"Prior to the nineteenth century, the experience of popular Catholicism in Ireland was associated with extended pilgrimages and with rituals performed at thousands of holy wells. The study of popular religion in Ireland has for centuries been dominated by a model that sees these practices as remnants of an archaic and largely pagan tradition inherited from a distant Celtic past."--BOOK JACKET.

"In Irish Pilgrimage: Holy Wells and Popular Catholic Devotion, sociologist Michael P. Carroll refutes this model and offers a fresh perspective."--BOOK JACKET. "A social, historical and psychological study of religion, history, and literature in Romantic Ireland, Irish Pilgrimage is the unique story of people struggling to express their religious identities in ways that were both impeccably Catholic and yet distinctively Irish."--BOOK JACKET.