Tobermichael, an overgrown spring sitting in the marshy ground of Knightswood in County Westmeath, carries none of that. No patron, no pattern day, no votive offerings recorded. It is simply a spring with a name, quietly refusing the role that Irish tradition usually assigns to such places.

The name itself is the most substantial thing known about it. "Tobar" is the Irish word for well or spring, and the "Michael" element suggests some association, perhaps long since forgotten, with the archangel or a person of that name. It was recorded on the first edition Ordnance Survey six-inch map of 1837, annotated plainly as "Tobermichael", which tells us that whoever was gathering place-name information at the time considered it worth marking. Roughly fifty metres to the south-east lies a second named spring, Toberslauntia Well, suggesting this particular patch of wet Westmeath ground was once considered significant enough to warrant two distinct names on the landscape, even if the reasons behind both have largely dissolved.