Browse Items · Digital Derg: A Deep Map

The legacy of the Druids

"It is a long passage of time since the men of Ireland first felt the mystery of those quiet little hills and looked for the unseen in the waters that lie at their feet, for the spiritual history of Derg stretches back into the dimmest age of…

Tags: Celtic revival, Druid, dryness, forest, hills, myth, pre-Christian, prehistory, Rome, Shane Leslie, St. Patrick, storytelling

The Island of Swimmers

"There is on the cliff of Cruachan looking out on the sea and the Western sun a very deep cave exhaling icy blasts all the time..."

Tags: banishment, Croagh Patrick, demons, Folklore, Isle of Demons, Isle of Swimmers, myth, mythology, origin of purgatory, Shane Leslie, St. Patrick

The History and Suppression of Lough Derg

A history of Lough Derg and its Antiquities.

Tags: commentary, destruction of built heritage, destruction of written heritage, James Stephens, Magrath family, nineteenth century, Saints' Island, St. Brigid, St. Colmcille, St. Dabheoc, St. Patrick, St. Patrick's bed, Station Island, suppression

The heritage of prayer

"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..."

Tags: Celtic revival, legacy, mythology, romance, saints, Saints Island, Shane Leslie, St. Patrick, water

The demon Corna

"When we were within half a bow-shot of the said island of the Purgatory I saw a bird blacker than coal take flight ; it had not a single plume or feather on its back..."

Tags: Augustinians, birdlife, boating, Corna, crossing, demons, miracle, pilgrim crossing, Shane Leslie, St. Patrick, Station Island, superstition, transformation

The coming of the Norsemen

"One soft autumn noon, the lough lay in a haze of golden mist. Behind the eastern clouds the sun puffed out some streaks of red, angry and livid in their broken setting, but softened and mellow ere they reached the hillsides of Ireland or rested on…

Tags: blood, Celtic revival, hills, literature, massacre, monasticism, myth, ninth century, Norse, Shane Leslie, St. Patrick, Vikings

The Augustinians

"No record was kept of all the years that passed after the coming of the Danesmen till the Archbishop of Armagh sent a band of canons regular of the rule of Augustine..."

Tags: Augustinians, Celtic revival, hills, literature, mountains, Saints Island, Shane Leslie, St. Patrick, twelfth century

Templecarne: Patrick's first church?

"…Tirechan says that Patrick founded a Church in Tirhugh. Where now is the location of that church?..."

Tags: Alice Curtayne, ancient church, Barony of Tirhugh, building, fifth century, myth, ruins, speculation, St. Patrick, Templecarne, Templecarne Graveyard, twentieth century

St. Patrick's well at Tullaghan

"St. Patrick’s Well at Tullaghan has a legend. St Patrick stopped the night in a house near a mountain. The woman told him not to look at the light on the mountain, but he went up and saw a serpent and when he struck it, St. Patrick’s Well sprang up.…

Tags: blood, Bundoran, County Donegal, etymology, Folklore, holy well, mountains, St. Patrick, Tullaghan

Sliabh Dubh Holy Well

"About eight miles from the Four Masters’ School in Byrne’s mountain on the old foot-road across Croney to Lough Derg is a Holy Well called [Sliab Dub ?]. ( ½ ml. from the Donegal-Tyrone border)

Local tradition says that as Saint Patrick was going…

Tags: Annals of the Four Masters, Folklore, headache, healing, holy well, mountains, offering, pilgrim road, sore joints, St. Patrick, toothache

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