It is dry now, which makes it an odd sort of holy well, yet the dryness is part of its history rather than a sign of neglect. Holy wells in Ireland were traditionally venerated as sacred water sources associated with particular saints, often the focus of patterns, or seasonal gatherings for prayer and healing. This one, it seems, has been moved, displaced, and reconstituted at least once, carrying its identity with it even as the water eventually disappeared.

The story behind the well involves a transgression and a relocation. Local tradition holds that the well was originally sited in Ballydeloughy graveyard, but was moved after someone used it to wash clothes, an act considered a serious defilement of a sacred source. The antiquarian Grove White, writing between 1905 and 1925, recorded that a local informant described it as a resuscitation of an earlier well that had been filled in long ago near the old church. That earlier well, according to the same account, had the unusual property of holding water even through the driest summer. The current hollow in the sycamore root shows no such reliability, but the name and the local memory have persisted, attaching themselves to the new location beside the field where Ballydeloughy castle still stands to the east.