The toughest pilgrimage in the world

In the second of our three-part series, we follow Tom Davies to St Patrick's Purgatory, a small island on Lough Derg in Ireland.

More than a thousand people were crammed together on this small island, some sitting on benches and others walking around the untidy brown stones which formed the penitential beds. All were barefoot and watched us silently as we came ashore and walked up past the dank lawns. It was their silence which was so difficult to come to terms with.

I followed Felix up to a dormitory where a nun, dressed in grey robes and with wide severe features that seemed not to have been creased by too much laughter, told us to take off our shoes and socks and leave all our belongings on one of the beds. I pressed my fingers into the mattress, finding no give at all. 'They are hard,' said the nun, watching me. 'But when you do come to sleep here you won't even notice it.'

And so, barefoot and holding a rosary, I came out into the warm, damp yard where a fresh-faced priest with spiky ginger hair explained what I had to do. 'First you have to make a station. You start here at St Patrick's Cross where you kneel and say one Our Father, one Hail Mary and one Creed. Then you go to St Bridget's Cross...'

One whole station, I discovered, called for an hour of kneeling before and kissing crosses, circling the Basilica again and again, walking repeatedly around the stone beds of St Brendan, St Catherine and St Columba, kneeling on the shore facing the lake and pushing out your arms three times at St Bridget's Cross to renounce the world, the flesh and the devil. All prayers were to be said standing, walking or kneeling – but never sitting.

In between each station you could rest but you had to accomplish at least three stations before the beginning of the all-night vigil in the Basilica.

But I did settle down and after two stations was relaxed enough to begin nosing around to see what was going on. My most vivid and immediate impression of the place was the horrific ugliness of human feet. There were swollen feet with bulging blue veins and hammered toes. There were puffed-up ankles and feet with bunions and corns. All of them were stinking dirty from walking through the mud of the penitential beds though even the thickest layers of mud could not disguise those awful patterns – some flat and others fallen, some twisted and others skeletal, some knobbly and others bunched with arthritis. We spent a lot of time obsessing about feet on Lough Derg.

Yet in between stations we discussed lots of other things too since the Irish clearly can't give up yarning, not even on a penitential pilgrimage. By and large they were a jolly, devout bunch with hunched shoulders and grey hair. But there was a fair smattering of teenagers too, all eager to do their stations properly and not above telling the odd dirty joke to show how worldly they really were. 'So this priest asked me if I had ever slept with a woman and I said, oh to be sure, I must have dozed off a couple of times.'

With the ritual closing of the Basilica doors to symbolise those fearful hours when St Patrick battled with demons in a cave on this very island, the Rite of Penance began. A man ascended the pulpit and began reciting the Hail Mary into a microphone. We joined in. 'Hail Mary full of grace for the Lord is with ye,' he intoned, the words quickening and merging in a sort of long, electrified buzz. 'Blessed art thou amongst women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb Jesus Christ. Holy Mary Mother of God pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death.'

The congregation kept moving around and around inside and outside the Basilica as we went through the Hail Marys, the Our Fathers and Creeds. 'Our Father which art in heaven hallowed be thy name... On the third day he rose again. He ascended into heaven... I believe in the Holy Spirit...'

Throughout that penal night we were to chant aloud an incredible 396 Our Fathers, 124 Creeds and 648 Hail Marys.

There is a strange Jesuitical cunning in the endless repetition of these prayers since it is almost impossible to let your mind stray away from the words and their meanings as they echo through your consciousness. Any fantasies that begin forming are swiftly cut down. Pretend prayer is possible. It is the method of the mantra in which meaning builds up in layers.

The words might mean nothing, then they might mean everything. One minute they might be the empty cry of parrots and the next they are the profoundest insights of the greatest prophets. They might drift to you from a distance before erupting out of the very core of your being, be as soothing as a lullaby or as painful and direct as a knife in your side.

With the rain came a dawn as dark as a hangman's stare. Clouds of tiny moths had been hatched in the glooming light which was spreading out over the mirrored lake and the tiny granite fists of the islands in a great dripping symphony of twisting greys and mordant blacks. The whole universe seemed to be spreading up and outwards like a growing bubble and it was then that I believed I glimpsed something deep and rich in the Irish psyche.

This was not the bomb-throwing Irish so beloved of the media but a nation in her purest and most noble posture. This was the seed-bed of the Celtic Church; the great spiritual energy of a fundamentally decent people still prepared to punish their knees in prayer before a holy God; still prepared to suffer the pangs of an outrageous hunger; still prepared to walk barefoot over hard stones as they chanted their tiny litanies of love... all so that they could earn the right to drag themselves face to face with their beloved Patrick; that they might look up to the monumental majesty of their saint who suffered so much when he bargained with God to ensure the faith and future of the Irish; the man who fought demons for them. For them!

This damp dawn we were all there in a fellowship of suffering with Patrick. His ineluctable personality was there with us, next to us, below us and above us. We were now suffering as he had once for us. We had come to pay homage to him; this complete man who comforted us still.

But I sinned again soon after that. I found a can of Coca-Cola in my bag so I sat in the lavatory , my underpants wrapped around the tin to keep down the noise of its fizzing, and drank it with grateful relish.

After morning prayer it was a joy to get our shoes and socks on again. To the call of a bugle, we all filed down to the boats and Father McSorley sang us the traditional hymn of farewell as we moved off.

I had been a remarkable visit; a bit like moving on a time warp back into the fifth century. Even as I looked around at the brown and grey hills and the ruins of deserted housed I was still not sure what had hit me. I had not done battle with demons but even a few weeks later I still felt a deep and mysterious sense of renewal. It was an encouraging feeling and there and then, on that boat, I promised I would do Lough Derg again but better. No slipping into bed, no mineral water that fizzes or any heretical stuff like that.

This serialization is taken from the new edition of Tom Davies's book, 'Wild Skies and Celtic Paths', published by Triangle, October 1998, £6.99. To order your copy online, click here.

This extract from 'Wild Skies and Celtic Paths' is reproduced by permission of Triangle/SPCK. Copyright © Tom Davies 1998.

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