Bishop Hugh's Well (Tober Aidan), Tonyowen, Co. Westmeath

A thorn tree leans over the water, its branches hung with rags and small votive offerings left by visitors over generations. Coins glint in the bed of the pool below. This is Tobar Aidan, known locally as Bishop Hugh's Well, and it has been drawing people from some distance for a very long time.

The folklore attached to the well was recorded in the late 1930s as part of a national schools collection, set down by pupils at Finnea National School. The story told is that Bishop Hughes was travelling to attend a sick call in the mountains when he lost the key to the tabernacle, the locked box in which the Eucharist is reserved in Catholic practice. He searched without success, prayed through the night, and found the key at daybreak. When he blessed the spot in gratitude, a spring rose from the ground. He is said to have promised that anyone who drank the water in faith would find relief from suffering. The well appears on every edition of the Ordnance Survey six-inch maps, which suggests it was a recognised landmark well before the folklore was formally written down.

The well sits roughly 230 metres to the south-east of Foyran Church and its adjoining graveyard, and the two sites are visible from one another across the low ground. The stream that flows westward out of the spring, the scattered stonework around its edge, and the offerings on the thorn tree all suggest a place that has been tended, quietly and consistently, without much fanfare.