William Carleton: the Lough Derg Exile

Abstract

Most tribes have holy ground, a sacred place that has come to stand for a presumed, numinous essence: the tribe transcendent. Lough Derg in County Donegal, a small lake with an island in it, Station Island, is such a symbol for the native Irish. An ancient site of pilgrimage associated with St Patrick, it evokes the central place of Catholicism in Irish culture, a position that in turn gives the people their spiritual purpose and distinction. Seamus Heaney has written a long poem about doing the pilgrimage, ‘Station Island’, and in a footnote he explains to non-Irish readers the historical and practical implications of the island:

The island is also known as St Patrick’s Purgatory because of a tradition that Patrick was the first to establish the penitential vigil of fasting and praying which still constitutes the basis of the three-day pilgrimage. Each unit of the contemporary pilgrim’s exercises is called a ‘station’, and a large part of each station involves walking barefoot and praying round the ‘beds’, stone circles which are said to be the remains of early monastic cells.¹