Ireland is a magical place.
I don't mean this in the way guidebooks do when they promise travelers an
idyllic vacation, one full of hikes in shockingly green valleys; evenings in
music-, dance-, and ale-filled pubs; and encounters with gracious, ebullient
people. Of course, travelers to Ireland will find these pleasures, but this
is not what I mean when I say that Ireland is a magical place.
And I don't mean that the fairies and giants, the talking greyhounds and the
enchanted eagles that fill Irish folk tales actually exist … though the lush
glens around Kenmare or the bald mountains of County Kerry would be just the
places to find such wonderful creatures.
Nor do I merely mean that Ireland - like other countries influenced by the
ancient Celtic people- has a history rich in Druidic and pagan spirituality,
a history in which rituals marking birth and death, transformation and
restoration, sustained generations. This approaches what I have in mind,
however. For Ireland's spiritual history is a living history. Scholars,
writers, storytellers, and spiritual practitioners bring these rituals and
beliefs to life for people around the world. Part of Ireland's magic
consists, then, in the continued, vibrant connection between the spiritual
beliefs of its people, past and present.
But I mean more than this. When I say that Ireland is a magical place, I mean
that the land itself helps make this connection possible. For thousands of
years, the inhabitants of Ireland have turned toward the earth to find
outlets for spiritual expression. They have looked earthward to gain not only
physical but also spiritual sustenance and rejuvenation. In return, the earth
has offered what it continues to offer today, namely the elements, physical
and metaphysical, necessary for cycles of growth, decay, and new growth. In
this sense, there are no parts of Ireland more magical than its sacred wells.
Driving slowly on a road only as wide as a cow path, I had no idea that the
walled field to my right contained anything but rain-drenched grass, though a
small handmade sign indicated the presence of an ancient monastic site.
Pulling over as best I could, I parked, squeezed between fence posts, and
made my way towards some bramble- and grass-covered mounds. Clearly, this was
an unexcavated site, and an uninspiring one at that. There were only a few
grey, lichen-encrusted stones visible, and it was impossible to determine
just what kind of buildings these stones once supported.
Turning to leave, I saw, some yards away, another circular-shaped mound, and
decided to take the brief detour on my way back to the car. Just as in the
adjacent area, a tangle of long grass and low branches covered what could
have been boundary walls, or the foundation of a small building; it was too
hard to tell. Here, however, something bright flashed in the grass, something
like a mirror or a pane of glass, flush with the ground.
Crouching down, I saw the sky's low-hanging clouds reflected in a round pool
of water about a foot in diameter and framed by a flat, hewn rock. At first I
thought this was some kind of sunken basin, full of accumulated rainwater.
After taking a closer look, though, I saw slight ripples in the water: this
was a well, apparently fed from an underground stream. And glinting up from
the bottom, among dark rocks and pale gravel, were bright, copper-colored
coins.
I had come across one of literally thousands of wells scattered across
Ireland, and the coins provided evidence that others had as well, either
deliberately, or, as in my case, by chance. Had hikers left the coins in
exchange for a cool drink? Had children tossed them in for luck? Had a
neighbor left them to secure the outcome of a wish, or perhaps a prayer? Had
a pilgrim left them as an offering to a local saint as thanks for divine
intercession? If any of these possibilities were true, then people were using
this well as had generations of local inhabitants. Likely, to those who
return to this well for refreshment of body or soul, it is considered sacred,
despite its now obscure and obscured location.
This well, unidentifiable to passing strangers like me but probably known to
locals as associated with a particular Christian saint-perhaps one of the
members of the ancient monastic community-is almost certainly much older than
the ruins currently surrounding it. Further east and along the southern coast
of Ireland, on a gently sloping ridge overlooking the sea, one finds a
similar spring adjacent to the Stone Age Drombeg Circle.
Referred to by locals as the Druid's Altar, this impressive collection of 13
surviving standing stones - built, given its orientation, to celebrate the
winter solstice - abuts the remains of two small huts. Here, one finds a
Neolithic kitchen site comprised of a stone cooking-pit next to an opening
leading to an underground stream. Archeologists surmise that, given such
evidence of ancient "accommodations," Drombeg Circle was a place of
regular ritualistic gathering. This water source, then, was probably used
both for sacred rites and to meet the more mundane needs of those who
gathered there, until the 5th century CE, to witness the winter solstice
sunset.
Was the small, unnamed well that I stumbled across similarly associated with
pre-Christian ritual? Excavation might help answer this question, since other
wells and springs, long since Christianized, have yielded pre-Christian
artifacts. In fact, it's often unnecessary to dig in order to find evidence
of pre-Christian influence at sacred wells. Consider, for example, St.
Brendan's Well, a small stone-framed underground spring remarkably similar to
my obscure, grass-covered well. Located in the important 12th century
monastic center of Cill Maolchéadair on the Dingle Peninsula, the well is
neighbor to what's taken to be an ancient sundial. A local guidebook recounts
that this stone had probably been recycled, even in the 12th century; quite
likely it once functioned as part of an ancient fertility rite. Another
nearby well dedicated to St. Brendan tops the peak of Mount Brandon, a
location where Iron Age people celebrated the beginning of the harvest, the
Celtic fire festival of Lughnasa. The well and its accompanying pillar stone
are thought to pre-date the 5th century Christian saint who, in late June, is
still venerated here.
