Thousands of them survive, many still visited on pattern days tied to a local saint, others long forgotten beneath bramble and rushes. The well at Caherpeak, in County Galway, carries the name Cooan, almost certainly a corrupted or anglicised form of a saint's name, and it is this association that lifts it out of the ordinary. The naming of a well after a specific individual, however obscure that figure may have become, points to a very old layer of local devotion, one that often predates any written record and sometimes predates Christianity itself, with pre-Christian water veneration absorbed gradually into the calendar of saints.

Beyond its name and location, the documentary record for this particular well is thin. What can be said with reasonable confidence is that named holy wells in the west of Ireland frequently served as focal points for patterns, the communal gatherings, part religious observance and part social occasion, that were a central feature of rural Irish life well into the nineteenth century. The townland name Caherpeak is itself suggestive; caher derives from the Irish cathair, referring to a stone fort or enclosure, and such placename elements often indicate early medieval settlement in the vicinity. Whether Cooan's Well sits near the remains of any such structure is not recorded in available sources.