Ireland's Pilgrim Paths

Walking the Ancient Trails

Darach MacDonald

• Publisher: New Island
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781848407787
• eBook ISBN: 9781848407794

Each of Ireland's pilgrim paths is an ancient tóchar ('camino' or causeway) into the world of Celtic spirituality. In this walking-pace travelogue, set against a backdrop of spectacular scenery in every corner of Ireland, Darach MacDonald, a modern-day pilgrim, recounts his trials and tribulations following in the footsteps of the ancients along prescribed paths, ranging from hikes of a few hours' duration to day-long treks and the three-day ordeal in St Patrick's Purgatory.

This is an exploration of the magical soul of Celtic Christianity, written from the perspective of a struggling, 'à la carte' Irish Catholic, 'who could be best described as a healthy sceptic in matters of belief'. The result is a narrative that is at times uplifting and at times uncomfortable, but always engaging and honest. While there are pilgrimage prayers along the tóchar, as well as historical background on the places once revered throughout Christendom, there are also pints in pleasant pubs and a diverse range of literary references, anecdotes and personal reflections on faith, morality and religious practice, offered in a spontaneous and unselfconscious spirit.

CHAPTER 1

PULLED TO PURGATORY

St Patricks Purgatory,
Lough Derg, Donegal

For months I am drawn to St Patrick’s Purgatory. I drive there from my home in Castlederg, a 20-minute journey over moorland and forests to a small stone bridge on Tulnashane Road. As I cross the border from Tyrone into Donegal, there is no shortage of bad news on the radio – faltering banks, rising unemployment, corporate greed, public fiddling, plummeting tax revenues, soaring deficits and dashed hopes. I park at Tievetooey, where the river tumbles out in a torrent and gushes north towards Derry, and set off on foot along the north-eastern shore of Donegal’s most expansive body of fresh water. It is a relief to feel the bracing air in my face as I march towards Croaghbrack Mountain and on my back as I return to Tievetooey. In the lee of Tullyglass and Crockmore, I ponder the travails of Ireland and my eyes are drawn to Station Island and the dome of St Patrick’s Basilica. In a district almost bereft of human habitation, it looms across the misty waters, a holy refuge in a sea of turmoil.

Home for Easter from Rome, my son Sam joins me on the walk and is captivated also by the haunting spectre. We drive down to the lakeshore complex, below the big arch proclaiming ‘Purgatorio Sancti Patricii’, to the car parks, the modern reception building and chapel and the big concrete jetty poking out towards Station Island. Around us are the stirrings of a new season. Staff trim lawns and ply back and forth in motor launches. We wander and gaze at a thriving manifestation of religious belief rooted in the pious pilgrimages of barefoot people rather than the splendour of the Eternal City. This quiet and remote place of reflection and self-denial has stood the test of time; that seems particularly pertinent in the current collapse of a world built on greed.

A statue of Patrick the Pilgrim by sculptor Ken Thompson presides over the jetty, and almost hidden behind it is an information board with a map of the path to Saints Island, inviting us to follow in the footsteps of medieval pilgrims. It says:

By the late twelfth century, the cave known as St Patrick’s Purgatory on Station Island in Lough Derg had become famous across Europe as a place of pilgrimage. Pilgrims made their way there via the Priory of the Canons Regular of St Augustine on the larger Saints Island. The old pilgrimage road or Tóchar was marked on Ordnance Survey maps of the nineteenth century.

The notice points out that the route is a circuit of 12 kilometres and it offers the good advice that pilgrims should wear proper clothing and footwear. We have already completed our walk for that day, but I resolve to return and walk the pilgrim path.

Tuesday, 21 April 2009

2.00 p.m.

