Burial, Tubrid More, Co. Kerry

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Burial Sites

Burial, Tubrid More, Co. Kerry

A well that acquired its name from a gift of sheep, and that was supposedly stolen by a landlord only to find its way back on its own, is already unusual.

The site in Tubrid More, North Kerry, known on both the 1841-42 and 1898 Ordnance Survey maps as Tobernamolt, carries that name from the Irish Tobar na Molt, meaning the well of the wethers. A wether is a castrated male sheep, and the explanation for the curious name is folded into the site's layered local tradition: when St Erc baptised St Brendan at this well, he was presented with three wethers in return. The well itself, according to another strand of the same tradition, sprang into existence at the prayer of St Ita, the sixth-century abbess and one of the most venerated early Irish saints.

The site gathers around a small clear pool enclosed within a low rectangular enclosure. Beside it stands a small building and an altar bearing a carved slab depicting three figures: St Brendan, St Erc, and St Ita. The place is also identified as the reputed burial site of St Ita herself, which gives the location its formal classification as a burial. During the Penal Laws, when Catholic worship was suppressed in Ireland, Mass was said openly at neither church nor chapel but at outdoor Mass rocks; the altar here is remembered as one such site. The account of the stolen stone adds a further layer: a Protestant landlord is said to have removed it to Oakpark in Tralee, after which it was, by local reckoning, miraculously restored to the well.

The well is reached by a path through the fields rather than any formal entrance, which gives the approach a sense of practical, unhurried arrival. The altar slab with its three carved figures is worth looking at closely once there, as the grouping of Brendan, Erc, and Ita in a single image draws together the web of associations that have accumulated at this one small pool across several centuries.

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