There is no water, no offering, no trace of the crowds that once gathered here from before dawn on the ninth of March and stayed, in earlier generations, through two full nights until the tenth. Holy wells were focal points of pre-Christian and later Christianised ritual in Ireland, places where people came to perform devotional circuits known as rounds, drink or bathe in the water, and seek cures for physical ailments. At Garranachole, people drank at each of the three corners of the well and washed their faces in it. That the well is now dry, and that the practice has lapsed entirely, gives the place a particular kind of quiet.

The testimony recorded by Grove White between 1905 and 1925 is specific and vivid. An elderly informant recalled seeing hundreds of pilgrims arriving on the ninth of March, the gathering running from six in the morning until nine at night. In his father's time the observance was longer still, beginning on the eighth and continuing through the night to the tenth. People came seeking relief from all kinds of ailments. The well's history is further complicated by a displacement story. Local tradition holds that the well was originally located at Killuragh but was moved to its present site after a landlord enclosed the original location within a walled garden. A version recorded by O'Reilly in 1987 tells broadly the same story but suggests the well from Killuragh was relocated to a site opposite Monanimy Castle, which is the present position of St Nicholas' Well. Whether the Garranachole well and St Nicholas' Well represent different memories of the same displaced source, or are entirely separate sites caught in overlapping oral traditions, is not resolved. The uncertainty is itself a kind of evidence about how these places accumulated and shed meaning over time.