TIPPERARY MUSINGS: Are you going out to Lady’s Well?

If you were from the Fianna Road, Derheen or Stradavoher end of The Watery Mall in the Thurles of the Fifties like me, you must have heard that question a million times.

Indeed, it was more a rhetorical question than a proper question for, in truth, in those times, what else was there to do?

It was a time before Home and Away and the X- Files and even television, and for many, even of radio.

And Lady’s Well by the sparkling river Suir in those days and in a delightfully sylvan setting a mile from town and great for swimming,was an idyllic little part of every Thurles boy and girl’s childhood in those happy years.

It was childhood in the mists of time and when the whole world centred around our little part of Tipperary.

But, in summer, in high summer, with the dust on the roads and all the women with prams perambulating towards Lady’s Well, the boys in the streets would use their gallogs and cowboy guns or space guns and togs (if they had any) and head for Lady’s Well.

After an exhausting day at the swimming or fishing or battles with the United States Cavalry or robbing a certain orchard of crab apples you would head for the pure water of the spring well, which was as cool, and clean and invigorating in a way water never has been since.

And if you had known people like Peter O’Shaughnessy of the Derheen he might have shown you how to make a cup of tea from the bullrushes, which are still out there in the river.

And I still meet people from as far away as Littleton who, like some of the girls from Thurles, used to go swimming in old dresses in a time when any kind of a dress was something to mind and look after.

I was reminded of all this and much more when Peter O’Shaughnessey recalled for me the days of the amazing bush over the well in Lady’s Well.

“You had the mix of two traditions, Pagan and Christian in Lady’s Well,” said Peter, who recalled the saga of the bush which he witnessed himself in his boyhood days in the 1930’s.

“I remember the Mass Tree first of all in Lady’s well. There was a large wooden cross on it, and it was there in penal days, and Mass was said beside it, I believe.

“I remember as a boy I would say a prayer there. The tree is probably rotted now-it was over sixty years ago.

“I remember also that there was a bush over the nearby well, which was very colourful. You would see thousands of little bits of rags of the bush standing four or five feet high over the well.

“The rags were left there by literally hundreds of people who hoped for a cure for one thing or another.

“It was a pishogue (superstition) that if you left a bit of garment that you wore close to your skin, like a sock or a vest, on the bush you would be cured.

According as the bits of rags were worn away by the weather so in direct proportion was your misfortune cured.

And people believed this but I was only a boy then and I could not say if anybody was cured or not.

It was a Pagan custom but, like many other pagan customs, it was given a Christian meaning.

And so, it was called Lady’s Well.

“The rags were very colourful and mainly you saw the red flannel which was then popular with the women of the time,” said Peter.

“It was a great custom or ritual which might have had it’s origins in the days of the Druids.”

I remember people putting the rags on the bush up to the time when the Thurles Town Council put the pumping station there.

“When I started going out there, though, it was not for religious reasons.

“But, like other young boys, I was heading for the water,thirsty, in those hot summer days in Lady’s Well where I and you and many spent the summer holidays.

But I saw the rags and I know a lot of people believed in it.”

But back to the bullrushes cup. What were they like?

“You had to be careful with them. The bullrushes could be very sharp. They might draw blood.

Or you might notice the damage they did when you tried to eat a bit of meat with salt as then you’d feel your lips burn.

They could cut the lips off you.”

“But the young people today would not do that now to make bullrushes cups. It was simple enough to make them and took only a few seconds. But times were different.”