"Many pilgrims surveying the crowds during the night vigil promise themselves that, on their following night of freedom, they will look down from their cubicle windows at the fascination of the scene, when the people emerge and group themselves in…
"The repetition of the baptismal vow [before St. Brigid's Cross] is a reaching back again towards baptismal innocence and is the usual ritual of retreats..."
"Throughout all the perversions and confiscations [of the Reformation], however, the Church never relinquished her hold upon the one grey rock which then was Station Island..."
"The stone circles [of the Penitential Beds] are small. When this sanctuary was demolished in the seventeenth century the despoilers left only the rude foundation stones protruding from the soil..."
"With the fall of night the world slipped away. We seemed to stand in a dim place where two worlds meet. At intervals we walked into the misty starlight and stamped a little warmth into our feet..."
"Now when I was shut in and had taken notice of the greatness of the Cave which I conceive to be about four cubits, I found the inner part thereof to turn and extend under me weak and shaking that it seemed as though it could not bear a man..."
"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…
