The Auge Well for Everyone

Not too far from our house is the Auge Well. “Auge” is a word that came into English from French, so I suppose you pronounce it “ah-gew.” It means malaria, and refers to its “acute” fever. Besides the obscure name, the well doesn’t have a saint associated with it, which is unusual.

The Auge Well

I’m interested in malaria because many years ago I read a scary book called The Mosquito, A Human History of our Deadliest Predator, by Timothy C. Winegard.

The horror of Winegard’s book stuck with me because of the incalculable suffering malaria (and other mosquito-diseases) inflicted. History would be very different without malaria. Even our bodies would be different. We evolved blood diseases that confer resistance to the malaria plasmodium; sickle cell anemia being only one of them.

Malaria’s probable arrival in Rome in the first century AD was a turning point in European history. From the African rain forest, the disease most likely traveled down the Nile to the Mediterranean, then spread east to the Fertile Crescent, and north to Greece. Greek traders and colonists brought it to Italy. From there, Roman soldiers and merchants would ultimately carry it as far north as England and Denmark (Karlen, 1995).

For the next 2,000 years, wherever Europe harbored crowded settlements and standing water, malaria flourished, rendering people seasonally ill, and chronically weak and apathetic. Many historians speculate that falciparum malaria (the deadliest form of malaria species in humans) contributed to the fall of Rome. The malaria epidemic of 79 AD devastated the fertile, marshy croplands surrounding the city, causing local farmers to abandon their fields and villages. (source)

Some researchers see evidence that malaria arrived in Ireland with the Mesolithic farmers who brought the cows. Maybe it arrived after extensive contact with the Romano-British in St. Patrick’s day. We know for sure the disease really got bad 400 years ago, when thousands of immigrants arrived seeking the health and prosperity that eluded them in their home country.

Between 1585 and 1640, England’s queens and kings established plantations, the same sort of colonial enterprises in Ireland as they did in North America. But in 1649, a civil war resulted in the execution of a king and rule by Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell. Cromwell looked to what the monarchy had started in Ireland and embarked on what is called The Cromwellian Conquest. The  immense destruction and desecration of the conquest remain visible.

But here’s where malaria comes into the story.

At a significant battle known as the Siege of Drogheda, Cromwell contracted malaria. He was sick with it for nine years before he died. In Cromwell’s day, malaria was treated with an early form of quinine, powered bark from the cinchona tree.

According to Winegard:

His doctors begged him to take cinchona powder. He flat out refused. Given its discovery by Catholic Jesuits, Cromwell insisted that he did not want the “Popish remedy “ or to be “Jesuited to death” or be poisoned by the “Jesuit’s Powder.” In 1658, twenty years after quinine first voyaged to Europe on the later winds of the Columbian exchange, Cromwell died of malaria. Two years after his death, the monarchy, under Charles II, was restored. Unlike Cromwell, Charles was begrudgingly safe from malarial death by sacramental cinechona bark.

Because of malaria, Cromwell didn’t live long enough to establish a viable successor. If he had been healthy, the monarchy may have never been restored. Instead, under Charles II, the political and economic power of the Ascendency began.

For the next 200 years, Ireland experienced a real-life Scouring of the Shire. The plantation system developed Ireland’s natural resources into industries: textiles, agriculture, mining, fisheries, shipbuilding.

This is where malaria comes in again. The Planters found a labor force among the farmers of the England’s southeastern fenlands. Their behavior could be regulated from the same prayerbook. Unfortunately, the southeast was also England’s malaria belt.


According to Winegard: 

The current partition of the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland is directly tied to the settlement patterns of these malaria-fleeing English Fenland farmers of the 17th century. …

The mosquito forced over 180,000 thousand Protestant English farmers to Catholic Ireland, where they settled among the landed English gentry, and Protestant Scots who had fled the English Civil War that raged from 1642 to 1651. This motley crew of Protestants created what became to be known as the Early, Munster, Ulster, and Later Plantations during the 16th and 17th centuries. Their immigration, presence, and territorial expansion ignited a nationalist racial and religious war…. These plantations have had obvious and profoundly violent effects on the history of Ireland ever since.

