Even if you drew it off for cooking, it refused. That particular prohibition sits alongside a cluster of other reported qualities: the water cured sore limbs when rubbed on them, small stones gathered near the well were pressed against aching teeth, and the well was attended by two fish whose continued presence was understood as a condition of its power. The prophecy, recorded in the 1930s, was specific: if the fish ever escaped, the well would lose its virtue beneath Poulaphouca Lake. The lake arrived anyway, in the form of the reservoir created by the Poulaphouca hydroelectric scheme, and the well, situated roughly 600 metres west of Templeboodin Church in the townland of Lackan, was submerged along with much of the surrounding landscape.

The well was known as St Boden's Well, and its association with healing and ritual observance was well established before the flooding. Writing in 1906, Omurethi noted the curative uses of the water and the stones. The folklore manuscripts gathered by the Irish Folklore Commission's Schools Collection in the 1930s, a project in which schoolchildren across Ireland recorded local traditions from older community members, added further detail: offerings were left by those who came seeking cures, a lone whitethorn bush stood near the well, and there was a recognised prohibition against drawing the water for ordinary household use. That prohibition against domestic use, combined with the reported refusal of the water to boil, suggests a site where the boundary between the sacred and the practical was carefully maintained in local understanding. The whitethorn, or hawthorn, bush is a recurring feature of Irish holy wells, associated in folk belief with the threshold between the human world and the otherworld, and its solitary presence here fitted an established pattern of sacred landscape marking.

The well water is not entirely gone. It is reported to be pumped to a point above the reservoir, a quiet piece of continuity for a site that is otherwise inaccessible beneath the water.