There are two possible responses when you hear someone saying “St. Catherine’s Well”. “Is she, by God?”, or “Oh! You mean the holy well in Leixlip.”
There are a few different ways to get to St. Catherine’s Well, but on my ramble today, I decide to take a shortcut through the freshly-shorn grass of Lucan Demesne and cross the Liffey at the footbridge that is ramshackled together from reams of chicken wire and good intentions. I am on today’s ramble with my wife Chrissy, who will learn about some of the history of St. Catherine’s whether she likes it or not. A small group of people has halted on the bridge to take pictures of the waters below meaning that, in these pestilent days, everyone moves around them like crabs, noses moved as far as possible away from this breathing group.
My aimsir weather app, usually nothing but reliable, had forewarned me of afternoon deluges and burdensome cloud formations. Instead, the sky is so blue that the hairy cows (coos?) in the field at St. Catherine’s have taken to the tree line in search of shade. We follow the path to the recently-stabilized ruins of the old chapel and peer in at a congregation of Comfrey plants growing into the sky beneath the absent roof. Comfrey, I recall, has a number of different names, the most evocative of which is ‘Knitbone’, given its use in traditional poultices to treat breakages.
It is a fitting introduction to this place as I am here today to visit a location traditionally known for its healing powers: St. Catherine’s Well. And so, we move on and walk past the old gateway to the ruined stables and mill and turn to our right, up the stone walled foreboding presence of the Black Avenue.
To my left, I look at the dark trees that block out the sun from where I walk. I am struck by the height of the ground behind them. I had not realised that the ridge was so tall – perhaps twenty or thirty feet above me. The ridge drops off to road level behind the wall. Although I cannot see it, I know that the Silleachan river flows on the other side of the stone towards the water treatment plant that edges St. Catherine’s.
Here on the Black Avenue, the surfaced road is, for some reason, substantially narrower than the road cut itself, meaning that at several points along the way, we have to stop and press ourselves into the verge in an overly-theatrical manner to indicate to the cars, all of whom have trouble with spatial reasoning on this road, that it is safe to pass.
We stop a little short of the top of the avenue as, to our right, a hollow has appeared by the roadside: this is St. Catherine’s Well. The well consists of not one but two wells, each abutted against the other, surrounded by whitewashed walls and small, vaulted ceilings. The well to the right is the holy well and the one that, traditionally, had a metal cup attached to the back wall for drinking. The well to the left, according to a number of entries on the Dúchas schools collection, is not a holy well – but it is a curative well.
I walk down the small steps into the well sanctuary itself and peer into it. The water inside the Holy Well is, indeed, remarkably clear, but fearing it may be inhabited by the spirit of St. Giardia, I opt not to taste it. The well has been somewhat restored since the last time I stopped for a good look. I recall being here in the last ten years and finding the small vaulted ceilings peeled back and lying on the hill behind it. I seem to recall that there was a small carved head of St. Catherine on the vault, but I could be mistaken. In any case, it is not here now. I had read a legend in a really old book about a Scotttish family who walked here from the Spa Hotel to sample the waters and decided to also take St. Catherine’s head with them as a souvenir. They suffered so much misfortune afterwards that they had to return to Ireland again to return the head.
The healing well was known for the ability of its waters to cure sore eyes. I dip my finger into the waters and dab each eyelid.
“What are you doing?” asks my wife.
“Trying the cure.”
“Do you have sore eyes?”
I pause to think. “No. I do not.”
“If it cures sore eyes, what does it do to healthy ones?”
I have no answer for this and instantly become convinced that I can now feel something on my eyelids. As I write this, five hours have passed and I can still feel it there. I wonder if there’s a well that cures hypochondria?
According to the local legends, once the eyes were cured, the person was expected to leave an offering of thanks tied to the tree that overlooks the well. The cure would last as long as the offering remained. I had also read that it was considered bad luck to cut anything from the tree itself because, according to legend, a body was once found at the tree. Today, there is no tree matching its description. But there is a stump.
St. Catherine was not from these parts. She was from Alexandria and lived about 1600 years ago. However, because the adjacent priory had been named for her, many of the local legends associate her with this spot directly. There are three legends that I have found that attest to this. One local legend states that St. Catherine was executed here and the wells mark the place where her blood was spilled. The second indicates that she created the wells as a miracle to impress and convert a non-Catholic. The third, which is my favourite, was described thusly in the Dúchas schools collection in 1938:
“One day St. Catherine was praying in a field and she struck a rock and the rock turned into a well. Then she dug a hole and put water in it and she said that it would be a cure for sore eyes.”
A beautifully simple tale. I think about it as we walk on. Not ten paces further up from the well and we see the filthy, mudded waters of the Silleachan river. We watch as the waters trickle down towards the well. Or at least my wife does. My eyes don’t work as well as they did five minutes ago…