According to local tradition recorded by folklorist Caoimhín Ó Danachair, Lady's Well relocated itself across a river after someone profaned it by washing clothes in the water, and only the prayers of a holy priest brought it back. That kind of active, almost temperamental sanctity is not unusual among Irish holy wells, but it gives this one a particular character. So does the warning attached to the trout that lived in its depths: a man who caught the fish later died in a lunatic asylum.

The well appears on the Ordnance Survey map of 1840 under the name Lady's Well, and the accompanying Ordnance Survey Name Books note that it was believed to possess healing virtues and that a pattern was held there each 15th of August. A pattern, in Irish folk religious practice, is a communal gathering at a sacred site on a saint's feast day or other significant date, typically involving prayers, rounds (a prescribed circuit walked or knelt around the site while reciting prayers), and sometimes music or assembly. The Skagh pattern drew people from a wide area, according to the Name Books, but was discontinued around 1880. What persisted was the date itself. Ó Danachair, writing in 1955, noted that the 15th of August remained a day of devotion, with the well decorated with statues, flowers, and lighted candles. The water was said specifically to cure sore eyes, and rounds continued to be made at other times of year as well. Two large boulders near the site were pointed out as the original location of the well, bearing what are described as the marks of Our Lady's hands.

The well itself is now enclosed in a concrete tank that overflows into a basin, a functional if unremarkable structure that houses what was once a more open and presumably less tidy source. A photograph taken by Ó Danachair in 1954, held in the National Folklore Collection at UCD and accessible through the Dúchas archive at duchas.ie, gives a sense of the site as it appeared in the mid-twentieth century. The 15th of August, the feast of the Assumption of Mary, remains the most significant date to visit if you want to see the well as a living devotional site rather than simply an archaeological curiosity. The two boulders are worth seeking out, as is the question of where exactly the river runs in relation to the current tank.