"...protected by a drystone wellhouse". Hmm. I can't recall ever having seen that very nice-sounding word "wellhouse" before. "Drystone" either. What are the common features of these kinds of wells? Do they vary a great deal? Is some set of features necessary for a small body of water to qualify as a proper well? Have they all been dug, or more commonly began as exposed pools or streams that had things like drystone wellhouses built to protect and identify them? Inquiring minds...
I suppose if this were a book (or one day becomes a book) there should be an 'Intro to Irish Wells' section that illuminates some of these sorts of mysteries for we modern wretches who've never constructed (or even visited) such a well.
You've never heard of drystone!? Perhaps it is not a thing in the Americas. Drystone walls are walls constructed from stone with no cement. In the past they were the most common kind of fencing in areas like the Burren where it wasn't possible to grow hedges. You'll see them in many parts of northern England too. Drystone walling is an art, and is deeply localised. Different regions have different styles and methods of drystone. I'm sure there are books and websites dedicated to that alone.
I mentioned wellhouses in my introductory article. Most wells have a little 'house' built over them for protection, though not all.
Now that you're living in Ireland I recommend you seek out a few wells. It's a great way to tap into the real pulse of the country. Also it's a nice day out.
If so, they didn't seem to make it to the Bronx. 😂 Plenty of red brick/concrete walls there though. And lots of Paddies too, back in the day. Maybe not up to code in New York City? I dunno.
There are still many original stone walls up in Westchester County, NY, (a county just north of NYC) where I grew up and went to college. As I recall the first settlers originally built wooden fences, since the forests were so lush and wood was plentiful compared to the old country. But eventually they returned to stone as being more enduring. Still I hadn't ever heard the term 'drystone'. Though that's exactly what these are.
should have read this before i made my now superfluous comment about Kentucky stonewall. :)
i'll take my moment then to share that i saw this video some 1/2 dozen years ago because we were trying to build an ancient byzantine style stone chapel in the 'new world', nowheresville, without money.
Along paths I often walk in the Lexington (Massachusetts) conservation land close to where I live, there are multilayered stones; I guess similar to the stone walls you speak of. The area is now forest, but in Colonial times, I believe the land was arable.
Yesterday, I heard a talk on the Water Walkers, female American Indians, who were walking around various bodies of water, including the Great Lakes, to bless them and draw awareness for the need to protect them. Perhaps your project runs a parallel course?
Water lines in Nature seem to me, similar to acupuncture meridians in our body. (you can trace them with a pendulum or forked sticks). The bogs are always interesting places as they allow the water to collect, 'reconnect', sun itself and spread out lazily, before disappearing as water is want to do; in fact its' pulsating and curious nature allows it to regulate its own flow between springs and ocean; it adores change and contact.
So yes I think you are right Paul, the watercourses will outlast modernity as their intelligence is part of the abundant rituals of the elements. We can learn much about shapeshifting; a good reason as any for a prayer of gratitude at a source, as we too are basically made of water (and calcium like the beautiful mountain in this photo.) Thanks so much.
I just took out my Oxford English Dictionary to check on the history of the word "coin".
I had the idea, maybe not all that far fetched, that it could be in relation to the word "koina" in Greek, which refers to the Greek vernacular language used all over the Roman Empire (I think... who knows where the words come from when they come from way back).
"Coin" (wedge/corner/angle, is the corner stone on a wall or building.
In reference to money, what emerges is the fact that money is IM-PRESSED with the stamp of someone with authority.
In French, I have done an etymological history of the verb "press", as in "the press", for example, and just recently realized that the word "EX-PRESS" which can be compared to the word "IM-PRESS" 'also enters into this genealogy. All of the words in relation to "press" suppose the use of (physical) force to modify.
This story is great, and I'm glad there are 48 more of them where that came from.
By the way, I read *Savage Gods* last week, and I think I got a better understanding of the ambivalence you wrote about in "Inis Cealtra". I'm a writer, so I thought I saw what you meant, but I didn't realize it was that bad. Reading it, I was glad that I knew what happened to you next, because otherwise I would have felt worried. One thought I had was that the opposite of words as savage gods is Leonard Cohen's lyric: "There's a blaze of light in every word." Also, are you familiar with the Catholic writer Walker Percy? The same thing happened to his father, and that really drove his spiritual search; it's also a significant theme in two of his novels.
