A traveller's guide to Lough Derg

A traveller's guide to Lough Derg

Lough Derg--Vicinity--Purgatory--Travel guide

An account of the religious history of Lough Derg for the traveller.

J. B. Doyle

Tours in Ulster: A hand-book to the antiquities and scenery of the north of Ireland.
By J. B. Doyle. With numerous illustrations, chiefly from the author's sketch-book, pp. 359-60

Hodges and Smith, Dublin

1854

Digitised by Google, sponsored by New York Public Library, archived on Hathi Trust digital library

Public domain

Handbook

English

Travel guide

DD_0478

54.6083, -7.8714

"There is a strange propensity in man to visit scenes which derive their only attraction from their being associated with ancient superstitions. Lough Derg has been the resort of pilgrims for more than ten or twelve centuries. In Keating's Ireland he quotes the following passage from Caesarius, who, he says, lived five hundred years after Christ: ‘whoever doubts that there is such a place as purgatory, let him go to Scotia (the ancient name of Ireland), and there he may visit the purgatory of St. Patrick;’ and in O'Sullivan's ‘Historia Catholica,’ vol. i. lib. ii., there is an amusing account given of the pilgrimage made in the year 1 328 by Ramon, Baron of Leita. From the Annals of Ulster for the year 1497 we learn that the then Pope ordered it to be destroyed as ‘a filthy nest of superstition and evil deeds," and its "Dean transferred to the deanery of Lough Era.’ It appears to have been soon restored, and to have arisen to as great a height of disorder as before, for in the year 1632 the Lords Justices ordered Sir James Balfour and Sir William Stuart to seize this island of purgatory in the King's name, and to ‘destroy the walls, works, vaults, and the place called St. Patrick's bed and the stone on which he knelt, &c.,’ charging the owner, James M’Grath, not to permit such practices again. At this time Sir William reported that he found there, an abbot and forty friars, and an average attendance of four hundred and fifty pilgrims, who each paid eight-pence admission. This prohibition was withdrawn by James II., when it again rose into such a state of licentiousness that the then Prior ordered the cave or bed of St. Patrick to be destroyed, as therein not only were many lives lost, in consequence of the eagerness of the devotees to go through their mortifications, but on account of the many irregularities which followed such scenes. Upon the site of this cave he caused St. Patrick's chapel to be erected ; which not only prevented the sacrifice of life, but greatly increased the Prior's dues by the increased accommodation which it afforded."

396 p. illus. 17 cm.