Twentieth Century

"An Excursion into the Fifth Century"

"A boy was standing like a ballet dancer poised on the rock"

"Beside St. Brigid’s Cross"

"It was said stone dreams and animal sleeps and man is awake"

"Low rocks, a few weasels, lake"

"Monks in convents of coracles"

"Primeval magic among the trees"

"The green islands that were his morning hope and his evening despair"

"The lake waves caught the concrete stilts of the Basilica"

"The little islands of Pan held in the crooked elbow of the lake"

"The middle of the island looked like the memory Of some village evicted by the Famine"

"The penance wheel turned round again"

"The silver strands of the individual sometimes show"

"The turnips were a-sowing in the fields around Pettigo"

"Three boatloads of Dublin’s unemployed came in"

"Water withers from the oars"

"We pray to ourself. The metal moon, unspent"

"For this is Lough Derg, St. Patrick’s Purgatory"

"Their hands push closed the doors that God holds open"

"They come to Lough Derg to fast and pray and beg"

"Women and men in bare feet turn again"

Bobby describes Station Island

Bobby expresses his confusion

Bobby interrogates Jenny about her motivations

Jenny asks Bobby to go to Lough Derg

Jenny completes the stations

Jenny crosses to Station Island

Jenny struggles with her emotions

Lough Derg in the rain

The barriers of self

The impression of Lough Derg on Jenny and Bobby

The Island's gift

"A fantastic display of lightning which continued for nearly two hours"

"A melancholy silence shrouded the scene"

"A mountain-locked lake that is just as secluded to-day as when Saint Patrick was attracted to its solitude"

"All around it is the glint and stir of water"

"Briars encompass it so thickly, and with such aggressiveness, one cannot approach within five or six feet of the mound"

"In going there they are answering the call for blood"

"In the end, all were obliged to return to the mainland and wait in the ferry house until the storm subsided"

"Occasional freakish summer storms"

"On prizing up a few loose stones, one exposes heaps of enormous bluebell bulbs, white and skull-like in shape"

"Recited in the open, while facing the airy spaciousness of mountain, sky and water"

"Rip Van Winkle whose experience is reversed"

"Shaking the very stars with their fusillades of Paters"

"The shaft on which this iron cross is set is precious, for it was salvaged from the lake"

"The stones become doubly slippery and the whole slope acquires a slithery and greasy surface"

"The very strangeness of the whole rite is like an old memory overlaid by time"

"There were boats at hand, and presence of mind, even among the onlookers, could have averted the tragedy"

"Unconcernedly the Easter sunshine poured down on that scene of desertion and decay"

"You will find instead only stumps, bumps, and conquering armies of weeds, cruel in their strength"

An omen of disaster prior to the 1795 accident

Burials on Friars' Island, in Templecarne, and further away

The 1795 disaster

The Franciscans

The journey of five women returning to Ireland in 1922

"A landscape that is usually a monotonous monochrome of either brown or grey tints"

"An ominous cloud appeared in the north"

"Floating on some miracle raft"

"He always looked for the most inaccessible place in every district"

"Lake of the Grouse"?

"No road, and not even a defined path, goes around the lake"

"One of the loneliest places on earth"

"Rolling, tawny bogland framed the blue water"

"The buildings give the impression of resting on the water"

"The Chair stands out sharply against the vandyke brown of hibernating heathers and the orange of wilted bracken"

"Those trackless hills enfold the lake as though to hide it."

"Tradition, when jealously guarded and carefully handed down is a reliable source of information"

Forty-six small islands

Friars' Island

Saints' island and its soils

Seadavog Mountain

Templecarne: Patrick's first church?

The lake returns to the Diocese

"We left the Island with dry skies but still carrying our fast with us"

"We seemed to stand in a dim place where two worlds meet"