Help at hand

Caoimhín Ó Danachair's (Kevin Danaher) monograph, The Holy Wells of Co Limerick, appeared in the RSAI journal of 1955. To verify his close study of historic maps for the project, the noted antiquarian and folklorist visited no fewer than 151 wells in the county in the course of 1954. According to tradition or surviving usage, "pattern" days of special devotion had been observed at fifty-two of the wells, but that number had declined by the time of Danaher's survey to only about twenty, and larger, public gatherings at only four or five of these. 

Danaher expressly states that his study does not discuss the origin and development of the cult of springs and fountains or speculate on the survival of elements of pre-Christian beliefs; but it is believed that some of our wells were, indeed, the sites of earlier beliefs and customs. Many other wells though, as Danaher notes, became 'holy' only after churches were built in their vicinity.  

The woods of Curraghchase in West Limerick on the grounds of the old De Vere estate now offer many winding and well-maintained trails, even if some of the informal trails, once kept clear only by the dint of footfall, have been overlooked. Just to the east of the woods, near the head of a shallow valley, is a St. Brigid's well, one of twelve in the county. Over the wellspring itself the saint's white-painted devotional statue was housed in a stone-built, gabled niche in the early 1940s and the well area enclosed around with a wall, in which a rusted offerings box is stlll mounted. A trough without, though it is tempting to imagine it to have been purposed as a dabhach, or bath, for the bathing of ailing limbs, must be accepted for what it is (Danaher does): a practical re-use of the flowing spring water as a cattle trough. Memory prompts that the way in to the well was marked by one of those old and lovely die-cast, green-on-white finger posts, but that may be just fancy. Access is across sheep pasture and down into the woods.

There is also an interesting stone caher-like enclosure on the ridge at the head of the valley and, until some more recent commercial plantation, St. Brigid commanded a fine view across to the long north-south swathe of Curraghchase woodland. There is beside the well, as you would expect, an offerings tree or 'rag bush', bedecked with ribbons and strips of cloth, as is the custom. This visitor, one day in the late 1990s if memory serves, fingered them idly; they are just that – little ribbons and strips of cloth, nearly all blank and anonymous, except for one, which was read with a shock. It bore just three words: "Brigid, send help."

What desolate soul had written this SOS, this cry of last resort? This saint, whose origins, pagan or otherwise, are still contested among scholars, was still, no doubting it, for some the object of a fierce faith, generational and unquenchable.

St James has four wells in the county, and Kevin Danaher writes that it is likely that all four dedications are attributable to the medieval devotion to St James of Compostella. However, it is not the scallop shell of the Camino pilgrimage that is carved over the inscription at Nantenan, but that of a fish, according to tradition a symbol used by Christians in the first few centuries after Christ.

As Kevin Danaher also writes, pattern days were in some locations observed as public holidays when secular pastimes were added to devotional exercises at wells. Indeed, in 1797, the RC Archbishop of Cashel, Dr Bray, was moved to condemn pattern day practices in the diocese of Cashel and Emly (to which some parishes in Co. Limerick belong). Happily, here at Nantenan, in at least one Co. Limerick parish, Cappagh, the tradition of observances is still upheld. 

In any case, the mineral content of the waters in some traditional wells has been examined and found to be medicinally beneficial, if not quite in prescriptive concentrations. Surely, what harm can come of a visit?