Today I ran across a reference to water witching and was reminded of this picture of Dad demonstrating to me how he could do it. He'd say go cut a willow switch or any green twig and I'll show you how. When he'd grab the ends of the "y" and hold them tightly he would walk slowly around until the twigs reacted. It was something to see how they would twist in his tightly clenched fists, so much so that he could hardly hang on. Then whenever I'd try - nothing. I did not have the gift. The book I read today told me why: according to one of the cited sources the ability can only be passed down from a father to a daughter or a mother to a son. It crosses genders in its path through the generations, therefore I could never inherit Dad's gift of witching. Some people don't believe in such things, but a lot of wells have been located prior to digging through this method. In another type a ring on a string held over a half-full glass of water would start hitting the edge of the glass when over a vein of water, and the number of times it hits the glass is the number of feet to dig down. Another style consists of holding two pieces of wire bent in a "L" shape and holding them in front of you; then when the wires crossed you were over the vein. Believe it or not!
