RTE No 20 Interior - Road to Emmaus Journal

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Road to Emmaus Vol. XII, No. 2 (#45)CROAGH PATRICKtile, but you stick to your own, and your own certainly weren’t Travellers.RTE: Can you tell Travellers by their dress?MICHAEL: Sometimes, and the girls often have big earrings, but you canmore often tell by their names and their accents. It’s a closed community andthey don’t marry out, so they have a very particular way of speaking English.Though everyone has their own regional speech, the dialect that many of theTravellers speak is literally medieval English and medieval Irish—it’s one ofthe secret languages of Ireland, if you like. In some areas, notably Tuam andGalway, there are still a lot of Traveller words in colloquial English.You can also tell Travellers by the nomadic routes that they follow aroundthe country. They travel back and forth to Scotland also, though there havebeen Scottish laws from the 13th century prohibiting them from disruptingtownspeople. When the British came to Ireland, they almost went crackedbecause, although they were used to the regular Irish, they weren’t at all usedto these nomads who just didn’t pay any heed to central government and hadno sense of private property.Whereas climbing the Reek is a regular thing for most of the settled population,there’s this especially strong attachment to it for the Travellers. Thelast woman killed on Croagh Patrick was a Traveller woman. She vowed toclimb it three times, one after another on the same day in the middle of winterbecause her nephew was sick. On the second climb she slipped and fellabout 1500 feet. The pilgrimage tradition has this older edge to it as well.What you may be looking at with these people is a survival of early historicmetalsmiths, who may have created some of the finest works of art in earlyChristian Ireland. As I said, this was their original function in early Christiansociety, taking their trades to the various lordships and monasteries. Whenthat medieval culture was broken up, they began their long historic slide intosocial dislocation. Nevertheless, they are a wonderful part of all pilgrimages,and they have a great devotion to Our Lady, Patrick, Brigid, and a whole hostof other saints.Night Pilgrimage on the ReekRTE: Why was Croagh Patrick’s night pilgrimage stopped?MICHAEL: We don’t know why precisely. There are many rumors, but theMarian shrine at Knock may have had something to do with it. 1 Knock washeavily promoted and reliably Catholic, unassociated with the dodgy storiesof Patrick fighting the demon Crom Dubh, and all of the pre-Christian possibilitiesthere. Some think that some of the bishops may have wanted to giveCatholic Ireland a pure shrine to go on pilgrimage to, and to let these olderones sort of slide off. That first pilgrimage I went on in 1974 was the last nightpilgrimage, and it coincided with the revival of Irish music and festivals, includinga lot more celebrating. The clergy felt that it was getting too raucous,too out-of-order, and quite a few people would be drunk starting up.RTE: Was that dangerous?MICHAEL: Well, you know they say that if you slip drunk you don’t get hurt.Those who were stiff and tried to save themselves were more liable to gethurt. When you think of the number of people going up and how steep it is atthe end, it’s remarkable how few do die. Probably every other year someonedies, but generally from a heart attack rather than actually falling. The reasongiven for it being stopped was that people were getting hurt, but the truth is,it isn’t any safer in the light. Before, when it was dark you wouldn’t go outsidethe boundary of the light, because you knew there was a drop, but in daylightpeople get off the main path. A man died doing that just two years ago.Certainly the people of Morrisk, the village at the bottom of the mountain,weren’t happy when the night pilgrimage stopped, but hundreds of people,thousands probably, still climb it at night, including the Travellers. No onewill stop you, but mass doesn’t start now until eight o’clock in the morning.RTE: Are there other set prayers that people say going up at traditional restingplaces or wayside shrines?MICHAEL: Yes, there are a series of stations on the ascent where pilgrimstraditionally stop. At each station a series of traditional prayers would berecited—Our Fathers, Hail Marys, and the Creed—often while the pilgrimcircled the station on their knees, although this is now dying out.1 Ed. note. The Marian Shrine at Knock: On August 21, 1879, fifteen people, age five to seventy-five, reportedseeing an apparition of the Mother of God, St. Joseph, and St. John the Evangelist in the south gable of theKnock parish church. The apparitions appeared during daylight, as bright, unmoving figures and stayed untilwell after dusk. Although the praying witnesses were wet from the rain, they reported that the ground underthe apparition remained dry. The apparitions were repeated three times in the following spring. Variouspossible natural theories explaining the apparition were investigated by church authorities, but none wereproved. A basilica was built at Knock in the 20th century to memorialize the event, and the Roman Catholicpilgrimage site was given official approval by Pope John Paul II in 1979, on the centenary of the apparition.1415
Road to Emmaus Vol. XII, No. 2 (#45)CROAGH PATRICKBronze and Iron Age Croagh PatrickRTE: Do you have any idea how long pilgrimages to the area have been goingon?MICHAEL: That’s a harder question, and a big debate. The mountain is theincredible centerpiece of a whole ritual landscape, so there have been peopleliving on and around Croagh Patrick for about 7,000 years. Because of itsshape and size, it could easily have been a prehistoric sacred peak. I used tothink that myself until very recently, because there are many Neolithic sitesaround the mountain.The Boheh Stone, or St. Patrick’s Chair, is a multi-ledged rock about thesize of this room, completely covered in Neolithic rock art except for onesmall cross carved into the side. Adjacent to it is a children’s burial groundhidden on a knoll, obviously an early cemetery because there are a numberof decorated crosses there. From St. Patrick’s Chair, you have an exquisiteview to the west of the beautiful pyramid-shaped Reek.Gerry Bracken, a friend of mine who died recently, observed that the sunappeared to set on the summit of the mountain when viewed from this beautifulrock. When you are standing on the Boheh Stone, Croagh Patrick is infront of you dominating the horizon: in late afternoon the sun swings aroundSt. Patrick’s Chair (Boheh Stone), Fr. Frank Fahey on pilgrimage, 1990. Courtesy Harry Hughes.Another very beautiful early site about four miles from the mountain is calledSt. Patrick’s Chair. It is on the 22-mile route from Ballintubber Abbey (the traditionalstarting point) and is actually one of the pilgrimage stops. Many ofthe early Christian stops along the route are reused pre-Christian sites: Lankillcemetery, for example, is an early Christian monastery site with tall BronzeAge standing stones inscribed with beautifully decorated crosses. Further on,are Iron Age sites, also with inscribed crosses, and the Boheh Stone.Sun rolling down the north slope of the mountain on April 18 and August 24 as seen from theBoheh Stone. Courtesy Harry Hughes.and sits on top of the mountain, and then appears to glide down the northface. Gerry got an amazing multiple exposure photograph showing the wholesequence. It looks like someone is pulling it down the mountain at a perfectangle. A physicist from the national observatory published an article on thephenomenon, saying that this prehistoric religious phenomenon explainswhy the rock art was there.1617
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RTE No 20 Interior - Road to Emmaus Journal

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