Holy well

A holy well or sacred spring is a spring or other small body of water revered either in a Pagan or Christian context, often both. Holy wells were frequently pagan sacred sites that later became Christianized. The term holy well is commonly employed to refer to any water source of limited size (i.e. not a lake or river, but including pools and natural springs and seeps), which has some significance in the folklore of the area where it is located, whether in the form of a particular name, an associated legend, the attribution of healing qualities to the water through the numinous presence of its guardian spirit or Christian saint, or a ceremony or ritual centred on the well site. In Christian legend, the water is often said to have been made to flow by the action of a saint, a familiar theme especially in the hagiography of Celtic saints.

The term haeligewielle is in origin an Anglo-Saxon toponym attached to specific springs in the landscape; its current use has arisen through folklore scholars, antiquarians, and other writers generalising from those actual 'Holy Wells' which survived into the modern era. The term ‘holy-hole' is sometimes employed. The terms '' and 'holy' are etymons.

Holy wells in different forms occur in such a wide variety of cultures, religious environments, and historical periods that it is usually held that it is a universal human instinct to revere sources of water. However, the fragmentary nature of the evidence, and the historical differences among cultures and nations, make it very hard to generalize. While there are a few national studies of holy well lore and history, mainly concentrating on Ireland and the British Isles, there is a need for more work examining other regions.

The earliest work specifically devoted to holy wells is Philip Dixon Hardy's Holy Wells of Ireland (1836), a Protestant attack on Catholic observances at Irish wells bearing the names of Christian saints, or otherwise considered sacred. By the later 19th century, the term had acquired its current usage: Robert Charles Hope's The Legendary Lore of the Holy Wells of England (1893), the first general survey of its kind, included a number of named wells which were not dedicated to saints (as well as some rivers and lakes with associated folklore, as Hope mentioned in his subtitle).

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