Eye Wells

 From The Abbey of Misrule:

Tobar na Súil literally means ‘the well of the eyes’, and it’s a common well name across the land, perhaps even the most common. ‘Eye wells’ seem to be the most common type of healing well. In her book The Holy Wells of County Cork (recommended; it has some beautiful pictures too), and in her accompanying blog, my fellow well-nerd Amanda Clarke notes that, of the 330 wells she visited in Cork, 71 were eye wells; that is, wells noted for being able to cure eye diseases through prayer and bathing the eyes. That’s just over 20%. I can’t find any figures for the country as a whole (there probably aren’t any) but if it were more or less the same, that would mean there were about 600 eye wells in Ireland. It has been suggested that peat fires in smoky, badly-ventilated cottages may have caused many of the eye problems for which cures were sought at these wells. (Read more.)