Nioclás Graves took me to visit this Well on his property at Helvick Hill. For many years it was left overgrown with ferns. Nioclás told me many great stories connected with this meeting place which was used by many people in the parish of long ago.Subsequently, John Daly penned this poem about the well. the photos are by myself.
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| Nioclás |
Graves Well.
When light grows short on Helvick’s Hill,
by Graves Crystal Well.
I wonder what mystic magical tales
Its moss-mantled stones could tell.
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| View of Helvick from above the Well |
Then a strange sad sense of stillness
lulls to sleep the evening flowers.
And ghosts of lost beloved friends,
lights other scenes and hours.
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| The repaired Well |
And a haunting hint of wood smoke,
From the sighing sea-shore rolls.
Where the cheerful Caledonian girls
Once smoked the herring shoals.
Then down the path by the fragrant pines
with brimming pails they go.
Those girls I knew when the world was young,
Sixty years ago.
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| Down the path they go |
And they pause in pensive silence
beneath heaven's star-blossoming dome,
by the slumbering dream-haunted waters,
'till the evening sails come home.
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| Down the path by fragrant pines... |
from the landlords Lodge on Helvick head
two old goats meander down.
one is the earl of grandison,
and Lord Stuart from Villerstown.
They congregate in the moonlight,
with generations of a lost lost ago
round the well there's no servant or master.
and the stories of old ebb and flow.
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| The Landlords Lodge |
They weave from yarn of memories
A tapestry of tales they tell.
Of gun-runners;and shipwrecks; and smugglers
As they lean on the arch of the well.
Then the phantoms one by one leave me
all alone with my thoughts and tears.
with sighs of parting Graves Well echoes
as it's done for three hundred years.
