By The Landlord
"I could give you no advice but this: to go into yourself and to explore the depths where your life wells forth." – Rainer Maria Rilke
"Defend me, therefore, common sense, say
From reveries so airy, from the toil
Of dropping buckets into empty wells,
And growing old in drawing nothing up.” – William Cowper
"Want to know a secret?
Promise not to tell?
We are standing by a wishing well
Make a wish into the well
That's all you have to do
And if you hear it echoing
Your wish will soon come true." – Snow White & The Seven Dwarfs
They have been a key survival source throughout our history, but what do they mean now in a modern world where water is luckily on tap? In any town or village they always seem to elicit the same response. First, peer in to seek your reflection. Then whoop or whistle to create an echo. And finally, to see how deep they might be, or to follow tradition, throw coins or other objects into them and make a splash. Arguably then, wells capture human history in a nutshell - survival, technology, superstition, narcissism, and eventually, destruction. All's not well that ends well …
Nevertheless, whether you perceive them as purely functional, or ancient man-made entry points into some scary watery otherworld underworld, or some massive musical instrument blow-hole to create strange sounds, wells are a surprisingly potent source of inspiration for song lyrics, whether used literally or metaphorically.
Actual wells of course might be the first way to water your selections, but in theory the verb, to well, as in well up with emotion might also come into play, as well as many common phrases - poison the well, draw from the well, the well running dry, wishing wells, as well as other associations - holy wells to oil wells. They variously represent everything from hope and a source of life-giving to a history of greed, exploitation, and even death.
Is there anything more nightmarish than the idea of falling down a well? Cue many a plot twist, movie and song …
But in a more positive light, the entire song topic process here at the Bar feels very much like dipping into some metaphorical, magical well. Each week I load up a bucket with some introductory ideas, lower it down and, lo and behold, out comes a well-spring of songs from what appears to be a bottomless pit of wonderful surprises and golden musical liquidity.
But first up, the most important question is, did Lassie really rescue Timmy after he fell down the well? Well, indeed ... not exactly. In episode 24 of a grand total of 324 of that long-running TV series first broadcast in 1954, in one the titled "The Well", men in suits and ties from the water company discover an old well on Gramps Miller's farm, and commandeer it for their greedy exploitation after a dodgy land sale deal. One of them erects a no-trespass signpost. Young chubby-cheeked Jeff, who is replaced by Timmy in a later iteration, spies on them from behind a rock, and when he protests, the man shouts back, and tells Jeff and Lassie to skedaddle. In response, barking, running, jumping, Lassie actually pushes a man down the well! Ooh! Bad Lassie! How can that be? Well, it's all here at 15.30.
Of course at Jeff's request, Lassie then takes a rescue note back to Gramps who dutifully stumbles up the hill with a rescue rope. But, drum roll ... no Timmy, or indeed Jeff, ever fell down the well in a Lassie episode. That's just a comedy myth.
Lassie does however make many other rescues, such as episode 140, "The Crow", where the young Timmy is now Lassie's new best friend and owner. In this one Uncle Petrie gets so annoyed at crows eating seeds on his farmer's field he doesn't look where he's going and falls down an old mine hole, which to be fair, is very wet, so a bit well-like, and Lassie, without anyone's help, rescues him by using not only her brain, but her teeth, lowering an even wetter water-spouting hosepipe into the hole for him to use as a climbing rope. Clever Lassie!
Does anyone else fall down a well? In the 1970 full-length TV film, Well of Love, Lassie actually falls down a well herself. Poor Lassie! But of course she escapes. Clever Lassie! All's well that ends well, eh?
Phew! Glad to clear that up. It's vitally important stuff. We're out of the well again, but how else can we get back in?
A well might well be more than just a source of water. It's defined as an excavation or structure created in the ground by digging, driving, or drilling to access liquid resources. That's most often water, but of course it might also be oil, which is a whole kettle of other oily fish. Oil wells have very different associations, one that has literally driven the history of America and the world at large.
As usual, I'm trying to resist the temptation to poison the imaginative well of readers' potential nominations by referring here to any particular songs about wells, and there are more than you'd imagine, especially on the wishing side of things, not to mention those of water or oil, so here's some parallel media to help bring forth inspiration.
Perhaps among the most powerful dramatisations of oil wells and what they do to people is Paul Thomas Anderson's 2007 film There Will Be Blood, loosely based on the 1927 novel Oil! by Upton Sinclair. It stars Daniel Day-Lewis as the ruthlessly obsessive Daniel Plainview, a silver miner-turned-oilman who will stop at nothing to get this oil well working.
Water is also a large source of conflict and exploitation in the past and most certainly in the present and future. Marcel Pagnol's two-part novel L'Eau des collines (Jean de Florette and Manon des Sources) was famously made into two films, a tale of greed, love and revenge centred around a well spring that provides irrigation to a village in Provence.
Wells are a testament to human endurance and technology. Whether hand-dug or drilled, wells then come in all shapes and sizes from a basic hole in the ground to some grand stone building, something from which farms, villages, towns, cities and empires might be spring. So perhaps song suggestions might mention particular wells or places on which they are based.
Hand dug wells are an incredible human achievement. The traditional type with a water pulley system could have been originated in Ancient China. Here's a model of one excavated from a tomb of the Han Dynasty (202 BC - 220 AD) period.
Ancient Chinese well design
But the deepest in the world is thought to be Woodingdean Water Well near Brighton at 390 metres (1,280 ft) deep, created to provided water for a workhouse, and it was dug over a period of four years from 1858 to 1862.
Into the vortex: the world’s deepest hand-dug water well at Woodingdean near Brighton
The self-titled biggest water well in the world is the imaginatively titled Big Well in Greensburg, Kansas, where visitors can descend an illuminated stairway to the bottom.
Big Well staircase in Greensburg
It's a whopping 109 feet (33 m) deep and 32 feet (9.8 m) in diameter, but The Well of Joseph in the Cairo Citadel, at 280 feet (85 m) deep and the Pozzo di S. Patrizio (St. Patrick's Well) built in 1527 in Orvieto, Italy, at 61 metres (200 ft) deep by 13 metres (43 ft) wide are both technically larger.
Deeply illuminating: Pozzo di S. Patrizio in Orvetio
There are many more around the world, and of course in some countries wells remain a vital source of water. I recently discovered an old well in the woodland area my local park. I'll post a photo of it later.
So to finish, let's set things off with some wishful thinking in these troubled times, harking back to a film from 1937 with Disney's first great masterpiece, Snow White and The Seven Dwarfs, with music by Frank Churchill, lyrics by Larry Morey and the voices Adriana Caselotti and Harry Stockwell:
So then, I'm delighted to reveal that this week's well master, helping turn the handle to source and sort your well-inspired songs, is the strong and highly discerning George Boyland! Please pour your suggestions into the comments section by last orders on Monday 11pm British Summer Time, for playlists published next week. It's more than a wish ...
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