St John's Well

I was awake at 6am, holy wells buzzing round my mind and managed to stay in bed for another hour before imbibing a strong cup of coffee and reading through my holy well notes. The interview went very well (thank you for all your well wishes!) and lasted for an hour, with the odd advert in the middle! I think it may be available as a podcast shortly so I can bore  impress you with a link! Some nice feed back, the first email I had was someone in county Clare saying could I do the same thing there, and the second was when is the book coming out! Exhausting though, I was wrecked by 10am!
A bit more well work today - I don't seem to have taken any photos but this is a delightful illustration I've just come across as I am ploughing through the National Folklore Collection. This is the most amazing source - the Collection was started in the early 1930s and older members of the community were interviewed about their locality, and some of the questions were only holy wells. Later the Folklore Commission approached all the schools and asked the children to interview older people - again holy wells were one of the subjects, and this also provides a wealth of information. Some of the people interviewed were in their 80s and 90s so this transports you back to Famine times.
Here Jeremiah Desmond has interviewed Hannah Buckley in 1934 about her local well, St John's Well on top of Mushera Mór which includes this beautiful and very accurate drawing. When Himself and I climbed this mountain, the well is of course on the top, the weather was appalling - blog entry here - but as you can see the well has hardly changed. It's dedicated to St John, has a cure for warts and is good for cattle complaints. A foolish Protestant once mocked the well:
He had some whiskey in his pocket and he mixed some of the water of the holy Well with it. Then he began to mock the Well, and put all the things around his hat. He then went along the top of the mountain, but was not gone very far when he lost his senses. His friends took his gun from him. He then went mad and they had to tie him up. Before they reached their house the man had died. A few moments after he died he rotted away.
Anyway, other than all that excitement we have just watched the funeral of Prince Philip - rather dignified and moving with some sublime singing. I was a bit anxious for the coffin bearers as they had to deal with the minute's silence and the piper was rather wonderful. The Queen is looking very small and suddenly frail.