Browse Items · Digital Derg: A Deep Map

"The very strangeness of the whole rite is like an old memory overlaid by time"

"Many a pilgrim who goes to the Island for the first time remarks that the most surprising feature of the place is its obscure familiarity..."

Tags: Alice Curtayne, cultural memory, pilgrimage, pilgrims, repetition, Station Island, stations, timelessness, twentieth century

"The shaft on which this iron cross is set is precious, for it was salvaged from the lake"

"The pilgrim then walks to St. Patrick's Cross, a poor but cherished relic made of rude iron and set on a very ancient stone column..."

Tags: 1632, Alice Curtayne, destruction of built heritage, lake, pilgrimage, re-use, Reformation, seventeenth century, spoliation, St. Patrick's Cross, Station Island, stations, submerged objects, twentieth century, water

"Recited in the open, while facing the airy spaciousness of mountain, sky and water"

"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..."

Tags: Alice Curtayne, baptism, contemplation, crowds, environment, isolation, landscape, mountains, pilgrimage, pilgrims, repetition, retreat, St. Brigid's Cross, Station Island, stations, timelessness, twentieth century, weather

"The stones become doubly slippery and the whole slope acquires a slithery and greasy surface"

"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..."

Tags: Alice Curtayne, outcrops, penitential beds, pilgrimage, pilgrims, rain, rocks, slippery, Station Island, stations, stones, twentieth century, weather

"All around it is the glint and stir of water"

"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…

Tags: Alice Curtayne, Basilica, breeze, crowds, darkness, environment, illusion, lake, lights, motion, night vigil, ocean, pilgrimage, pilgrims, sound, Station Island, stations, twentieth century, view, vista, water, wind