But this slight irregularity in the flat, low-lying land near the southern shore of Lough Melvin in County Leitrim marks the site of St Mogue's Well, a holy well that was once the focus of a pattern, the traditional Irish gathering of communal prayer and festivity held on a saint's feast day. The well lies around 150 metres to the north-east of a nearby church, close enough to suggest a long-established sacred landscape along this quiet stretch of lakeside ground.

The pattern here was observed on the 31st of January, the feast day associated with St Mogue, a figure also known as Aidan of Ferns, the sixth-century bishop and founder of the monastery at Ferns in County Wexford. His cult spread widely across Ireland and into parts of Scotland, and the dedication of wells and churches to him is found in several counties. Writing in the 1830s, the scholar and topographer John O'Donovan recorded that the pattern at Gubalaun was still being celebrated on that date, a detail preserved in O'Flanagan's 1929 compilation of O'Donovan's letters. By the time later researchers documented the site in the mid-twentieth century, the tradition had lapsed entirely, and it is no longer held.