When surveyors eventually reached the site, a fallen tree lay across it and prevented any proper inspection. The well exists, in a sense, more as a rumour of itself than as a documented feature.

What gives the site its particular character is a detail recorded by Bowman in 1934. The well, which carries the Irish name Suilin, meaning "Well for the Eyes" and suggesting a tradition of curing or relieving eye complaints, apparently did not stay where it was. According to Bowman's account, a farmer cut a channel from the well to carry water to cattle in a neighbouring field in the townland of Gneeves, and the well subsequently moved, or was understood locally to have moved, to that adjoining field. The migration of holy wells is a recognised motif in Irish folklore; wells were thought to possess an agency of their own, liable to depart if treated with insufficient respect or put to purposes considered beneath them. In this case, the cause was entirely practical, a channel dug for livestock, but the well's apparent response was in keeping with a much older pattern of belief. Whether the water source physically shifted course or whether local understanding reframed a new spring as the original well is a distinction the record does not settle.