The woods above the Auge Well, mid-day Winter Solstice

If it weren’t for malaria-induced emigration, perhaps the new landlords of Ireland would have had to work with the locals to build their new industries, and together they could have built a more integrated society. This integration process of immigrants had been successful in Ireland’s past. 

I wonder if the Ague Well was so designated at the time of Plantation of Ulster 400 years ago. That would explain why it has that particular cure, but not a saint. At this time, many Irish people emigrated, but some remained, perhaps as crypto-Catholics, as evidenced by the Mass Rocks in the neighborhood. Regardless of their faith or family, ancestors of my neighbors suffered from displacement, immigration, and malaria. Anyone could visit this beautiful well, and take what comfort they could.

The Ague Well is described in the Irish Folklore Collection.

The well is situated on Cashelmore hill nearby two miles from Creeslough, County Tirconaill. It is in the vicinity of Doe church. This old church is still in use.

The well is situated in the Ards Demesne which formerly belong to the Stewarts but now belongs to the Irish Land Commission and to the Capuchin fathers. Ards house is now a Capuchin monastery and situated along the shores of Sheephaven Bay. There was a little whitethorn bush beside the well. Little fir trees have been planted around by the Irish Land commission in 1932 to 1933. There is a mass rock beside the well.

The patron saint of the well is unknown. It was blessed by a priest now unknown. There is no annual pattern. The well is usually frequented by people going to America, who take bottles of the water with them to prevent them from taking the ague. There are no special rounds. There are no pebbles used. When people frequent the well, they go round it two or three times and say any prayers they wish. There are no special prayers. The water of the well is used to cure the auge, and to prevent people taking the auge. The water is drunk and carried away.

The pieces of cloth or tape are tied to the little bush beside the well.

The well never gets dried up. It was known to cure people that many years ago of the auge. A little distance from the well is a mass rock where the priest often said mass in the penal days.

Mary Colhoun, Massiness Girls’ National School, Creshlough, Co. Tirconaill. 20th of June 1934. Dúchas.ie

This is my transcription. At the link, you can see the original handwritten account.

Photo from few summers ago. 

People I’ve asked about the well didn’t know what the name means. I know I didn’t. They are surprised to learn that malaria was once endemic here. The last malarial outbreaks in Ireland were in the mid-19th century. Globally, the suffering continues; malaria infects 200 million people a year. But post-Covid advancements have led to new malaria vaccines. If we’re lucky, the whole world will be free of malaria soon.

I don’t believe the Auge Well ever cured malaria, but I do know that holy wells offer a sacred site for everyone. I find offerings at the Auge Well, some obviously Catholic, some not. The Ague Well is a place that—like malaria—doesn’t care what your faith tradition is.

Another source on Dúchas.ie records that emigrants took Auge Well water with them because it cured homesickness. If I ever had to leave this place, I would definitely keep a bottle of its water on my mantle. It would be a balm, as homesickness comes on like a fever, sharp and cyclical, just like malaria.

Traditionally, holy wells cured diseases of the mind and heart, as well as the body. An “eye well” might sooth eyes irritated by the smoke in a poorly ventilated cottage, but might also help the person “see” the resolution of a dispute.

The Heritage Council published a brochure last year about Ireland’s Holy Wells, and describes several of these multivalent cures.

There’s a well in North Kerry called Tobar na nGealt with a cure for mental illness. A while ago, the water was tested, and it contained lithium. So maybe there is something medical to these cures.

But there doesn’t need to be. A walk in nature, with intention, and formal words, said aloud for your own ears to hear: these actions can be self-transformational, the only true magic. You only have to believe in yourself.

Winter solstice trees at the Auge Well

I wrote about the Auge Well a few years ago when it comforted me during cancer treatment.