If only the offerings in partiicular could talk! I remember as a very small child (back in the 1940s/ early 1050s) being brought to a religious site ( not a well) back in my Italian homeland. The offerings were sometimes very moving, always intriguing, sometimes frightening to me. Especially anything referencing a child for it probably meant the child was either ill or dead. Ways to cope in this vale of tears which is life.
I can see why sites like this were seen as holy, or maybe to earlier people, magical.
To be wandering across a mountain and then to suddenly find a stream of fresh water appearing out of the earth, and then immediately disappearing again?
Sounds magical even now! And would be a true blessing if you were in need of a drink!
The act of leaving a personal item is touching to me, seems alot more personal. I make "offerings" in the form of money to my Church but its not the same. My pastor wouldnt know what to do if I dropped an old shoe in the plate. God wants whats in our heart not whats in our pocket.
That interests me too. After I read this I was thinking "Where would I leave such an offering, and what would I leave?" Connecting to places, or God, like that is just off my radar. I've never had much exposure with that practice or people who do it and where I have has been in indigenous, non-Christian contexts. I don't dismiss it as superstitious or irrational. It just feels foreign to a mind that may be oversaturated with modernity. But intriguing nonetheless.
About 25 years ago my sister and I were driving to a town in a rural county where she had recently bought a house. While approaching the town by a side road, we drove by a marker for a shrine, and immediately turned around to check it out. The shrine was located about a hundred yards off the road and was built to commemorate the spot where the first mass was said in the county in the 1850s. I think that there is something special about stumbling across a shrine or cross set out of the way someplace, off the beaten path. There is a sense of wonder that anyone would have taken the trouble to do it in the first place, apparently unmindful and unperturbed that it would rarely be seen by anyone. Therein lies the charm. This happened in California, where the chances of coming across such markers are few. Mores the pity. The discovery of this little shrine certainly enlivened our day.
I agree. The other great thing is that there is no time limit on when or where such things can be created. Which means they could be created by us, now.
I love that so many of the offerings at holy wells and shrines are a testimony to that person being cured of whatever malady made it necessary to own that item. Someone went home not needing their glasses anymore that day. Similarly, there is a wall with racks of unnecessary crutches at St. Joseph's Oratory Basilica in Montreal, Canada.
I loved this well story. It made me think that faith runs underground where we least suspect it. And always has done. Today I went to Harvest Festival at a Surrey church in the prosperous Home Counties less than an hour from central London. Pretty cosmopolitain. Yet this place had a churchyard full of ancient yews, all decorated with brightly coloured ribbons and other offerings. It's an 11th century church with a mural of the ladder between heaven and hell created by an artistically inclined monk around 1200. You can feel that spirit still in the place. It's like a stream of faith runs through this spot and has done for centuries. I love that. Looking forward to the next well and loving the series.
The prayers to God float up to heaven and by the rule of opposite reaction the coins of man float down to the sea. It's not only good theology it's good physics :-)
This is a wonderful series Paul.
Did you sample the water? Is it potable?
I think I did. Some wells, especially those fed by streams on mountains, can be drunk from. Others are not worth risking!
Oh if that well could talk! If those offerings could talk. I love the mythology and history behind all these well series
Thank you Paul
"...protected by a drystone wellhouse". Hmm. I can't recall ever having seen that very nice-sounding word "wellhouse" before. "Drystone" either. What are the common features of these kinds of wells? Do they vary a great deal? Is some set of features necessary for a small body of water to qualify as a proper well? Have they all been dug, or more commonly began as exposed pools or streams that had things like drystone wellhouses built to protect and identify them? Inquiring minds...
I suppose if this were a book (or one day becomes a book) there should be an 'Intro to Irish Wells' section that illuminates some of these sorts of mysteries for we modern wretches who've never constructed (or even visited) such a well.
You've never heard of drystone!? Perhaps it is not a thing in the Americas. Drystone walls are walls constructed from stone with no cement. In the past they were the most common kind of fencing in areas like the Burren where it wasn't possible to grow hedges. You'll see them in many parts of northern England too. Drystone walling is an art, and is deeply localised. Different regions have different styles and methods of drystone. I'm sure there are books and websites dedicated to that alone.
I mentioned wellhouses in my introductory article. Most wells have a little 'house' built over them for protection, though not all.
Now that you're living in Ireland I recommend you seek out a few wells. It's a great way to tap into the real pulse of the country. Also it's a nice day out.
Drystone is a common term where stone walls were common like Kentucky
Interesting. Perhaps the traditions were imported from Europe.
