CULTURE New book lays Croagh Patrick bare

Pilgrims’ path laid bare


Áine Ryan

PYRAMIDAL peak, Croagh Patrick, reaches deeply into the complex and cavernous spirituality of the Irish psyche. For thousands of years pilgrims and penitents, preachers and prosletisers, old and young, have climbed its steep slopes in the hope of redemption, salvation and renewal.
Ireland’s holy mountain – also known as the Reek – is a dramatic symbol of this country’s fertile legacy of culture and archaeology, history and traditions, mythology and mysticism.
Despite the serious challenges being faced by the institutional Catholic Church, this holy mountain continues to attract hundreds of thousands of visitors annually. On Reek Sunday alone – the last Sunday in July – over 20,000 people climb its crooked pathways and shaled cone.
Local author, Harry Hughes’s book, ‘Croagh Patrick – A Place of Pilgrimage, A Place of Beauty’, captures the mystical mystery of this imposing mountain. It introduces the reader to its rich religious history and its pervading place in the Irish race memory. The mountain’s natural beauty and imposing outline, overlooking scenic Clew Bay, is captured in the many photographs that enhance this wonderful potpourri of history and folklore, archaeology and etymology.
Primarily though, this ancient mountain’s steep pathways have been etched and hewn over the millennia by the simple faith of its pilgrims. Early Christians such as our patron, Saint Patrick, in 441AD, trod the ancient chariot route, the Tóchar PhΡdraig, to the mountain – once also a place of Celtic and pagan worship – where he fasted for 40 days and 40 nights. So too, barefooted and beating their breasts, our peasant forefathers replicated this custom with a faith defined by its simplicity and devoutness.
Harry Hughes writes: “A pilgrimage may be an act of simple devotion to beg God’s grace for the pilgrims and their people, to help the soul through the threads of life to the heavenly home. It may be an act of expiation, craving forgiveness for crime or wrong-doing. It may be an act of thanksgiving for a favour granted for a recovery from illness. There is no doubt that climbing Croagh Patrick forms an event in one’s life that is never forgotten.”
Enhanced by the photographs and the drawings, each busy chapter in this poignant book chronicles an essential tale that pits human frailty and determination against the steadfast power of nature mediated by our integral quest for the transcendent – that elusive world beyond the horizon.   

CROAGH PATRICK – A Place of Pilgrimage, A Place of Beauty is available in bookshops with a recommended retail price of €9.99. 

About the author
Harry Hughes is a member of a well-known Westport business family who own Hotel Westport, Portwest and the Carraig Donn chain of shops. He has long held an interest in Croagh Patrick and is chairman of the Croagh Patrick Archaeological Committee and of the Croagh Patrick Famine Memorial Committee.

Capturing Croagh Patrick
Beacon of hope
“The continued popularity of pilgrimage to Croagh Patrick indicates a still persistent and perhaps ineradicable instinct towards the transcendent on our part. This deeply spiritual mountain … continues to provide a beacon of hope for many whose faith has been diminished by the rise of materialism and the omnipresent challenges of consumerism.… The social dimension of the experience, particularly on Reek Sunday, disputes the pervasiveness of individualism and celebrates the notions of communality and belonging as an intrinsic part of our various spiritual journeys.”
Dr Michael Neary, Archbishop of Tuam

Reek and bay ‘dressed up in gold and purple’
“I caught sight of the most beautiful view I ever saw in the world. The mountains were tumbled about in a thousand fantastic ways, but the bay, and the Reek, which sweeps down to the sea, and a hundred islands in it, were dressed up in gold and purple, and crimson with the cloudy west in flame. The islands in the bay looked like so many dolphins and whales basking there. It forms an event in one’s life to have seen that place, so beautiful.”
Victorian writer William Thackeray observing the scene as he travelled from Leenane to Westport in an uncomfortable side car in 1843.