Tobernamolt — Tubrid More

This is marked on the 1841-42 and 1898 OS maps as 'Tobernamolt' (Tobar na Molt - well of the wethers). Situation and Description: This well is approached by a path through the fields. This site consists of a small rectangular enclosure (KE021-115001-) which surrounds the well's small clear pool. There is a small building and an altar with a slab depicting three figures: St Brendan, St Erc and St Ita. The site is the reputed burial place of St Ita (KE021-115005-). Rounds/Offerings: The well is visited on the Saturdays before May Day, 24 June and 29 September. Three rounds of three rosaries are recited: the first around the 'grave', the second around the well and 'altar', and the third around the well, 'grave' and 'Altar' (KE021-115003-). The water is said to cure all ailments, whether drunk, bathed in or taken away. Legends: (a) The well sprang up at the prayer of St Ita. (b) St Ita is buried in the 'grave', (c) When St Erc baptised St Brendan at the well, he was presented with three wethers, hence the name, (d) Mass was said at the 'altar' in penal times, (e) A Protestant landlord carried away the stone to Oakpark, Tralee; it was miraculously restored to the well. Holy well and the pattern was described by Talbot-Crosbie (1908-12, 428-34) as follows; 'The enclosure contains three main objects of interest; the 'well,' the 'altar' and the 'grave.' The 'well' which occupies the western extremity is a more or less circular pool, some 15ft. in diameter and perhaps 4ft. deep, edged with undressed stones. It is fed from some bottom-spring, and has an out- flow to the west, led through a pipe, so that the pilgrim can 'pay his round' dry-shod. But the flow is slight, even after rain: there is hardly a perceptible current in the pool. In a dry season the water sinks considerably; though it is said never wholly to fail; nor is the auspicious trout which, by report, lives solitary, immortal, in those few gallons of clouded water, left to gasp out its life in the sun. From time to time a whiff of gas escapes through the bottom slime, near to the bathing steps, and a bevy of wannish bubbles ascending to the dull surface, erupts into the air. It will be gathered that Tobar na Molt answers but little to the ordinary idea of a well: apart from its size, its surface is not deep below the ground, and it has an unmistakable outflow; being, indeed, as I have said, the source of the short but romantic stream, the Tyshe. myself. The 'well' which I have preferred to describe first, comes last in the rounds of the pilgrim. It is circled once, watch-wise, i.e., with the right hand in- ward; the rosary being repeated, for the third time, the while. Triple submersion, after ' paying the rounds,' repeated in some instances on the next and even again on the following day, represents importunity in its drastic form; but the most of those who have recourse to Tobar na Molt do not bathe at all, but merely take a varying number of sips of the water. The three great days of pilgrimage to the well are (1) the Saturday before La Bealtaine. (2) the Saturday before Saint John's day, June 15, and (3) the Saturday before Lammas, August 1. This choice of days offers a tempting puzzle to the ingenious. St. Brendan of Clonfert's festival is May 16. Remarkable cures are undoubtedly effected from time to time, at the well. Some half-score crutches, one pair pathetically short, moss-grown and worm-eaten, are a rather forlorn witness to immediate restoration of powers. The 'altar' stands five paces above the well, and fronts approximately west. it. It is heaped with a sorry debris of votive offerings; broken and dissolving images, mouldering scapulars, rusty heads, a mug filled with rain-water, a child's boot, pencils, buttons, pins-pins of all sorts-the pitiful tokens of suffering poverty. The front of the 'altar' consists of a single block of lime- stone, elaborately carved. Towards the further end of the enclosure is the 'grave,' which, measuring some 18ft. in length and lying roughly north and south, consists of the broken turfy frame of what seems to have been a large burial- mound constructed of stones and earth; the roof having fallen in, perhaps as the supporting substances decayed. Outside the 'grave,' at the northern end, are three small circular holes, made about a foot from each other, in the thickness of the sod; each with a smooth stone as bottom. The stones are of slightly diverse tints and have been polished by the fingers of suffering pilgrims. who hope a benefit by rubbing these dies of stone, as well as by leaving pins upon them as 'pishogues': the rings of sod are stiff with rusted pins. Pilgrims are wont to kneel in the southern end of the bath-shaped interior, and here the bank has been scooped out, several hundredweights of soil having been removed by generations of sufferers who, taking home the clay, with the duck-weed and slime of the pool, believe they have a sovereign panacea for their plagues. I have had the opportunity of visiting Tobar na Molt on a day of pilgrimage, the Saturday before May Day. A stranger, more affecting spectacle I have never seen; nor can I forbear to supplement my paper by a short description. I found the road leading to the Well busy with pilgrims, some of whom had come a long distance by train, proceeding on foot, or by vehicle-on the June pilgrimage, by far the most popular of the three, there is, I am told, a constant stream of traffic along this road, beginning on the Friday nigh4+ and continuing until the Sunday morning. Drawn up by the road-side above the Well, a score or more of side-cars, pony-carts and ass-carts were waiting. Along the approach across the fields were posted numerous beggars, forming pickets at every gate-way-strong-limbed " tinker" women, baby at breast, abounding in the restless, wild-beast beauty of their class; ragged children, decrepid and blind men, all clamouring for alms and eager to reinforce with effectual prayers the devotions of the generous pilgrims, "Give me a copper, now, and may you get the benefit of the round." The reliance shown upon the virtue of a dole to these, for the most part, undeserving and dis- reputable people, was not the least remarkable feature of an occasion which, as well in its ideas as in its rites, seemed to belong to the fifteenth rather than to the twentieth century. But the scene framed by the well enclosure, the kneeling groups and the meandering files; the green and the brown shawled figures-most of the pilgrims were women, with earnest - O God, how earnest-faces, moving lips, and fingers busy with the rosary; the grave, bare-headed young men; the sundry individuals who struck at once the eye and the heart; a gaunt, white-haired man, his great height warped, and his wrinkles set in pain, paying his round with a grotesque, leaping gait; a slender, well-dressed young woman, with stern eyes and lips, and kneeling beside her, a little cripple girl with white, drawn face; a lusty cripple boy, his plump cheeks crimson with the effort of plying his crutches on the soft sward,-so many sufferers, some at the beginning, some at the end of a life of suffering, all so intense, so absorbed, their whole soul wrought and strained to the highest pitch of unmitigated, un- compromising faith, completing their rounds with a passionate eagerness that hardly brooked the restraint of twisted and shrivelled limbs, and kneeling in oblivious rapture of instant supplication before the " grave " and " altar "-and not a sound heard, not an articulate syllable from all those clamant souls, not a footfall as the filing sufferers made dusky, sinuous tracks upon the lush, vivid grass, and, moreover, heightening by contrast the ecstacy of the pilgrims, the mundane face of the brawny toll-collector posted at the entrance wicket all made a spectacle which no one could possibly see without emotion, and which no one having seen with emotion could ever possibly forget. Moreover, the throng of poor suffere