On a shelf of land above a deep ravine in the northern foothills of the Comeragh Mountains, a whitethorn bush stands draped in scraps of cloth, left by visitors over what may be many generations. This is a rag tree, a practice rooted in Irish folk tradition whereby strips of fabric, sometimes torn from clothing worn against an ailment, are tied to a branch near a holy well. The intention is that as the cloth slowly rots away, so too does the affliction it represents. The tree here at Knocklucas is a whitethorn, a species long considered sacred in Irish tradition and often found in association with holy wells and liminal places.

The bush sits just to the east of Tobar na Gréine, a holy well whose name translates from the Irish as the Well of the Sun. The site occupies a natural ledge on the western side of a ravine cut by a stream running south to north, and from this position it opens onto a wide view to the north-east, with Slievenamon, the mountain in south Tipperary long woven into mythology and folklore, rising prominently on the horizon. That alignment, a sun-named well oriented towards one of the most symbolically loaded hills in Munster, feels deliberate, though whether by ancient design or by the slow accretion of meaning onto a convenient landscape is difficult to say.