I climbed the mountain that is most associated with St. Patrick just a couple of years ago. Croagh Patrick, as it is known (Cruach Phadraig in Irish), is a few miles from Westport, Mayo.
When I undertook this pilgrimage in early March, climbing this 2,500-foot-high mountain was arduous, not only because it was a rainy day but because the year before I had a knee replaced. I met only one or two people on the way up and down. One young man was almost jogging. He said he climbed Croagh Patrick each day in March to help raise funds for cancer. The other climber was a policeman (Garda) on holiday.
It took me seven hours to go both ways due to my knee problems. The way back down took longer than the way up, since my knees had to brace against the loose rocks that made up the top third of the climb.
At the top of the mountain it was snowing, and I had to seek cover in the doorway of a small chapel, Teampall Phadraig, the only building on the mountain. Halfway down it was sleeting. At the bottom, it was pouring rain. On the way down, as I paused in fatigue, a wonderful rainbow extended from the bogs on the other side of Croagh Patrick to Clew Bay just below me.
During the Gort Mor (the Great Famine of 1846-54) many thousands of poor Irish emigrated from here in ships ill-designed for Atlantic transport, and many died of disease and hunger. All told, over 1 million starved to death in the Great Famine, an event that did more to destroy the old Gaelic culture and language than any other single event.
A few miles away, in Westport, I found a youth hostel and a leisure center with a steam room nearby. The steam was so thick it was like a fog. The room was full of males and females of all ages whose faces I couldn’t see. I mentioned, rather proudly, that I had just climbed Croagh Patrick, and the steam room became animated with conversation as each of the local Mayo people talked about their adventures climbing Croagh Patrick. To my consternation, most said they had climbed it in three or four hours.
Stories about the legends of St. Patrick were part of the conversations, the fact that he had spent six years of captivity in this area of Mayo, not in the northeast of Ireland as some maintained.
After having been away for 20 years, much of it in St. Martin’s monastery in Tours, France, he returned to Mayo and stood in an ascetic exercise for 40 days demanding that God save all the Irish from falling into eternal perdition. God was so impressed with Patrick’s 40 days of steadfastness and the insistence on his demands that He relented, but required that the Irish make pilgrimages and do penances to gain salvation.
Ever since, it has become one of the two most important pilgrimages to honor St. Patrick and, no matter the suffering in the climb, the 35,000 pilgrims doing the climb gain much, as they believe, in the way of spiritual purification. Besides this one day of March 17, there is another important day for pilgrimage on Croagh Patrick — July 31, also known as Lughnasadh.
Patrick challenged kings and druids and managed to convert some of the native Gaelic aristocracy at Armagh, where he lighted the first Pascal fire. This symbolic gesture laid the foundations for Armagh as the ecclesiastical capital of Ireland.
There was a legend that the druids considered him such a threat to their power that when Patrick came to Armagh to try to convert Ui Loegaire (King O’Leary), he had to change himself and his followers into deer. The famous protective prayer known as “Patrick’s Breastplate” was associated with this legendary encounter.
Although the contemporary St. Patrick’s Day parades — which are held throughout the U.S., Canada, Australia, England, New Zealand and South America, with all their marching bands and their celebratory nature — were not traditional to Ireland, they have become a way of honoring the Irish diaspora. It is estimated that there are about 36 million Irish in America and 70 million worldwide, so this is a way of celebrating the one day each year given over to being Irish or being sympathetic to things Irish.
Hugh Curran was born in Donegal, Ireland, and immigrated to Canada with his parents before moving to Maine. He teaches courses in Peace and Reconciliation Studies at the University of Maine.