Toberbreanal, in Ellagh Beg in County Mayo, offers none of that reassurance. It sits at the base of a steep-sided stream gully, enclosed by hazel and blackthorn, in a hollow that feels genuinely tucked away from the surrounding landscape. The well itself is a rectangular stone-lined pit, roughly 1.1 metres by 1.4 metres and about a metre deep, its vertical walls now largely given over to moss. At the northwest end, an opening in the stonework leads to two shallow steps descending to the water, a small but deliberate piece of construction that speaks to generations of deliberate use.

The well was named on Ordnance Survey maps at the six-inch scale in both 1838 and 1922, which tells us it was well enough established by the early nineteenth century to be worth recording, and that its identity had not slipped from local memory in the decades that followed. The name Toberbreanal combines the Irish tobar, meaning well, with a second element that likely carries a personal or dedicatory name, though the exact origin of "Breanal" is not fully clear. Directly to the northeast of the well stands a penitential cairn, a low mound of stones accumulated through acts of devotion, typically built up by pilgrims who added a stone with each circuit or prayer completed. The pairing of well and cairn is a recognisable pattern in Irish pilgrimage tradition, and their proximity here suggests this was once a site of some local religious significance, even if no pattern or pattern day is now recorded for it.