This year, 2024, marks the 1500th anniversary of the death of St Brigid, one of the three patron saints of Ireland, along with St Patrick and St Colmcille. Brigid is believed to have to have been born around 450AD in Faughart, County Louth but she is mainly associated with Kildare where she founded a religious […]
Cattle
Enticed by old photographs: three ladies encountered around Adare
The National Folklore Photographic Collection, available online at duchas.ie, is an invaluable source with a wide ranging variety of images including holy wells. County Limerick seems especially well documented and each of the three wells covered in this blog initially enticed me with their beautiful black and white photographs. I had high hopes for each […]
Enchantment & Petrification: St Feaghna’s Well, Bonane
This has to be one of the most extraordinary and unusual sites yet visited. Extraordinary in so many ways: from the setting, to the monuments to the folklore. Apologies for the length of this post but I was immersed and enchanted! Veering off the N71 from Glengarriff to Kenmare, you encounter a myriad of tiny […]
Some Favourite Wells of 2018
It’s been a good year for well hunting, worthy of a quick round up of some of my favourite sites. I reckon I have visited around 150 or so holy wells in the last twelve months, all unique and all in different states of preservation, activity and care. Although most wells are to be found […]
On Wells 2: the Water & the Cure
The most significant thing about a holy well is of course the water. Not all wells are wells though, they can be springs, lakes, scoops in rock, ponds, hollows in trees or part of a stream. And not all wells now contain water – 37 holy wells visited were dry. Hopefully a few of those […]
Old Friends Revisited
A final trip into the Gaeltacht Mhúscraí was required to find three unvisited wells. We intended to stay in the area for three days, Himself walking the Slí Muscrai Gaeltacht. I also had a motley quartet in my sights around Newtownshandrum. But we were slightly thwarted by the weather: no, not torrential rain or floods or […]