Maggie O’Farrell

I've always been really fascinated by the holy wells or the sacred wells in Ireland.

I mean, they are everywhere.

You can find them wherever you go.

Most towns or villages, there'll be at least one, I would say.

And some of them have been, you know, they're ancient sort of pre-Christian pagan places of worship.

It goes right back to the times of the Druids in Ireland.

But some of them have been, quite a lot of them have been co-opted into Catholicism and Christianity and they've been blessed by a priest and given the name St.

Bridget's Well or St.

Patrick's Well or whatever.

But they all have this kind of folkloric resonance to them and some of them are really extraordinarily charged places.

But there's also a science to them.

Really interestingly, there's one, a very famous one in County Cork, which is said to cure madness.

And recently somebody did an analysis of it.

And apparently it has a very high level of lithium, which just goes to show.

Yeah, which is a treatment even now for some mental illness.

So it just goes to show that in all myth, there is at least a seed of truth.

Only Irish folktales.

He would only ever read Irish folktales to us.

Well, my father would only ever read, as I said, only ever read Irish mythology to us.

And at the time it used to annoy us a bit because we used to beg him to try and read the Moomins or Pippi Longstocking to us, but he would only ever read Irish myth.