Famous Irish Pilgrimage Centre

New Zealand Tablet, Volume LII, Issue 37, 30 September 1925, Page 57

Famous Irish Pilgrimage Centre

X limners ot visitors now passing through Ireland have contributed a considerable quota to the record season at Lough Derg, 'lp- the most famous of the Irish holy places. ;|f- The pilgrimage annually opens in June and ends August 15. To avoid the tendency toward overcrowding at the close of the ■f season, visitors were asked to start coming -f; in June this time, but the sudden influx from Britain and America has caused a A throng that was not foreseen. Lough- Derg is the setting of the “Purgatoiy of St. Patrick. It is in Co. Donegal, Northwest Ireland. The Lough Derg pilf grimage retains the rugged early Christian ■ austerity. The pilgrims live in a monastic atmosphere. Days of fasting and nights of vigil DO NOT MISS Til (*: CHANCE OF * WINNING LEWISHAM HOSPITAL ART UNION ~ are required of them, and bare-footed they must traverse the Stations of Prayer on the rugged cobble stones. The whole experience gives one a sense of something that time’s superficial changes have left unaltered since the dawn of things. Hidden in the Donegal mountains, the lil tie lake has a singular, romantic wildness But its story is what makes it unique. Tradition of Cave. The. name of “Lough Derg’ was long a puzzle to the learned, it seen rd to mean <“tho red lake.” Latter-day scholars have, "'however, found the rig ’; translation—“the lake of the Gave.” That name is traced , to the existence on one of its small rocky islands of a deep, narrow, mysterious cave, the fame of which, according to General Valiancy, the antiquarian, had travelled to the remotest East many centuries before the Christian era. The tradition of the cave is preserved by the inhabitants. Early Irish people regarded it with fear‘and horror, as the abode cf evil spirits, and fishermen on the lake averted their gaze from the island which contained it. St. Patrick passing through the district, heard the tale and determined to free the people from such fancies. He rowed to the forbidden island— for no boatman would take him there. Entering the cave, he felt that its quietude invited him to prayer and penitential exercises. Days went by, and the watchers on the shore believed that his temerity had cost him his life. Forty days had passed when he emerged, safe but terribly emaciated from fasting and fatigue. He had struggled with Satan and had overcome him.* While pray- ] ing in the darkness of the cavern, he obtained the awful privilege of witnessing the ex- f piation that is undergone in Purgatory. 1 The antiquity of the cave and its tradi- i tion admit of no question. Valiancy identi- 1 fied accurate descriptions of it in the sacred a books of the East. Gerald Barry, in the t (twelfth century, although writing largely v from English sources, confirmed the state- I ment .that St. Patrick visited the subterran- s

i can chamber. Eight hundred years ago J Henry of Saltrey wrote: ' I ho. Lord took Patrick into a deseri place, and showed him a deep cave, darl 3 within ; the place is called St. Patrick’s Pur - gatory.” f Tradition Stands Test. > Never was a tradition more consistent, ami A ever was a tradition more consistent, aiui even the most sceptical respect its hoary age, Logicians all agree on one essential item that St. Patrick in the fifth century of the Christian era entered the cave on the island in Lough Derg and did penance there. For a time a stubborn attempt was made by Protestant writers to upset the tradition and to show it as originating as late as the ninth century. But recent research has utterly confounded them. One of the curiosities of the neighborhood was an old stone, bearing an undecipherable inscription, which was discovered in the ruins of an ancient church nearby. The mystery of the inscription has at last been solved. It is a record of a pilgrimage made to Lough Derg by St. Mac Nessi, who was the first Bishop of the Diocese of Connor, as well as being a personal friend of St. Patrick. Careful tests have proved that the writing on the stone goes back' to the fifth or sixth century. The conclusion is clear. Lough Derg was a place of pilgrimage even before St. Patrick passed away. The pilgrimage to the island on the “Dim Lake became illustrious throughout medieval Christendom, and penitents of every rank and nationality began to seek its graces. The story of the island cave was carried all over the known world. Matthew of Paris introduced it into his history. v It even figured in the Italian romances of the Middle Ages. Its greatest crown in literature was conferred by Dantejrhen he used it as a model for his own descent into the earth to see the punishments of hell and purgatory. Figures in Dante. Europe just then was ringing with tidings of an Irish soldier of fortune named Owen .who, returning to his own country after years of foreign war, had the boldness to venture into the cave where, it was said, he was met by spirits who brought him across a bridge and showed him the sorrows of the under-world. Dante was struck by the artistic value of the idea, and he evolved from it the Divine Comedy, which, after eight centuries, is the classic of the academies, the delight of the Italian peasantry, and the constant inspiration of the cinema. The Spanish poet-priest, Calderon, made St. Patrick’s Purgatory the theme of his most popular drama. j Pilgrims were welcomed in Ireland. The staff and weeds, “the sandal shoon and sealop shell,” were a passport to good treatment. In 1 this way, the . hospitality of the lush first became a topic of general remark, and Froissart in his records relates the testimony of pilgrim knights of Norman blood ■ who went in penance to the holy island. OneDutch visitor who came rather as a sightseer was displeased at beholding no miracles

and wonders, so he complained to Rome. That was in the fifteenth century. The early years of the sixteenth saw the issue of the

y Papal Bull of Pius the Third which mad© ’ the shrine and the pilgrimage authentic. A The terrible “Reformation” epoch- was k powerless to close down the Lough Derg devotion. Queen Elizabeth’s emissaries ransacked' the shrine. Queen Anne’s Parliament declared the pilgrimage processions to be “riotous and unlawful assemblies.” Parti ticipants were condemned to be publicly whipf. Ped. Still they went on. Throughout the ii age-long term of anti-Catholic persecution f in Ireland, Lough Derg was never without e its ‘contingent of the faithful who exercised i, their religion in public. ✓ y Toward the end of the nineteenth century, I two great buildings— hospice for men and i another for women—were erected on oppov site shores of Station Island, and several ref markable statues of sainted personages were r unveiled. The last effort to destroy the des votion, which had by this time grown imi mense, was made by a powerful Orange landlord, Sir John Leslie, who claimed both lake t and island as his personal property. The e .case was sensational. > But the landlord did not win. The court - decided that “the Catholic Church had a f sound claim to the ancient and holy ground,” -j and the case was dismissed. 1 —The Pilot (Boston). i _ ' **■\