Every July, Thousands of Irish Pilgrims Climb up Croagh Patrick. But, Their Faith Tested by National Crises, How Much Longer Can They Continue This Ancient Tradition?
By Manchan Magan
Guardian (United Kingdom)
July 31, 2009
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jul/31/croagh-patrick-pilgrimage
Ireland has, arguably, just experienced its most harrowing, helter-skelter year since it achieved independence in 1921. After a decade-long economic boom, the country's finances crashed to a shuddering halt last autumn, while the Catholic church was finally stripped of much of its moral authority and political influence by the publication of reports into decades of child sex abuse.
With the country feeling misguided and directionless, then, the atmosphere at our greatest annual sacred gathering was distinctly muted. A staggering 20-25,000 pilgrims still climb Croagh Patrick mountain – a soaring cone-shaped 765m (2,500ft) peak that rises above Clew Bay in Co Mayo – each year on the last Sunday in July (the nearest Sunday to the original pagan festival of Lughnasa), often barefoot.
This is where the Irish have always come for guidance and reassurance at the beginning of harvest time; later, it became a place for penance for sins committed. We've been coming here for more than 3,000 years, since our Neolithic ancestors first chose it as a sacred site. Later, we came to worship the Celtic sun god, Lugh; then, in AD441, the site was cannily co-opted by St Patrick, who fasted here for 40 days and nights before banishing the snakes from Ireland. Ever since, we have been coming in memory of him.
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| Pilgrims make their way to the summit of Croagh Patrick, a tradition that goes back thousands of years. Photo by Tim Thompson |
By 6am last Sunday, thousands of pilgrims were already winding their way up the rutted, fuchsia-lined track, streaming through a network of stone-walled fields towards the sacred mountain. It is a mainly rural bunch: elderly farmers in wellies and suit jackets, beer-fattened lads in Gaelic football tops, young parents with puckish children and no-nonsense women in dreary raincoats – similar to a crowd at an all-Ireland hurling final, in fact. There are few signs of the swaggering, style-obsessed urbanites who seem to have taken over Ireland in the last decade.
All around me, a continuous line of people sigh and groan as they make their way up the grey shale track in the face of drizzle-laden gusts sweeping in off the Atlantic. Bodies unaccustomed to exercise mutter to each other, "Will you make it, Mum?" "I'll wait for Nana; she's finding it tortuous." The general atmosphere is of cowed acceptance, grim-faced determination, with no trace of the festive joviality or spiritual elation one finds at pilgrimages abroad. We display the stoic, head-down fatalism of an army on the march.
A concerted media campaign to discourage going barefoot means there are only a few dozen unshod pilgrims this year – all of them male. Every jagged stone is etched into the contours of their faces; their eyes have a haunted, tormented look that is frightening. I try to give them plenty of room lest I stand on their toes, but the hordes coming up behind press me forward while, from above, pious pilgrims who began walking before dawn are already making their way back down again, sending rocks and stones hurtling past us.
Some of the unshod are elderly, with a grandchild to help them along; the anguish in their faces suggests they are suffering almost as much as their charges. Two of them look particularly affluent, and whispers go around that these are bankers racked with guilt at having led the nation to the verge of bankruptcy – seeking absolution for the fact that the rest of us are having to bale them out to the tune of £6bn.
It is hard to tell what exactly keeps people coming here every year; mostly it is the instinct to follow tradition, but this year more than ever I think people want reassurance in the familiar after the decimation of our economy. Unemployment has more than doubled, we have seen income drops, tax hikes and negative equity in our homes, and there is far worse still ahead. It is a time to reconnect to our roots, to remember who we were before we were hypnotised by the allure of chrome-spangled SUVs, Hermès bags and Juicy Couture sweatpants.
At Leacht Benáin, a cairn at the base of the summit cone, only a few elderly women are performing the penitential exercises that earn one "plenary indulgences" (the automatic forgiveness of sins): they recite the obligatory Our Fathers and the Hail Mary seven times while circling this ancient mound of stones. The conviction in the women's eyes gives no hint of the upheaval their faith has been through this year, sparked by the publication in May of the Ryan report into clerical child abuse, which found that rape and sexual molestation were "endemic" in church-run residential schools up until the 1980s, and that tens of thousands of Irish children were sexually, physically and emotionally abused by priests and nuns.
I notice, too, the Archbishop of Tuam, the Most Rev Michael Neary, still making his way up, looking frail and grey. I'm reminded of the promise St Patrick wrestled from an angel up here on the mountain, which guaranteed that the Irish would never lose their faith.
Rejoining the crenellated wall of humanity winding its way upwards, I see a Polish woman collapsing to the ground, breathing frantically. The crowd parts to give her room, but no one stops, hardened as they are by the harrowing blasts of wind that whip up sporadically. I look around for any signs of hope or happiness, and see it only in the proud smiles of children, exultant upon accomplishing each tortuous section of track.
The final stretch is a sheer flank of loose rock where every scrambling step sends stones flying back down, as if the mountain is actively repelling us. Eventually I reach the summit and am rewarded by glorious views of the Nephin Beg mountains to the north, and the grey waters of Clew Bay glinting with emerald islands. There is something remarkable about standing on this site where Irish people have been worshipping for so long.
In theory we are meant to go on our knees now, saying more Hail Marys and praying for the pope's intentions, but few bother to do so. The pilgrims today are Ireland's traditionalists, and it is understandable that they are not smiling. The certainties around which our society was built have been shaken to the core. I notice, too, that few are taking much notice of the apathetic priest saying mass in a little glass box attached to the stone church here. When I hear him reminding us that we are all sinners and unworthy in the eyes of God, I head to a plastic shack selling extortionately priced tea.
Still, the fact that we have been gathering here for so long puts Ireland's current trials into some kind of perspective. We've been coming since well before the Catholic church existed, and we've survived worse economic hardship than the current one. Then again, on the very next day, an estimated 11,000 "pilgrims" flock to the opening of the first Ikea store in the republic – which makes me wonder how much longer this mountain will hold any relevance.
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