That much is known. The details, for now, remain elusive, which is itself a quietly telling fact about how many of Ireland's sacred water sources exist, recorded but not yet fully described, known to local people long before they were known to any official register.

Holy wells are among the oldest continuously venerated sites in the Irish landscape. In many cases, pre-Christian associations with water spirits or healing deities were gradually absorbed into Christian practice, with wells being rededicated to saints and becoming the focus of annual pilgrimages known as patterns, from the Irish word "pátrún", meaning patron. Clare is particularly well supplied with such sites, the county's limestone geology producing springs and seeps that would have seemed, to earlier inhabitants, genuinely miraculous. The Mahonburgh well fits into this long tradition, though without further detail it is difficult to say which saint, if any, claimed it, or what rituals were historically observed there.