President Mary McAleese sets off on a pilgrimage along the Camino de Santiago de Compostela in Spain. I join her on the pilgrim path, but in Donegal. And if previous walks have been comforting, this is an invigorating hike along the shore, up, down and around small inlets, sometimes disappearing into thick woodland, but emerging to yet another view of the purgatorial penitentiary on Station Island. The island forms a reference point on the right as my perspective changes and the route unfolds, with the help of waymarker signs put there by the Heritage Council of Ireland. The waymarkers have a distinctive yellow logo – a medieval pilgrim with staff. Other features are indicated by fingerpost signs. The first of these is for the picnic spot, pointing out a beaten path through shoreline thicket to a promontory where a rough wooden table offers unimpeded views of fasting pilgrims. From here, the pilgrim path continues along a high ledge, which is actually a rugged forest road, around a deep inlet, rising higher again and on to the second fingerpost for St Brigid’s Chair, about 1.5 kilometres from the starting-point. This points down steps with a handrail to what was possibly a resting-place among the rocks. Today, the steps lead down to brambles and a rocky recess harbouring no more than a crushed beer can. A short distance further along the path, however, is the third fingerpost, pointing towards St Davog’s Chair, up a steep mountain path about 200 metres away. The first prior of St Patrick’s Purgatory; Davog was a devotee of Patrick. The ‘chair’ is his burial cairn, overlooking the lake.

2.30 p.m.

The path drops almost to lake level for another little cove and a final fingerpost for St Brigid’s Well. It is more than worth walking the 2 kilometres from the jetty, even for those who baulk at the full route. The lake is high, but the well peeks above ripples that swirl around the stone-rimmed circle. A metal cross from a foundry in Glasgow, almost hidden beneath overhanging shoreline trees, adorns this ancient place of pilgrimage. The cross and tree branches are festooned with rags, tiny garments, Rosary beads, holy medals and other votive offerings from those who come to this ancient place in search of Brigid’s intercession. The pain of pilgrims is evident in such offerings as baby bootees and a child’s prayer-book. My attention is drawn to a school tie from CBS Grammar in Omagh. I sense it was put there about seven years previously, during the desperate search for a classmate of my son, Sam; a boy of 15 from Castlederg who went missing on a night out in Donegal. The dragnet included this area, before it emerged that he had drowned below a sea wall across from Donegal town’s garda station after a garda patrol had declined to help him. I stand in silent prayer for Brendan Rushe at St Brigid’s Well and reflect that each ragged offering represents a story of heartbreak for loved ones who came on pilgrimage to this receptacle of tears.

3.00 p.m.

Just beyond a gate, the pilgrim path veers off the forestry road and hugs the shoreline as it meanders along for a couple of kilometres. The trail now resonates with the past, when medieval pilgrims from all over Christendom walked this route to purgatory. With frequent glimpses of the lake, and one substantial break for a view of Station Island, the path rises, falls and turns gently under overhanging trees until the tiny, cobbled lane crosses a small burn. It rises again to rejoin the forestry road at a waymarker pointing right. Here the road dips to a long straight trail and the view opens up with Station Island looming again, further offshore. Then at a T-junction, another waymarker points right and the land balloons out into the lake. About a kilometre on, the forestry has been cut down and another distinctive pilgrim-path waymarker points across the boggy terrain to the lakeshore, where Saints Island almost nudges the shore. There is no path, so I pick my way carefully across the heath for the final hundred metres.³ It is well worth the effort. Here, as shown by a line of rocks peeping above the water and stretching across the rippling lake, are the remnants of the causeway and bridge that once brought pilgrims to the Augustinian monastery, where monks helped penitents to prepare for St Patrick’s Purgatory over on Station Island. The monastic island is deserted now; a thicket on its southern end seems the most likely location of the monastery and monks’ graveyard. From the mainland, it seems close enough to touch, but there is no way across the cold waters of Lough Derg. I cast a longing eye towards the island shore and turn for home.

4.20 p.m.

The return route of the pilgrim path continues around the headland, past the Black Lough, where Donegal’s Bluestack Mountains take off from Tyrone’s Sperrins. After about 1.5 kilometres, the path rejoins the outward route for a straight stretch of almost a kilometre, bypassing the turn for the old woodland trail that hugs the shore. It then turns left at a quarry and continues for a couple of kilometres to St Brigid’s Well. While this part of the trail is higher, it has little of interest to the pilgrim hiker because it runs through dense forestry that precludes any view of the lake or mountains. From the well, however, the path finishes in a flurry, with magnificent vantages, especially at St Davog’s Chair with its panoramic view. Finally, it’s over the stile at Patrick the Pilgrim’s statue and into the car park, turning my back at last on what poet Patrick Kavanagh called:

Christendom’s purge. Heretical

Around the edges: the centre’s hard

As the commonplace of a flamboyant bard.⁴

The second time I take this trail, I opt to return along the lakeshore path and I begin to delve into the story of Lough Derg and its spiritual significance down the ages. Clíodhna, a Celtic goddess, is said to have had a castle here of marble, gold and precious stones. It guarded the portal of Tír na nÓg, where nobody aged. In this story, Clíodhna entices men there before their time. Dazzled by her beauty, they follow her into a cave and thence from the mortal coil. However, she falls in love with a mortal, Ciabhán. As they try to escape together from the fairy world, he is drowned by a huge wave, the Tonn Chlíodhna at Glandore Bay in Cork, and Clíodhna is washed off to Tír na nÓg forever.⁵

A variation of the Clíodhna tale tells of Lough Finn (meaning Fair Lake) in south Donegal, home of a monster that has devoured more than two thousand men, taking the guise of an alluring woman to entice them into her cave. When Finn McCool and his Fianna warriors come to the lake, the monster agrees to leave humans alone in exchange for 50 horses and 50 cattle daily. But the Fianna forget to feed her. In a rage, the monster devours scores of men, including Finn’s son. But the quick-witted Finn grabs the monster and flips her onto her back, while his son (having been swallowed whole) cuts his way out and kills her. The monster’s blood turns Lough Finn to Loch Derg (dearg meaning red).⁶ An alternative translation of the name Lough Derg suggests that it derives from the Gaelic word deirc, meaning cave.

Fast forward, then, to AD 445, when St Patrick arrives, despondent that his work of persuading the Irish away from belief in pagan deities (like Clíodhna) has faltered. The Irish have no concept of right and wrong, much less of Judgement Day. Patrick decides to fast and pray for guidance in the isolation of the lough. He goes to an island, banishes a serpent (which, having nowhere to go, explodes and dyes the lake red) and takes up residence in its cave. Here he receives a vision of purgatory that reaffirms his Christian mission. Patrick then leaves his companion Davog to take care of this ‘termon’, or sanctuary, and this area of Pettigo becomes a monastic settlement of anchorite (hermit) monks living in stone cells near the cave.

While Patrick earns the plaudits for the pilgrimage, Davog is the first saint known to have been associated with Lough Derg.⁷ From all areas of Christendom, however, others follow to St Patrick’s Purgatory. The earliest surviving maps of Ireland record Lough Derg – one place-name in a land almost totally bereft of them. David, rector of Würzburg, describes the pilgrimage in 1120.⁸

In 1135, St Malachy of Armagh, primate of Ireland and a devotee of Rome, gains control of Lough Derg by establishing a monastery of Augustinian canons on Saints Island, where pilgrims prepare through prayer and fasting (bread and water) for their vigil in the cave on Station Island. Among them is the knight Owein, whose 1153 pilgrimage is described by Henry of Saltrey in Tractatus de Purgatorio Sancti Patricii, which survives in libraries throughout Europe.⁹ Owein descends into purgatory in the cave of Lough Derg and is visited by demons, which try to inveigle him into renouncing his religion. Each time, he resists by saying the name of Jesus Christ. After passing an entire night in purgatory he emerges, purged of his sins.

Around the same time, Giraldus Cambrensis describes Lough Derg in Topographica Hibernica (1188). A 1346 fresco at a convent in Todi, Italy, depicts Patrick in the cave and his vision. Lough Derg becomes one of the most venerated places of pilgrimage in Christendom. In 1397, Ramon de Perillos, a former page of King Charles V of France, who went on to become chamberlain of King Juan I of Aragon and special adviser to the pope, describes his pilgrimage to Lough Derg.¹⁰ He begins at Avignon, with papal permission to go to St Patrick’s Purgatory, and travels to Paris, across the sea to Canterbury and on to Oxford, to be received by King Richard of England. He crosses the Irish Sea from Chester and is met by Roger Mortimer, the king’s cousin and heir presumptive. He then visits the archbishop of Armagh and Niall, the O’Neill, who gives him permission to take the path to Lough Derg. Ramon de Perillos describes his purgatorial vision and his return journey, including how he spends Christmas with the O’Neill and New Year’s Day in the Pale before returning to serve the pontiff.