If so, they didn't seem to make it to the Bronx. 😂 Plenty of red brick/concrete walls there though. And lots of Paddies too, back in the day. Maybe not up to code in New York City? I dunno.
There are still many original stone walls up in Westchester County, NY, (a county just north of NYC) where I grew up and went to college. As I recall the first settlers originally built wooden fences, since the forests were so lush and wood was plentiful compared to the old country. But eventually they returned to stone as being more enduring. Still I hadn't ever heard the term 'drystone'. Though that's exactly what these are.
For drystone nerds, we present the different regional wall styles of Britain:
https://conservationhandbooks.com/dry-stone-walling/walls-in-the-landscape/characteristic-regional-walls/
True, Jack. There are indeed 'drystone' walls in NY, where I also grew up. They have a long history here in the UK.
There are still some expert drystone wallers in Yorkshire, but sadly it's a dying art.
o, sorry.
should have read this before i made my now superfluous comment about Kentucky stonewall. :)
i'll take my moment then to share that i saw this video some 1/2 dozen years ago because we were trying to build an ancient byzantine style stone chapel in the 'new world', nowheresville, without money.
st john in the wilderness:
https://newworldbyzantine.com/sacred/saint-john-in-the-wilderness-chapel/
https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5e78f10494c7b26bc99e2fd2/t/5e8e37f41e634257048eb242/1586378743992/64.REFLECTING_THE_HEAVENLY_JERUSALEM.pdf
[sorry I forget how to hyperlink in comments]
(we didn't succeed. btw. nobody in bc, here, knows how to build this anymore. and nobody has faith to work for little money and years)
very unamerican of us. by american i mean successfully secular christian. modern. i mean us.
good people. nice people.
i'm talking american culture...=heresy.
-mb
Along paths I often walk in the Lexington (Massachusetts) conservation land close to where I live, there are multilayered stones; I guess similar to the stone walls you speak of. The area is now forest, but in Colonial times, I believe the land was arable.
Sunday viewing for those with time on their hands:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=igiZcimXEJU&ab_channel=BurrenbeoTrust
In the farmland of the Midwest you have spring houses. https://www.tripadvisor.com/LocationPhotoDirectLink-g59828-d1090288-i457197489-Governor_Dodge_State_Park-Dodgeville_Wisconsin.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otter_Spring_House Here is a sacred spring in Wisconsin
It's in America
https://youtu.be/wPfZNTSuY7E?si=jARAiqcnYI9p7LNw
(everything is in America, niche).
Though of course it's not really American, anymore.
Nothing real is American anymore, and Amerca's falsehood is global now (apex of Modernity?):
https://youtu.be/qdYCDCpOvQo?si=u65gG7cFmMY444V9
This well touched my heart.
and makes me reflect on the depths and meaning of "blessing" that that holy water, and those offerings, wash out to sea, which touches the Americas.
*heart*
-MB
Yesterday, I heard a talk on the Water Walkers, female American Indians, who were walking around various bodies of water, including the Great Lakes, to bless them and draw awareness for the need to protect them. Perhaps your project runs a parallel course?
Intriguing! I suspect that holy wells and watercourses will long outlast modernity.
I hope so.
One can only hope, Paul, since a lot of modernity is about power and the almighty dollar, pound, or euro, and not spiritual at all.
Water lines in Nature seem to me, similar to acupuncture meridians in our body. (you can trace them with a pendulum or forked sticks). The bogs are always interesting places as they allow the water to collect, 'reconnect', sun itself and spread out lazily, before disappearing as water is want to do; in fact its' pulsating and curious nature allows it to regulate its own flow between springs and ocean; it adores change and contact.
So yes I think you are right Paul, the watercourses will outlast modernity as their intelligence is part of the abundant rituals of the elements. We can learn much about shapeshifting; a good reason as any for a prayer of gratitude at a source, as we too are basically made of water (and calcium like the beautiful mountain in this photo.) Thanks so much.
I just took out my Oxford English Dictionary to check on the history of the word "coin".
I had the idea, maybe not all that far fetched, that it could be in relation to the word "koina" in Greek, which refers to the Greek vernacular language used all over the Roman Empire (I think... who knows where the words come from when they come from way back).
"Coin" (wedge/corner/angle, is the corner stone on a wall or building.
In reference to money, what emerges is the fact that money is IM-PRESSED with the stamp of someone with authority.
