the powers of darkness, bring bad luck and even rouse some malicious spirit or monster from deep within the well or spring.

The sudden drying-up of certain holy springs or wells such as St Helen’s Well in Staffordshire is said predict a national disaster. If the spring in Langley Park dries up, it foretells a battle, but if it fills up there will be peace. This was said to be true whatever the weather. While the Drumming Well at Oudle warns of a calamity when a thumping is heard down the shaft. The predictions of some springs such as Dudley Spring in Warwickshire or Barton Mere at Bury St Edmunds are more easily explained, These are known as Cornsprings or Levants which Gilbert White in his Natural History of Selbourne said would fill or flood if the price of corn was going to rise. I think we can take it then, bread prices are going to rise this year!

I wonder if it was a co-incidence that in the 16th Century, as soon as the collecting of ‘holy water’ from saints' wells was deemed heretical under the Reformation, people began to discover the ‘health’ properties of water such as Malvern water, and started bottling it to sell to all parts of England? Perhaps we still need to believe in the powers of healing water. Certainly watching people today determinedly clutching their bottles of water as they walk around towns, reminds me of those medieval pilgrims clinging to their ampulla of holy water.

One last thought - I was listening to politicians and Environment Agencies this week explain that it makes good economic sense to allow houses and farmland in some areas to flood. And it reminded me of an ancient statute I came across while researching medieval fenlands. It said that if you wilfully, or through neglect, caused a neighbour’s property to flood by failing to maintain ditches, water courses or flood defences, you could be buried up to your neck in the dyke and left there to drown in the flood water. Your body would then form part of the flood defences to protect your neighbour. I wonder if that statute is still on the books, if it was revived, it might concentrate the minds of our planners and ministers wonderfully.

But remember in 1348, the year the Black Death, came to Britain it rained every day from Midsummer's Day to Christmas Day - I think someone must have walked round quite a few springs widdershins that year.