Others of courtly credentials flock to the Irish lake island. In 1411, Laurentius Tar from the court of Sigismund of Luxembourg, king of Hungary, writes his account, which survives in the original Magyar. In 1482, Legenda Aurea, written by Jacubus de Voragine two hundred years previously, becomes one of the first books to be printed. It contains a lengthy description of a Lough Derg pilgrimage by a nobleman named Nicholas, who endures 15 days’ mortification before the monks allow him to enter the cave, warning him of the temptations and advising him to call out, ‘Jesus Christ, Son of the living God, have mercy on me, a sinner!’¹¹ The demons appear and, when Nicholas refuses to obey them, they roar like wild beasts until he silences them with the invocation. The demons cast him into a great fire, but he uses the invocation again. He does so again when being burned alive with other men, whose limbs are devoured by serpents. He is taken to the pit of hell, where there is a horrific stench and acrid smoke. He is so terrified of being cast down he can no longer speak and can only invoke God’s help in his heart. The torment ends when he crosses a bridge as smooth as ice over a fire of burning sulphur, invoking Christ with each step. He is met in a sweet-smelling meadow by two youths, who show him paradise. He wishes to enter, but the youths say he must return to his people for 30 days. He emerges from the Lough Derg cave and tells of his experiences. Thirty days later, he ‘calmly rest[s] in the Lord’.

There are many other notable literary allusions to Lough Derg in early published literature.¹² Stories of the visions of pilgrims in the cave on Station Island are an inspiration for Dante Alighieri’s lengthy sequence on purgatory in his Divine Comedy, written in the early fourteenth century.¹³ The fascination continues with William Caxton’s popular encyclopaedia of 1481, the first illustrated book published in England, which includes a lengthy entry on the pilgrimage. While such stories draw devout pilgrims to Lough Derg, the site also draws sceptics. In 1497, a Dutch monk from Eymstede goes to the pope, complaining that he has not had a vision in the cave. Shortly thereafter, Pope Alexander VI closes St Patrick’s Purgatory. The cave is sealed and the Augustinians removed. Such a papal decree might cause lasting concern but for the fact that it came from the most infamous of the Borgia ‘secular popes’. Alexander VI’s pontificate is described as follows by the man who would become Pope Leo X: ‘Now we are in the power of a wolf, the most rapacious perhaps that this world has ever seen.’¹⁴ Pope Pius III says Alexander VI is ‘damned’ at death and the Vatican is hard put to find a cleric to perform his Requiem Mass.

Yet his rapaciousness does not extend to Donegal, where the Franciscan friars step into the breach and the pilgrimage resumes under a new edict of Pope Pius III in 1603. The pontifical blessing is confirmed when Papal Nuncio Chiericati visits Lough Derg in 1617. By then, the Plantation of Ulster is under way. Lough Derg remains in the control of the MacGrath family, whose title is secured under English law. Yet, under government order, the Protestant bishop of Clogher, James Spottiswoode, comes to the island in October 1632 to supervise the destruction of everything there. The interruption of service is temporary, however, and by 1660, when references first record women making the pilgrimage, Michael O’Clery is prior. Fr Art MacCullen takes over as prior from 1672 to 1710, when the Franciscans return. In 1763, a friary and an oratory are built on Station Island. In 1780, St Patrick’s Church is built. Five years later, priests of Clogher Diocese take on the priory and in 1790 the cave is filled in and replaced by a chapel. The current facilities and modern pilgrimage then take shape. A substantial hospice opens in 1882, allowing thousands of pilgrims to ‘do Lough Derg’ during a season that is set from the start of June to 15 August.

But enough pussyfooting around...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Contents
• MAP of Ireland’s Pilgrim Paths
• Foreword by Fr Brian D’Arcy, CP
• Introduction: Walk the Walk
• Chapter 1: Pulled to Purgatory
• Chapter 2: Visions of Paradise
• Chapter 3: Path of the Righteous
• Chapter 4: Don’t Knock It ’til You’ve Tried It
• Chapter 5: On the Great Road to the Sacred Heart
• Chapter 6: Searching for the Light
• Chapter 7: A Walk in the Garden
• Chapter 8: In the Footsteps of Patrick
• Chapter 9: First Steps in the Name of Jesus
• Chapter 10: Wells along the Way to Barra’s Bower
• Chapter 11: Between a Cnoc and a Hard Place
• Conclusion: Salvation in Sight
• Notes