Over twelve hundred wells and springs were recorded on the first Ordnance Survey maps in the 1860s. The holy wells among them were still visited. Moore records the practice: the devotees would drop a small coin into the well, drink of the water, repeat a prayer mentioning their ailments, and then decorate the well or the tree overhanging it with flowers and votive offerings, usually rags. They believed that when the rags rotted, their ailments would be cured. These rites were observed within living memory when Moore was writing in 1891.

The wells were usually found near old ecclesiastical sites. The early recluses built their keeills near springs, constructing wells for their own use and for baptising converts. The wells predated the keeills, and the keeills settled beside them. Christianity did not create the holy wells. It moved in next door.

Chibbyr Lansh, on Gob-y-Vollee, consisted of three pools and was resorted to for the cure of sore eyes. The cure required the patient to come on Sunday, walk three times round each pool, and say in Manx: Ayns enym yn Ayr, as y Vac, as y Spyrryd Noo — "In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost" — then apply the water. A Christian prayer at a pre-Christian well, and nobody saw a contradiction.

Gill, writing in 1929, placed the wells in a deeper framework: "Very ancient beliefs that both the Kingdom of the Dead and the Fairy Kingdom, two spheres which extensively intersect, were reached by a water-transit — a sea-strait, a lake or river, and sometimes a well." The wells were thresholds to the Otherworld. Lough Corrib, he noted, was said to have issued from the burial-place of Manannán mac Lir.

Chibbyr Hidee, the Tide Well in the courtyard of Castle Rushen, was said to rise and fall with the tide. A magical cause was attributed to it, though the well sits close enough to the harbour that a natural explanation exists. Two tidal wells on the Island carried supernatural associations — Chibbyr Hidee and Ballig Well at Conchan.

The seasonal visiting of wells on hilltops took place on the first Sunday in August. Springs on South Barrule, Slieu Dhoo, Slieu Curn, Snaefell, and Maughold Head were all visited. The scenes at Maughold were described as "essentially non-Christian." The Church denounced the annual ascent of Snaefell, but the people went anyway. Gill connects these August pilgrimages to the same tradition as the Midsummer rush tribute on South Barrule, noting that the two customs represent "two ancient and concurrent systems of year-division."