Tobernagibboge translates from the Irish as "the Well of the Rags", and the name alone tells you something about how people once related to this quiet, unassuming place.

The practice of leaving rags or strips of cloth at holy wells is one of the older forms of devotional custom in Ireland. Known as clooties in some traditions, these offerings, typically torn from the clothing of a sick or suffering person, were tied to a tree or bush growing near the water. The belief held that as the cloth decayed, so too would the ailment. At Tobernagibboge, the Ordnance Survey Letters of 1839 record the well's name as deriving from "the quantity of rags left there formerly and still by its votaries", a phrasing that suggests the custom was still actively observed at the time of writing. The Reverend William Carrigan, writing in 1905, adds a small but vivid detail: the rags and linen were hung on a tree that grew directly over the well, which gives a clearer sense of what the site once looked like, cloth and cloth-fragments suspended above the water, left as ex-votos by those who had come seeking some form of relief or intercession.