Note 15 — Chapter VI · The Folklore of the Wells

See the Book of the Dun Cow, fo. 39a–41b and Joyce’s Old Celtic Romances, pp. 97–105; but the story may now be consulted in O’Grady’s Silva Gadelica, i. 233–7, translated in ii. 265–9. On turning over the leaves of this great collection of Irish lore, I chanced, i. 174, ii. 196, on an allusion to a well which, when uncovered, was about to drown the whole locality but for a miracle performed by St. Patrick to arrest the flow of its waters. A similar story of a well bursting and forming Lough Reagh, in County Galway, will be found told in verse in the Book of Leinster; fo. 202b: see also fo. 170a, and the editor’s notes, pp. 45, 53. ↑