Holy well, Murorgán, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
Holy Sites & Wells
At the base of the sea cliffs just south of Brandon Point on the Dingle Peninsula, there is a holy well that sits below the high tide line.
This is not a well in any conventional sense, a stone-capped structure set in a field or beside a country road, but a clear spring emerging from a crevice in the rock, submerged or washed over by the sea for part of every day. That it attracted pilgrims at all is remarkable; that it continued to do so across centuries is stranger still.
Known as Toberyline or Tobar Flainn, the well was traditionally visited on the 29th of June as part of a turas, a structured pattern of devotional movement between sacred sites, a practice common across Ireland in which pilgrims moved on foot between a sequence of stations, often reciting prayers at each stop. This particular turas linked Tobar Flainn with another site, Turrasyline, located around 500 metres to the southwest. The folklorist Caoimhín Ó Danachair recorded the well in 1960, describing the spring in the rock crevice in terms that made its precarious, tidal position plain. The Co. Kerry Field Club noted, separately, that the site was also visited on New Year's Day, suggesting more than one occasion in the devotional calendar held significance here.
The well is not easily reached. The cliff-base setting, and its position below the high tide level, means that access depends on both the state of the tide and the conditions of the sea. Anyone hoping to find it should approach the matter with care and local knowledge rather than confidence.