Inspired by my endeavours to create a colour-coded map of sewer vents/ stink pipes by manufacturer, and by my county council’s endeavour to undertake a survey of holy wells, I started adding name:etymology:wikidata first to the holy wells in Co. Kilkenny, but then to the whole of Ireland.
I had produced a video about mapping holy wells in March 2021, but I think I need to make an updated one, because I was oblivious of the name:etymology group, and instead, had suggested people use subject:wikidata. Silly me. But at least, I only had to retag some of them rather than looking up every name.
Some saints or holy people like St. Patrick and “Our” Lady where easily identified, of course, but there were some very obscure saints there for which I had to create wikidata entries. For some, I just could not figure out which saint the holy wells were named after. I also had to skip St. Brigid and St. Kieran, because either name relates to more than one saint.
The first night I did this, I gave every saint a colour or colour combination, but I had to give up on that, because it is called the land of 1,000 saints after all. Here’s a list of saints IN Ireland on wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_saints_of_Ireland. There are holy wells named after Biblical saints and early, non-Irish saints as well.
Some holy wells are also not named after a saint, but after the cure they supposedly give, Tobernasuil would be healing eyes, for example. That’s how far my Irish goes… But I’ve asked someone for help. But I added the wikidata identifier for “eye” in that case.
So this is what it looks now:
*They are by far not all the holy wells in Ireland, only the mapped ones.
I found it interesting how St Brendan is present on the West Coast from whence he sailed.
Obviously, wikidata can so so much more. If all the saints had their life span somewhat defined, their gender and their “country” of origin, one could filter by that, just like we can already do with street names. But that’s beyond my skills.
Or filter by cure which is not at all random. There are studies being carried out looking at the chemical components in the water, and some well that reputedly cure “madness” have been shown to contain higher amounts of lithium.
Feel free to do make that map with filters, though!
Here’s the overpass-link which has the colour legend in the code, of course:
http://overpass-turbo.eu/s/1yc8
Very few holy wells mapped in Northern Ireland, but that would be an ecumenical matter.