Still other Christianized wells are located at sites long associated with
ancient kingship ritual, including the Doon Well in County Donegal. Many of
these thousands of wells are situated geographically - by a rocky outcrop, on
a mountain side, or where fresh water mixes with the sea - in a way that has
profound resonance with aspects of ancient Irish mythology and the Irish
Celtic tradition of locating cosmic power within the earth. Furthermore, many
are still found in close proximity to a tree - often a hawthorne,
whitethorne, or ash, or perhaps a rowan, oak, holly, or hazel. These trees
are all part of the Celtic tree calendar. Furthermore, they play significant
roles in Irish Celtic myths in which certain trees possess or confer specific
magical or healing properties, such as the power of divination, protection
from storms, or the guarding of the sacred gateway into the underground
Otherworld.
A further indication of the spiritual continuity that wells facilitate are
the numerous wells across the countryside dedicated to St. Brigid, a figure
from early Irish Christian history who likely never actually lived.
Associated with agriculture, especially cows, St. Brigid has her feast day on
February 1 - a day that is also known as Imbolc and is associated with the
Celtic fire goddess Brigid. Historians commonly agree that the goddess Brigid
became St. Brigid as Christianity swept across Ireland. Archeologists
indicate that some of the wells dedicated to St. Brigid are Celtic in origin
and were once sites of fertility rites or other kinds of pagan rituals.
This sort of evidence aside, perhaps the strongest evidence that the wells
and fresh water springs of Ireland unite the spirituality of its ancient and
modern people are the practices still carried out by those visiting the
wells. On holy days - typically the feast day of the saint associated with
the well or the local parish - pilgrims circumambulate clockwise, or do a set
number of "patterns," around the well while reciting particular
prayers. Often the pattern requires walking around a holy tree or a sacred
stone, or in and around other features of the site, such as a hill, stream,
or cave.
The patterns at some wells include pilgrims kissing, rubbing, scratching, or
marking stones located at the site; lying on or passing their bodies through
specific features of the site; and bathing in and drinking the water.
Pilgrims often add small stones to piles left by others, or they leave behind
coins, holy metals, pictures, written prayers, pins, crosses, keys, rosaries,
or statues as they finish their visits. At sites with holy trees, pilgrims
often tie white or red pieces of cloth, or pieces of clothing such as
scarves, baby bibs, or gloves, to branches. An accompanying prayer might
implore that, as the cloth disintegrates, the ailment afflicting the person
in whose name the cloth is left, and whom the cloth once touched, diminish as
well.
This final practice of leaving behind votive offerings is nowhere more
evident than at St. Brigid's Well in Liscannor, County Clare. Enclosed in a
small, narrow, low-ceilinged building with a single, gently curving interior
passageway, this well is situated on the side of a tree-covered rise near
Liscannor Bay. A freshwater stream emerges from the hill, and is caught in a
stone basin at the very end of the curved passage in the interior of the
dark, damp structure; a cup hangs on a chain in the basin for pilgrims to use
to drink the cold, clear water. Lining the walls are hundreds of objects left
by pilgrims: photographs, votive candles, prayer cards, statues, letters,
rosaries, crutches and prosthetics, clothing, books, children's toys, saint's
medals, hand-written prayers, and countless other personal belongings. The
damp has caused many of the objects to molder, leaving the visitor with a
haunting and sobering visual impression of the grief and hope expressed in
this space.
The general features of such behaviors at holy wells - such as the veneration
of stones, living trees, and small hills; the drinking of water; or the
leaving behind of red clothes thought to ward off evil - are clearly
incorporated into an explicitly Catholic religious context. However, they do
not necessarily reflect specifically Christian practices. Yet they do
resonate with features of Irish Celtic mythology and, hence, quite likely
reflect ritualistic practices of the early Irish people. In this ancient
Celtic context, small hills were associated with the fertile swelling of the
goddess, and breaks in the walls of mountains were regarded as doors to the
Otherworld. Trees, such as the hazel, were thought to contain feminine wisdom
and a branch of the hazel, according to legend, was made into a wand for the
earthly king as a sign of authority granted by the goddess. Wells and streams
were regarded as the symbolic meeting place, often the wedding site, of the
earthly king or chieftain and the otherworldly goddess. Drinking water from
such a sacred spring was thought to confer the wisdom of the goddess to the
drinker and, when the goddess was thought to be the spring itself, symbolized
a union of the spiritual and the physical worlds. It is not difficult to
recognize the traces of these ancient beliefs in the practices of present day
pilgrims and other visitors to Ireland's sacred wells.
When I cupped my hands and drank from the small well I discovered by chance
in an empty green pasture on Ireland's west coast, I did not fully realize
the spiritual legacy in which I was taking part. Countless hands had dipped
into the very same water, countless supplications had been whispered there,
and countless footsteps led away from the ancient spring. Like others before
me, I left the well refreshed, having been renewed by the power of the land,
grateful for having tasted the magic of Ireland.
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