"St. Patrick most likely did visit the lake"

"St. Patrick most likely did visit the lake"

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.28

M.H. Gill & Son, Dublin

1878

Sponsored and digitised by Google, Princeton University Library

Public domain

Article

English

Magazine Article

DD_0442

54.6083, -7.8714

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

"St. Patrick most likely did visit the lake, and may have spent some time in one of the islands, or in this lonely cave. He certainly was frequently favoured with heavenly visions, whether or not the one recorded by Henry is genuine. At any rate the place was sanctified by his presence. St. Dabeog, who founded a monastery there about the year 490, and his disciples, would follow St. Patrick's example and use the cavern as a ‘duirteach’ or, solitary praying-cell ; some had visions, like those recorded, others imagined they had, and, perhaps, ‘some pretended they had;’ and thus the origin and history of the cave might easily be explained without insinuating, as Dr. Lanigan does, that St. Patrick's Purgatory on Lough Derg was got up as a rival to Patrick's Purgatory as Croagh-Patrick, mentioned by Jocelyn."

Article