That bare fact is, for now, almost all that the formal record yields, and there is something faintly appropriate about that. Holy wells, known in Irish as toibreacha beannaithe, occupy a peculiar space in the Irish landscape: older than Christianity in origin, absorbed into it gradually, and still occasionally visited with a reverence that resists easy categorisation. They are among the most numerous and least formally documented monument types in the country, scattered across almost every parish, and easily overlooked.

The Drumellihy well sits in a part of Clare that carries the usual deep layering of pre-Christian and early medieval activity common to the west of Ireland. Holy wells were typically associated with a patron saint and visited on a specific feast day, a practice known as a pattern, from the Irish word for patron. Offerings of cloth, coins, or small personal objects were left at the water's edge, and prayers or rounds, a set number of circuits walked around the well in a prescribed direction, were performed. Whether this particular well retained an active pattern tradition into recent centuries, and which saint, if any, claimed it, is not currently documented in available sources.