Holy well, Loghill (Shanid By.), Co. Limerick
Co. Limerick |
Holy Sites & Wells
There is no well to see here, and that, in its own way, is the point.
On the north bank of the Glashanagark River near Loghill in County Limerick, a flat, marshy stretch of ground holds no visible surface trace of what was once a site of active devotion. Saint Colm Og's well has, to all appearances, vanished into the land itself, yet the folklore surrounding it suggests this disappearance was always part of the story.
Schoolchildren in Ballyhahill recorded a telling detail in the Schools' Collection, a 1930s nationwide project that gathered local knowledge through national school pupils: the well, they noted, was once situated up in a high field, but women had used it to wash clothes, and so it removed itself down into the glen as a rebuke. Whether that account reflects genuine communal memory of a spring that shifted course, or a moral explanation for a change nobody could otherwise explain, it lodged itself firmly in local tradition. The well was known, according to the folklorist Caoimhín Ó Danachair writing in 1955, as a cure for sore eyes, a specialisation common among Irish holy wells, many of which were associated with particular ailments. Ó Danachair noted that rounds were still being made at the time, though not often, and that offerings left behind included rags, coins, and small religious objects. The pattern of rounds involves walking a prescribed circuit around the well or nearby features while reciting prayers, a practice with pre-Christian roots that was absorbed into Catholic devotion over centuries. Photographs taken by Ó Danachair at the site in 1954 survive in the National Folklore Collection at UCD and can be viewed via the Dúchas archive online. The prescribed prayers, as recorded from the schoolchildren, were seven Our Fathers, seven Hail Marys, and seven Glorias, repeated seven times, followed by one Our Father and three Hail Marys said specifically in honour of the saint.
The site sits close to a graveyard, which is a common arrangement for holy wells in Ireland, the sacred and the funerary often occupying the same quiet margin of a townland. Given the marshy ground and the absence of any visible structure, a visitor should expect to find very little in the conventional sense. The well, if it persists at all, does so below the surface. The Dúchas archive, accessible at duchas.ie, holds both the folklore testimony and the 1954 photographs, and those records tell considerably more than the ground itself currently gives away.