In French, I have done an etymological history of the verb "press", as in "the press", for example, and just recently realized that the word "EX-PRESS" which can be compared to the word "IM-PRESS" 'also enters into this genealogy. All of the words in relation to "press" suppose the use of (physical) force to modify.
The area looks lovely and out of the way.
This story is great, and I'm glad there are 48 more of them where that came from.
By the way, I read *Savage Gods* last week, and I think I got a better understanding of the ambivalence you wrote about in "Inis Cealtra". I'm a writer, so I thought I saw what you meant, but I didn't realize it was that bad. Reading it, I was glad that I knew what happened to you next, because otherwise I would have felt worried. One thought I had was that the opposite of words as savage gods is Leonard Cohen's lyric: "There's a blaze of light in every word." Also, are you familiar with the Catholic writer Walker Percy? The same thing happened to his father, and that really drove his spiritual search; it's also a significant theme in two of his novels.
If only the offerings in partiicular could talk! I remember as a very small child (back in the 1940s/ early 1050s) being brought to a religious site ( not a well) back in my Italian homeland. The offerings were sometimes very moving, always intriguing, sometimes frightening to me. Especially anything referencing a child for it probably meant the child was either ill or dead. Ways to cope in this vale of tears which is life.
I can see why sites like this were seen as holy, or maybe to earlier people, magical.
To be wandering across a mountain and then to suddenly find a stream of fresh water appearing out of the earth, and then immediately disappearing again?
Sounds magical even now! And would be a true blessing if you were in need of a drink!
Just wandering across a spring in the woods where I wouldn't expect one gives me a little jolt of pleasure.
It's interesting how we think, isn't it?
We are always above looking in. Me too. we all are.
i had the thought:
it *is* magical.
doesn't appear. it is.
*heart*
-mb
The act of leaving a personal item is touching to me, seems alot more personal. I make "offerings" in the form of money to my Church but its not the same. My pastor wouldnt know what to do if I dropped an old shoe in the plate. God wants whats in our heart not whats in our pocket.
That interests me too. After I read this I was thinking "Where would I leave such an offering, and what would I leave?" Connecting to places, or God, like that is just off my radar. I've never had much exposure with that practice or people who do it and where I have has been in indigenous, non-Christian contexts. I don't dismiss it as superstitious or irrational. It just feels foreign to a mind that may be oversaturated with modernity. But intriguing nonetheless.
Fascinating! Do you know if there are any holy wells in Wales? - land of my birth. You've started something here...
Keep an eye out for a couple of Welsh wells later in the series ...
About 25 years ago my sister and I were driving to a town in a rural county where she had recently bought a house. While approaching the town by a side road, we drove by a marker for a shrine, and immediately turned around to check it out. The shrine was located about a hundred yards off the road and was built to commemorate the spot where the first mass was said in the county in the 1850s. I think that there is something special about stumbling across a shrine or cross set out of the way someplace, off the beaten path. There is a sense of wonder that anyone would have taken the trouble to do it in the first place, apparently unmindful and unperturbed that it would rarely be seen by anyone. Therein lies the charm. This happened in California, where the chances of coming across such markers are few. Mores the pity. The discovery of this little shrine certainly enlivened our day.
I agree. The other great thing is that there is no time limit on when or where such things can be created. Which means they could be created by us, now.
Thank you. Again a beautiful way to start The Lord’s Day.
I love that so many of the offerings at holy wells and shrines are a testimony to that person being cured of whatever malady made it necessary to own that item. Someone went home not needing their glasses anymore that day. Similarly, there is a wall with racks of unnecessary crutches at St. Joseph's Oratory Basilica in Montreal, Canada.
I loved this well story. It made me think that faith runs underground where we least suspect it. And always has done. Today I went to Harvest Festival at a Surrey church in the prosperous Home Counties less than an hour from central London. Pretty cosmopolitain. Yet this place had a churchyard full of ancient yews, all decorated with brightly coloured ribbons and other offerings. It's an 11th century church with a mural of the ladder between heaven and hell created by an artistically inclined monk around 1200. You can feel that spirit still in the place. It's like a stream of faith runs through this spot and has done for centuries. I love that. Looking forward to the next well and loving the series.
The prayers to God float up to heaven and by the rule of opposite reaction the coins of man float down to the sea. It's not only good theology it's good physics :-)
Will you be posting a map with the locations of the Holy Wells? Love the series! I’d like to follow along on a map…