unspoken water

English

Noun

unspoken water (uncountable)

1. Water collected by someone who remains silent, particularly from under a bridge which leads to a cemetery (though in some folkloric practices, from a well or spring instead), believed to have magical curative properties.
   • 1839, The Book of Bon-accord: Or, a Guide to the City of Aberdeen, page 364:

     Of the virtues of south-running water, and 'onspoken water' it is unnecessary to speak. It may be mentioned, however, that in this part of the country the use of unspoken water is not altogether discontinued, and that a south-running stream is still held in some reverence.

   • 1895, Longman's Magazine, page 643:

     What you do when anyone who is dying has to be cured, is to go and fetch unspoken water. You tak'a pitcher, and get some water that flows under a bridge ovver which living folk walk, and dead folk are borne.

   • 1898, Helen Wheeler Bassett, Frederick Starr, The International Folk-lore Congress of the World's Columbian Exposition, Chicago, July, 1893 ..., page 58:

     If the shilling stuck to the bottom of the cog, the animal was under the spell of a witch, but the unspoken water had taken effect, and a cure would follow. My informant has been sent on an errand of this kind.

   • 1922, James George Frazer, The Golden Bough: pt. IV, [...] 3d ed., rev. and enl. 1914, page 246:

     When the young couple return from the spring, they fill their mouths with the unspoken water and try to spirt it on each other inside the door of the house.

   • 1924, Charles Stewart Black, The Scots Magazine, page 175:

     It is in connection with unspoken water. This name was given to "water from under a bridge over which the living pass and the dead are carried , brought in the dawn or twilight to the house of a sick person without the bearers speaking either in going or returning."

   • 2010, Geoff Holder, Guide to Mysterious Aberdeen, The History Press, →ISBN:

     The old lady also claimed to be the last woman in Torry to have cured a child using 'unspoken water'. The infant was wasting away and the mother was convinced it was a fairy changeling or had been otherwise cursed by the fairies.

   • 2013, Robert Crichton, The Camerons: A Novel, Sarah Crichton Books, →ISBN:

     Those would be the bottles of unspoken water he had heard about, water taken from beneath a bridge over which the living walk and the dead are carried, brought to the house at twilight or dawn without the bringer ever saying a word ...

Further reading

• 1927, Alexander Campbell (F. S. A. Scot), The Romance of the Highlands:

  There was also the unspoken water cure. This was water taken from particular wells and used in certain illnesses. It was drawn before sunrise, and brought without uttering a word, otherwise the spell would have been broken.

• 2019, Monika Szuba, Contemporary Scottish Poetry and the Natural World: Burnside, Jamie, Robertson and White, Edinburgh University Press, →ISBN, page 126:

  'Unspoken water' denotes 'running water taken from under a bridge (over which the living pass and the dead are carried) and collected in a vessel that should not be allowed to touch the ground'. The water is then used to cure a sick [person].