ACIS Logo R. Celeste Ray

Ireland’s climate is what first appealed to a pale and perpetually-sunburnt child growing up in Florida. While a student at University College Galway, I was taken to a holy well on Inis Mór and that visit sparked a life-long fascination with sacred watery sites. While my work for post-graduate studies and beyond focused on Scottish battlefields, Ethnicity in the U.S. South, the South Tirol of northern Italy and Historical Ecology, I began returning to Ireland to interview about holy wells in 1998. Publications related to fieldwork in every county on the island of Ireland include the books “The Origins of Ireland’s Holy Wells” (2014); “Sacred Waters: A Cross Cultural Compendium of Hallowed Springs and Holy Wells” (2020) and the forthcoming “Holy Wells of Ireland: Sacred Realms and Popular Domains” (2023). My last sunburn was acquired on Inishowen.

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