"Floating on some miracle raft"

"Floating on some miracle raft"

Lough Derg--Pilgrimage--Description--Alice Curtayne

"Down below [Dabheoc's Seat], Station Island rose up in imperial grandeur against its background of low hills..."

Alice Curtayne, 1898-1981

Curtayne, Alice, Lough Derg: St. Patrick’s Purgatory, pp. 16-17

Burns Oats and Washbourn, Ltd., London and Dublin

1944

Citation for the purposes of criticism

Monograph

English

History

DD_0124

54.596797,-7.859638

"Down below [Dabheoc's Seat], Station Island rose up in imperial grandeur against its background of low hills. These were continually swept by shadows as the sun played hide-and-seek with the clouds, lighting up transient shades of delicate colour on the landscape. The green-domed Basilica and the buildings so tightly clustered around it might have been floating on some miracle raft. It was hard to believe that they had any anchorage. As unsubstantial and unreal as a mirage, one was afraid to look away lest they should vanish. One the distant hills, one could just discern the white gleam of some houses. Otherwise there was no trace of man, no roads, no sign of cultivation anywhere. There stood the Basilica proclaiming its message to an empty world. If Saint John, the Beloved Disciple, was granted visions on the Isle of Patmos, one could easily credit Dabheoc, too, with having had experience of some unrecorded apocalypse above the shores of Lough Derg."

Monograph