Holy well, Ballinlough, Co. Limerick

Co. Limerick |

Holy Sites & Wells

Holy well, Ballinlough, Co. Limerick

A well that moves when it is offended is not what most people expect from the Irish countryside, but that is precisely the reputation attached to this modest spring near Kilteely in County Limerick.

According to folklore recorded from pupils at Hospital National School, St Bridget's Well relocated itself after a child was washed in it, an act apparently considered an affront to its sanctity. The same source credits it with curing styes, those small and unglamorous infections of the eyelid that nonetheless loom large in the folk medicine of holy wells across Ireland. It appears on no maps, and by the mid-twentieth century it had already fallen into a state of some neglect, its edges broken up by cattle trampling freely around it.

The well was first noted in print by O'Kelly in the North Munster Antiquarian Journal in 1944, and a more detailed account was published by Caoimhín Ó Danachair in 1955. Ó Danachair, who was also a collector and photographer for the Irish Folklore Commission, documented the site in photographs in 1954, images now held by the National Folklore Collection at UCD and accessible through the Dúchas archive. His notes record that devotion to the well had lapsed by the time he encountered it, though there had been a revival of sorts on St Bridget's Day in 1940. What the original ritual involved is not known. The well's founding legend follows a pattern found at other Brigid-associated sites: the saint was refused a drink of water, struck the ground, and a spring rose up in answer.

The well sits to the west of Kilteely village, though its exact location requires some local knowledge given that it features on no published maps. Because it is in open farmland and has historically suffered from cattle damage, visitors should expect a rough and unimproved setting rather than a maintained heritage site. The first day of February, St Bridget's Day, is the obvious time to visit if you want to follow the calendar the 1940 revival observed, though the well carries its associations quietly enough at any season. The Dúchas photographs from 1954 are worth consulting beforehand, both as a guide to what to look for and as a record of how the site appeared when Ó Danachair found it more than seventy years ago.

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