Hunt tells that St Keyne came to the well about five hundred years before the Norman Conquest and gave its water a strange virtue: whichever of a newly married pair drank of it first would enjoy domestic sovereignty for ever after. The well lay in a thickly wooded valley with four trees of different kinds growing over it.
Hunt visited the well once and found a lady drinking from her thimble, arguing with her husband that the right to rule was hers. The husband said that he had had the first drink, as he had rushed ahead of his wife and sucked his dipped fingers. She argued that this was not drinking and, Hunt supposed, had the best of the argument for the rest of her life.
He quotes the antiquary Tonkin, who wrote that if the well kept its wondrous quality it would draw more visitors of both sexes than Bath or Tunbridge, and who noted that the trees had since been blown down and replaced by two oaks, an ash and an elm by Mr Rashleigh, on whose land it stood, so that the wonderful arch was destroyed. Hunt thought the loss of the original trees explained why the water had lost its power. He also prints the opening verses of Southey's ballad. Hunt adds that sitting in the stone seat on the tower of St Michael's Mount was said to confer the same mastery and had the same saint behind it.
Wikipedia gives the well as about 1 km south east of the village, with a small housing built over it in the 16th century and rebuilt in the 1930s. The belief is old, well attested in print since the 17th century, and light-hearted in tone. The pin is at the well.
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