"From Armagh it is almost one day's journey to a certain Island, which is slightly large called Mabeoch and beyond this Island to a small island in which is the Purgatory aforsaid..."
"The Liffer largens near its source and forms a lake in which there is an Island with a little Convent, near which there is a grotto narrow enough and full of spectres horrible to the view..."
"Now it seems there's a place they call Purgat're, so I must write it, my verse not admitting the O. But as for the venue I vow I'm perplext To say it's in this world or if in the next, Or whether in both for 'tis very well known That St Patrick at…
"It is more certain than certainty that in the northern shore of Ireland a place horrible by its terrors was found by him and is generally called St Patrick's Purgatory. The fame of that place has been so scattered through European parts that it…
"Spirituum hic thermae, his Lethaea piacula : qui se Balneat hic, Stygii non timer amnis aquas / Here souls may bathe : Lethe's atonements here : And he who bathes, no Stygian flood need fear."
"The record of many others who followed the same perilous quest survives. The Sire de Beaujeu, Louis de Sue, Louis of France, Malatesta of Hungary, and, not least, there came in the reign of King Henry VIII. the Cardinal Legate to England, who made a…
"The three days of fasting, the night spent in prison, the prayers prayed in the cold water at the Pilgrimage to-day, are all in glorious descent from the time of the Culdees..."
