Croagh Patrick

Croagh Patrick may be an icon of Catholicism, but it has welcomed pilgrims since long before St Patrick, writes Áine Ryan. Photos by Michael McLoughlin

Long before the arrival of St Patrick in the fifth century, Croagh Patrick, then known as Cruachán Aigle, was an altar to the many deities worshipped by our pagan forefathers – Lugh, Danu, Brigitta. Around 100,000 pilgrims and visitors climb the mountain annually. On the last weekend of July, Mayo becomes Mecca as up to 30,000 pilgrims climb the mountain during the Reek Sunday pilgrimage.

Rain, hail, or sweltering heat will not deter them. Sharp stones will cut their feet. Blackthorn sticks will balance aching limbs. Friendly faces will beckon encouragement. Whirring helicopters will be on standby. Mayo Mountain Rescue, the Order of Malta, the Garda, armies of local volunteers, will assist the many casualties.

This dispassionate mountain boasts a dramatic litany of human casualties. In 2003, on Reek Sunday, a woman in her early thirties collapsed and died at Leacht Benáin, a cairn of stones, the first station at the base of the cone.

In Neolithic times, it was at this cairn of stones that a human sacrifice was annually made to the pagan gods. This was where farmers ritually congregated each autumn to thank the sun god for the harvest (Their story is told at the north Mayo centre, the Céide Fields.)

In a bloody ritual of human and animal sacrifice, a young man known as the Corn King was slain in thanksgiving, to appease a panoply of deities symbolising the elemental powers of nature.

Around 600 BC, the Celts assimilated this festival into their own seasonal rituals. Imbolc (1 February), Bealtine (1 May), Lughnasa (1 August) and Samhain (1 November) then incorporated the pre-Celtic primitive rituals held at each equinox and solstice.

St Patrick's banishing of the demons – after his 40-day and 40-night sojourn on the mountain – has traditionally been viewed as the symbolic beginning of Catholicism in Ireland. But it was, significantly, an evolution rather than a revolution.

The history of Irish Catholic worship remains intrinsically linked with paganism. After the Corn King was ritually sacrificed on the side of Croagh Patrick, the worshippers ate his flesh and drank his blood. While the Celts did not indulge in human sacrifice, they fashioned the last sheaf of harvested corn into a Corndolly or Cailleach. This was a symbol of survival throughout the dark, treacherous winter when the weakening sun became emaciated and powerless.

Come Imbolc – 1 February – the crops were not sown until the seeds of the Corndolly were replanted in symbolic thanksgiving for survival through the winter months.

This is a direct precursor of the transformation of the communion and wine of the Mass into the body and blood of Christ. At the Ould Lammas Fair, still held in Ballycastle, County Antrim, freshly-baked soda bread was traditionally used for communion wafers.

Over the millennia, and up to at least 50 years ago, the annual Reek Sunday pilgrimage was a penitent journey of thanksgiving. Take the small farmers of nearby Clare Island, Inishturk or Achill, for example.

A good year was when the hay was reeked, the corn was stacked, the turf clamped and the praties (potatoes), free of the dreaded blight, were pitted. Luxury was a cow that gave milk, a hen that laid eggs and a good bargain made at the May or November Fairs.

On the eve of the Reek Sunday pilgrimage these islanders would fast from the previous night. At dawn, they would put down their currachs and yawls and pull (row) or sail to the little pier at Murrisk, the village at the mountain's base.

They would then climb the mountain barefoot. Stopping at each station – Leacht Benáin, Roilig Mhuire, St Patrick's oratory – they would pray, as instructed. They would walk around the tiny oratory at the summit, fifteen times, praying for the Pope's intentions.

St Patrick's oratory, at the summit, was built in six months, by 12 local men, in 1905. They drew all the materials up the steep incline by donkey and horse. The project cost £100. It was funded by donations from emigrants and pilgrims. This year, on Reek Sunday, the Archbishop of Tuam, Michael Neary, will concelebrate a specially-dedicated Mass at 10.30 am, after which he will unveil a centenary plaque.

There is a quirky exoticism to the open-air foyer greeting pilgrims at the mountain base. The panpipes music of native Indian musicians wafts and curls up the mountain side. Stalls and kiosk filled with rosary beads, miraculous medals and holy water, burgers and chips, tortillas and paninis, raincoats and sticks litter the pathway.

An army of northern-Irish evangelists offer free tea and cordials in exchange for a quick sermon on redemption. "This is not the true path to finding redemption" and "Redemption will only be found by reading and understanding the Bible", they chorus.

Father Frank Fahey, long-time curate of nearby Ballintubber Abbey disagrees.

"This spirit of religious and spiritual pilgrimage is in keeping with a long traditional of practice throughout the world. It is also in keeping with a universal need and search for meaning, for a glimpse of that elusive and ever-beckoning transcendental," says Fahey.

Over the years Fahey has been a leading campaigner for the conservation of the Tóchar Phádraig, the ancient pilgrim path leading to Croagh Patrick, now itself a national monument. It was once a royal chariot route leading from Cruachán in County Roscommon, the seat of the kings of Connacht, they say.

Father Fahey regularly leads walks along a 22 km stretch of the Tóchar, from Ballintubber Abbey, the site of an early Patrician church, to the Reek. Some years ago he spearheaded the signing of the pathway which provides an odyssey through significant pre-Christian and Christian artefacts. The return walk, including the climb and descent, is a tough 12 hours.

"Recently, I led a group of Irish Army lads along the Tóchar, up the mountain and back again to Ballintubber. Later that evening the boys were, justifiably, indulging in a bit of boasting in the local pub, when they were interrupted by a man sitting at the end of the bar.

"'Sure that's nothing', he said. 'My grandmother used to get up at 6am, milk all the cows, feed the hens, do the walk, climb the mountain, come home and milk the cows again that evening.'

"That shut them up", said Fahey, laughing.

Sunday 31 July, people from Derry to Dingle, Texas and Taiwan, Coventry and Glasgow will converge on a mountain on the edge of the Atlantic. A human convoy of Christians and atheists, scientologists and geologists, old and young, will rock-and roll up the stony pathway. Some will wear designer walking boots, others platform sandals, others no shoes at all.

Those who have climbed the mountain seven years running will be assured of a direct path to heaven.

When they reach the summit, they will stop, exhausted, and look out over the breathtaking panorama that is Clew Bay. Just beyond Clare Island, lies the edge of the world – Hy Brazil and Nirvana beckons.

Meanwhile, the stubborn mountain has been saved from exploitation by mineralogists, gold-diggers. A Department of Environment order in 1990 protected – "on holy grounds" – the excavation of its mineral riches. After all, it has far too many stories to tell and dark secrets to keep.