Michael Houlihan, 'The Holy Wells of County Clare' (2015)

The arrival of a new book about holy wells at Swanvale Halt rectory is of course a moment of great and greatly-anticipated delight, and I was very thankful for the tip-off that led me to Michael Houlihan's The Holy Wells of County Clare. I was expecting something in the manner of a gazzetteer of holy well sites but Mr Houlihan's survey instead takes an historical/analytical approach - understandably when you discover that the number of venerated springs in the county runs to something like 240. The book is lucidly written and tackles a variety of interesting topics, relating the wells to the local topography, the presence of Cillini or unofficial burial-grounds for unbaptised children, and the availability of medical provision, or the lack of it, in the 19th century. The historical side of the survey is heavily slanted to the 19th and 20th centuries, disposing of the period 'From Pre-Christian Times to the Famine' in a single short chapter, but as there is actually rather little to be said about that whole epoch beyond surmise it allows greater space to be given to a more intriguing theme. Basically Mr Houlihan's thesis is that holy well devotion really took off as an aspect of popular Catholicism during the Penal period, a time during which, for the most part, the Catholic peasantry of Ireland were left to fend for themselves devotionally - one of a piece with mass-rocks and outdoor liturgies. Once the Roman Catholic hierarchy began to re-establish itself in the second quarter of the 19th century it found itself looking rather askance at such outré observances as holy wells, especially the riotous and undecorous 'pattern' celebrations held at them on the feast days of their patron saint, and slowly the whole world of holy wells began to be brought to heel by clerical officialdom.

One very rarely indeed sees anything written about holy wells being buttressed by the usual historical apparatus of statistics and maps, but Mr Houlihan provides some as well as a fantastic collection of sixty or so photographs. The two things that strike me most from these are the lovely shots of Irish people who proudly care for their local holy well (St Anastasia's Well, Ennistymon, and St Flannan's Well, Inagh, for instance); and the eye-watering garishness of some of the well-structures, dispelling any notion you might have had that all Irish holy wells are unchanged relics of an immemorial Celtic past. The blazing red and white slap of The Well of the Creator of the World, Killard, is astonishing; Our Lady's Well, Kilmacduane, sits on a slope in blue-and-white splendour like a bit of Samarkand dumped in a field; and the Gothic candlelit concrete sideboard that is St Martin's Well, Ballynacally, sporting not one but two statues of the Infant of Prague, is a revelation. However the selection of ten sites examined and photographed in detail reveals the diversity of Clare wells, not surprisingly, I suppose, when there are so many around.

The concluding chapter is a deft account of the way well-devotion has changed, and the possible conflict between Christian and pagan forms of reverence at these sites, as well as the potential damage that can be done by tourism along with the advantages it brings. In short this is a model well book and could only have been made even more enjoyable by the addition of more wells!