That, at least, is what local accounts say, and whatever the explanation, the detail lodges in the mind. The well, known locally as Tobar Muire, meaning Mary's Well, is a modest thing physically: a natural spring enclosed by a drystone surround, its opening facing west, the stonework roofed with a lintel rather than corbelled or arched. Modern offerings have been left there, the kind of quiet devotional gesture that keeps a place like this alive across generations.

The 15th of August, the feast of the Assumption of Mary, was traditionally the day people came here. This pattern of visiting holy wells on a particular saint's day or Church feast, known as a "pattern" from the Irish word "patrún," was once widespread across Ireland, combining formal religious observance with communal gathering. At Tobar Muire the association with the Virgin Mary is embedded in the name itself, and the stories collected locally speak of cures obtained at the well, alongside the more unsettling image of candles seen moving into it at night. Whether those lights were attributed to the supernatural, to private acts of devotion in the dark, or simply to the kind of atmospheric memory that accumulates around such places over centuries, the accounts were vivid enough to be passed on.