Browse Items (75 total)
- Tags: twentieth century
Sort by:
Lough Derg in the rain
Jenny and Bobby arrive at Lough Derg in the rain and are greeted by the sight of the lake and the pilgrims waiting to cross
Jenny struggles with her emotions
Jenny struggles with her sense of spirituality as she completes the circuits of the penitentian beds
Jenny crosses to Station Island
Jenny gets a sensory impression of the island as she approaches and encounters its contents and topography
Jenny completes the stations
As Jenny completes the stations at the penitential beds, she reflects on the power of repetition and prayer and feels the elements
Jenny asks Bobby to go to Lough Derg
The story opens as Jenny asks to visit Patrick's purgatory, to the confusion of her male companion Bobby
Friars' Island
"Friars' Island is unmistakable, because it is the nearest to the ferry. Unfortunately, the origin of its name is unknown..."
Forty-six small islands
"Lough Derg is dotted with forty-six small islands, some of them graced with shrubs and occasional rowans or ash, but the greater number are only bare rocks projecting out of the water..."
Tags: Alice Curtayne, Allingham Island, Ash Island, Bilberry Island, birdlife, Bull's Island, Derg Beg Island, Derg More Island, Eagle's Rock Island, Friars' Island, Gavelands Island, Goat Island, islands, isolation, Kelly's Island, loneliness, Philip Boy Island, Priors' Island, Saints' Island, Station Island, stones, Stormy Island, Trough Island, twentieth century
Burials on Friars' Island, in Templecarne, and further away
"About twenty of the victims were buried on Friars' Island, where fir-trees on a mound show their grave to-day..."
Bobby interrogates Jenny about her motivations
As they drive towards Lough Derg, Bobby interrogates Jenny as to her motivations for wishing to visit Lough Derg this year of all years. She responds that it is a particularly Irish form of religious devotion and expression.
Bobby expresses his confusion
Bobby expresses his confusion at the extravagant embodied devotion and extreme austerity of the pilgrimage to Lough Derg and that it exposes a side of Jenny that he has never seen before.