​“ – Aren’t Cork people funny all the same, I said. I mean like see that footbridge there, there are two footbridges along this stretch of the river. This one here was opened by Gerald Goldberg, Cork’s Jewish Lord Mayor, it leads from Goldberg’s office in the heart of the city to the Synagogue on South Terrace and on into the Jew Town of Albert Road; but the funny thing is that bridge is known locally as the Pass-Over. Then we have the other footbridge up by the Quay Co-op. It’s called the By-Pass, ya see Joe McHugh was the City Manager at de time dey were building it, and sur poor aul Joe had to go under the knife with his heart… de By-Pass, gas or wat?”
 
Passion Play – Cónal Creedon (1999) 

‘Yet, a large part of the business of visiting a holy well is to come for a cure. Many wells are named specifically for the particular body part or illness they reputedly cured, such as eye wells or wart wells, though many were relatively panaceal (Logan 1980). Linked to this a range of healing rituals emerged, the most prominent of which was the leaving of offerings on rag bushes or trees. This ritual was (and is) a mix of the embodied, symbolic and performative wherein an object that should have touched the body (such as a strip of cloth from a petticoat), was dipped in the well water, rubbed on the affected part and left on the tree to let nature take the now disembodied illness away.’
Ronan Foley - Small health pilgrimages: Place and practice at the holy well
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​‘At a number of wells the tree (or occasionally a bush) is used to secure a cloth placed there by a pilgrim. The range of trees varies greatly. A.T. Lucas took a closer look at holy well trees. He visited 210 holy wells in Cork in the 1960’s and found whitethorns (103) predominated, with ash (75), oak (7) and a mixture of other species making up the remaining 25.’
Michael Houlihan – The Holy Wells of County Clare.

​‘Early in the nineteenth century, a hostile witness wrote a description of a pilgrimage to Devenish Island, Co. Fermanagh. In it he mentioned the holy well dedicated to St. Molaisse
In it people with sore eyes, and back going children wash for a cure making what is called a station (a thing that I know nothing about) and tye a rag on the thorn according to custom.’
 
The Holy Wells of Ireland – Patrick Logan

​‘It is right, on visiting a well, to make offerings of small objects, only as value as homage. Rag offerings are naturally most frequent where there is a ‘blessed bush’ at the well, but they are frequently hung on a bramble, or even, on the Atlantic coast, kept in place by stones. Rags abounded, with other offerings, at Gleninagh, at least till 1899, being tied to the twigs of an elder bush. They were hung in quantities on the stunted old hawthorn at Oughtmama well, and were found at Tobersraheen, at Aglish graveyard at Ogonello, and on the fallen hawthorn near the basin at Kiltinanlea. They were often accompanied by rosaries, religious medals, necklaces and ribbons, broken or whole plaster and china figures and vessels, and glass, buttons, pins, and nails.’
T. J. Westropp – Folklore of Clare