"Two islands which have made it famous"

"Two islands which have made it famous"

Lough Derg--Pilgrimage--Magazine--Narrative

An account of Lough Derg from a late-nineteenth-century pilgrim.

Matthew Russell, 1834-1912

'Lough Derg: By a Recent Pilgrim', The Irish Monthly: A Magazine of General Literature Sixth Yearly Volume, p.20

M.H. Gill & Son, Dublin

1878

Sponsored and digitised by Google, Princeton University Library

Public domain

Article

English

Magazine Article

DD_0429

54.6083, -7.8714

https://archive.org/details/irishmonthlyvol01unkngoog/page/n5

"Lough Derg, in the county Donegal, is not a very large, and by no means a very beautiful lake ; but in it there are two islands which have made it famous. Station Island is still annually visited by more than 10,000 penitents, and Saints' Island contained the original St. Patrick's Purgatory, in medieval times one of the most frequented places of pilgrimage in the world. This St. Patrick's Purgatory has a strange and chequered history. Its origin is hidden in the mists of fable ; it has been celebrated by historians, poets, and theologians ; it was suppressed by the Pope, desolated in the time of Charles I., banned by edict of Queen Anne, even the site of the shrine itself was changed ; yet, in spite of time, and change, and penal enactments, it still retains its place in popular favour. From the time of Gerald Barry to Carleton, ignorance, bigotry, and credulity— -each had its own story to tell of Lough Derg — and, as might be expected, that story was most part lies. Even the great Catholic writers of the seventeenth century tell some very strange things of St. Patrick's Purgatory, and, not having visited the island themselves, their local descriptions are not always quite accurate."

Article