Project helps preserve deep well of Clare culture

TOOTHACHES, headaches and a range of ailments of humans and animals have drawn pilgrims to Holy Wells for centuries, if not millennia, writes Fiona McGarry.

Across the length and breadth of Clare, people still leave offerings in the hope of spiritual comfort and special intercessions.

As well as the famous ‘Tooth Well’ at Gleninsheen in North Clare, where people leave toothbrushes and coins, there are 236 sites dedicated to saints and pagan figures dating to the Neolithic Age.

Now, thanks to the painstaking work of historians and authors Michael Houlihan and Tony Kirby and their teams, the location and lore of these sacred sites have been gathered and made available in a new online resource.

The two men have spent years carefully searching out the lesser-known and almost-lost wells, and those which are globally famous like St Brigid’s Well in Liscannor. Their tireless work has recovered “the apparently forgotten”. It has also created a springboard for the celebration and restoration of neglected sites around the county.

The online Holy Wells catalogue, supported by Clare Heritage Office, Clare Creative Ireland and The Heritage Council, was launched on St Brigid’s night before an online audience of more than 100 people.

Compere for the launch was Clare FM’s Paula Carroll, who expertly directed the contributions.

“Holy Wells are very special places,” Heritage Officer Congella Maguire told the online gathering.

“They’re very beautiful places. They’re not located by accident in the landscape. They’re often located as part of a suite of monuments and places in the landscape. They’re often in secluded places and remote locations, but in the past, this wasn’t always the case. They were in busy places where people came on pilgrimage, where people socialised and community gatherings occurred. They’re also very natural places, places with water, trees and stone. They revive us. They’re places of healing and of cures.”

Ms Maguire noted that as many as 20% of the wells documented are no longer visited.

“We wanted to locate them so we could protect them, but also so that we could work with local communities and bring them back into the memory of these communities and work with communities to make them more accessible,” she said.

She added that, of the 242 wells recorded on Clare’s list of National Monuments, five have not been found.

The project involved what Ms Maguire described as “many miles of walking, many days of talking and much research”.

“It was a labour of love for Michael and Tony. Tony was helped by Nick Geh and James Feeney took many wonderful, beautiful photographs.”

Retired pharmaceuticals expert, Michael Houlihan from Kilorglin, County Kerry, is now living in Quin, and was chief surveyor on the project.

“Already we’re getting notes to say there are more Holy Wells around the place,” he told the online gathering.

“Essentially, they are ubiquitous across County Clare. An awful lot of them had been present for hundreds of years, before they became Christian.

“For a long period, you had pre-Christian beliefs in Clare, then added Christian beliefs. They were contested spaces where both belief systems were operating without rancour.

“Another thing that people liked was the fact that they were autonomous. They weren’t controlled by the Church or the State and people were in charge of their own Holy Well.”

Michael, who has already published books on the wells of Clare and is currently writing one on the fairy folk of Ireland, outlined the rich history of Holy Wells.

“They go way, way back to the early Neolithic Period,” he said. “People have been visiting sacred springs for 4,000 years. They were particularly relevant in the Bronze Age, when there was huge numbers of deposits made to water.

“In the Iron Age, we all know about the ‘Bog Bodies’, so there’s always been this interaction between water and people. Come the 5th century, Christianity came in. Baptism became the important thing in wells. It put another layer on top of the belief system that was already there.

“In time, the Reformation came and the European Church had a greater influence on this county, but we still managed to maintain very, very important aspects of our own means of expression at Holy Wells.

“The Penal Laws in the 17th century were very painful for Irish people and people returned to the Holy Wells as a means to practice their religion.

“In the 18th and 19th centuries, you had a huge amount of what I would call ‘Irish faith practices’ coming to the fore.

“After The Famine, the chapel became the centre of Catholicism and in time, wells faded a little. In the 20th century, the engagement with Holy Wells was very strong in the ‘40s, an increase in the ‘50s, a dip in the ‘60s and a renewal in the ‘80s. You can be your own judge of where Holy Wells are today.”

Fascinatingly, the offerings made at Holy Wells range from the spiritual to the mundane.

“There’s a well where babies dummies are left behind by mothers trying to get a night’s sleep,” Michael said.

“At other sites, people leave lighters if they are trying to give up smoking. The Liscannor Holy Well is absolutely chock-a-block with votive offerings.”

The topic of “devotionalia” was also discussed by Tony Kirby, author, historian and guide. He noted that that the last ten to 15 years have seen a rise and rise in interest in Holy Wells.

“You go to Holy Wells for spiritual wellness or medical wellness, but under no circumstances can you just take, take, take,” he said.

“You must leave a sign of your gratitude and your reverence for the place and the saint. The offerings are a critical aspect of an interpretation of the wells in an audit.

“For example, the absence or presence of them, the sheer volume of them. The degree to which they are worn or dated, for which coins at Holy Wells can be critical indicators. Whether they are religious or secular in nature, or both.

“And, of course, whether these offerings were biodegradable – as they always were in the past – or not, as may happen now.

“At some wells, which have a high flux of people because they may be on tourist routes or walking trails and there’s casual deposition of plastic items, which some would argue are not in keeping with the true tradition.”

Mr Kirby outlined the density of Holy Wells in Clare.

“In the early 1840s, the density of wells was one to every 120 people,” he said.

“That means that Clare probably has the third greatest density of Holy Wells in the country.

“This archive is a major cultural achievement. Quite interestingly, it’s going to pose an immense challenge. A pattern is emerging that we’re physically losing some of these monuments and not only that, we’re losing knowledge about them with the passing of our elders.

“The diminishing of our material culture in the landscape and the oral history pertaining to them. This project is an achievement and a platform from where we can go out and perhaps restore our Holy Wells and document precious information from our elders.”

Sources for the project included Ordnance Survey maps and other historical maps; the 1930s Schools Folklore Collection; Lelia Doolan’s chapter on wells in The Book of the Burren; the work of Eddie Lenihan; Tim Robinson; local historians, collectors and elders.

“What fascinates me about Holy Wells is the following: that they are the last monuments in the landscape, or one of the last along with unbaptised babies’ burial grounds, about which there is little knowledge,” Mr Kirby said.

“This generation of elders is the last with knowledge. We are the last generation who can record this knowledge from these elders.

“There is huge potential for localised oral history projects to save the treasured knowledge for posterity. The incredible folklorist Máire Mac Neill, who lived here in County Clare, said, on a very positive note, ‘The apparently forgotten can be recovered’.

“The magnitude of the achievement of this project… is that the apparently forgotten was, to a good degree, recovered and we could have a platform for recovering more.”

The Holy Wells of Clare resource, also supported by the Irish Community Archive Network (iCAN) and The National Museum of Ireland, is available here.