Ireland’s holy wells: Manchán Magan reminds us why traditions should be cherished

Gaze into a holy well, and you are staring into the soul of Ireland. Such is the message conveyed in warm and moving terms by Manchán Magan’s charming new series Ag Triall ar an Tobar (TG4, 8pm).

Holy wells – natural springs to which people have attached spiritual meaning – are not unique to Ireland. But, they are an essential part of our psychological landscape: there are more than 3,000 across the country, many predating Christianity and extending deep into our pagan past.

“Many people have a great affinity for those wells,” says Magan, looking like Wes Anderson’s idea of Ryan Tubridy as he sets off across the country to visit sites of particular significance.

Magan has long been a sort of Irish landscape whisperer. Several years ago, he celebrated Ireland’s bogs in the TG4′s An Fód Deireanach and paid tribute to trees and their place in the Irish psychosphere in Crainn na hÉireann.

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Ag Triall ar an Tobar is another absorbing plunge into the interior life of Ireland and Magan brings infectious enthusiasm and an agreeable lack of cynicism. In part one, he focuses on the coast, revealing that more than two million people live within 5km of the sea.

First, he travels to Achill Island, Co Mayo, where a local takes him to a well that stands in the shadow of a cross erected by the man’s father during the Civil War (torn between the sides his dad sensibly laid low in the US for nine years).

“One of the most important things about wells is that they’re unique places that connect us to the land, to antiquity, to our ancestors,” says Magan. He later visits Ardmore in Waterford, where St Declan’s Well has served as a site of worship for thousands of years.

Irish broadcasters should be producing more of this sort of thing. Ag Triall ar an Tobar doesn’t make any grand claims – it’s a rambling show in which a man in too much tweed wanders around chatting to locals. But it addresses a singularly Irish subject – nobody does saintly relics like we do – with impressive gusto.

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“When you come from a region that is so wild and isolated,” says one contributor, “That creates a mindset that doesn’t exist elsewhere. We remain undefeated.”

It’s a wonderful synopsis of our national mindset. TG4 is to be commended for quietly putting out television that, while not telling us anything we don’t already know, reminds us what it means to be Irish – and why our ancient traditions should be cherished. At the conclusion of this fascinating episode, all’s well that ends well.