The name itself carries meaning: in Irish, tobar means well, and Danu or Dana is associated in early Irish mythology with the Tuatha Dé Danann, a supernatural race whose memory persisted long after Christianity reshaped the landscape. Holy wells, found across Ireland in their thousands, were typically pre-Christian sacred water sources later absorbed into local devotional practice, often acquiring the name of a patron saint or, in rarer cases, retaining traces of older, harder-to-classify belief. Toberdane appears to belong to that second, quieter category.

Kilfenora itself sits at a crossroads of deep history. It was the seat of a small medieval diocese, home to a Romanesque cathedral that still stands, and surrounded by high crosses of considerable age and artistry. That a named well in this townland should invoke something as archaic as Danu speaks to the layering of belief that characterises the Burren, a region where early monastic sites, prehistoric tombs, and landscape features of uncertain purpose coexist in close proximity across the same grey rock. The well's precise form, whether a simple stone-lined basin, a masonry surround, or a natural fissure, is not currently documented in available public records, which is itself a quietly telling detail about how many such sites remain incompletely known.