"A miracle! - A miracle!"

"A miracle! - A miracle!"

Travelogues--James Spencer Knox--Lough Derg--Description

Knox criticises the superstitious hysteria for miraculous cures

James Spencer Knox, 1789-1862

Pastoral Annals. By an Irish Clergyman [i.e. James S. Knox], pp. 379-80

R. B. Seeley and W. Burnside, London

1840

Digitised by Google, sponsored by Princeton Library

Public domain

Monograph

English

Travelogue

DD_0267

54.606912, -7.860865

https://books.google.com.mm/books?id=kIIuAAAAYAAJ&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q=lough%20derg&f=false

"Mingled with these devotees, is another body of the faithful, no less necessary to the due 'getting up' of the drama. These are composed of men, women, and children, afflicted with every species of disease, whose friends have brough them thither, or who have spontaneously come, in the hopes of cure, natural or supernatural. As the masses proceed, one or other of these imposters feels or feigns recovers. First, a shrill voice, pipingly announces the fact; organs more powerful next proclaim it; then shout the press within, A miracle! - A miracle! the outer crowd repeat, in a grander key; which, borne on the glassy surface of the lake, to the expectant multitude who line its shores, is again and again echoed, till the distant mountains receive it into their lonely caves, and give it back again in dying tones, to the ears of those who first published the monstrous fallacy. 'A miracle the woods, a miracle the floods, a miracle the vaulted roofs resound'."

Monograph