On Ordnance Survey maps from 1841 to 1842 and again in 1898, the site appears as Tobernamolt, an anglicisation of the Irish Tobar na Molt, meaning the well of the wethers. Wethers are castrated male sheep, which is an unusual thing to name a holy well after, and the reason for it is bound up in a web of early Christian legend that connects three of the most significant saints of early medieval Ireland.

According to local tradition, the well sprang from the ground at the prayer of St Ita, a sixth-century abbess venerated across Munster, and the site is considered her burial place. The connection to wethers comes from a different story: when St Erc baptised the young St Brendan here, he was presented with three wethers as a gift, and the name stuck. A carved stone slab at the site depicts all three figures together, St Brendan, St Erc, and St Ita, anchoring the legends in something tangible. The small building and altar nearby carry their own history: tradition holds that Mass was celebrated here in secret during the Penal Laws, when Catholic worship was suppressed and outdoor or hidden sites took on the function of churches. One further legend adds a confrontational coda. A Protestant landlord is said to have removed the carved stone to Oakpark in Tralee, only for it to be miraculously restored to the well.

The well is visited on three specific Saturdays each year: the Saturday before May Day, the Saturday before 24 June, and the Saturday before 29 September. The devotional practice, known as doing the rounds, involves reciting three sets of three rosaries in a prescribed sequence, first around the grave, then the well and altar, and finally around all three together. The water is held to cure all ailments, and may be drunk, bathed in, or taken away. These rounds, combining ambulatory prayer with a fixed route between sacred points, are a form of penitential station, a practice with roots stretching back into early Irish Christianity.