A SATURDAY before Christmas; destination Fitzwilliam Square and the continental market for mulled wine and trinkets. But it was the detour en route, into Sweny's chemist, No 1 Lincoln Place at the top of Dublin's Westland Row, that provided the lasting memories. It was there that Leopold Bloom went in Ulyssesto admire Sweny's bottles of potions and compounds and ponder the alchemy of the place, as today's occupants, Joyce aficionados all, put it.
Not so many potions on sale today. The shop, which retains the old chemists' fixtures and fittings, is an eclectic and delightfully higgledy-piggledy mix of Edwardian and later silver and plate – spoons, dishes and the like – together with costume jewellery and books, a lot of books. And there, while browsing among the stacked rows, one caught my eye. It was titled I Follow St Patrickand was written by Oliver St John Gogarty and published in 1938 by Rich & Cowan of Bedford Square, London. It was a bit moth-eaten, but nothing that would deter a purchase for €10 – and a first edition no less! On the title page, someone had written in pencil beside the author's name "Decd. 22.9.57 New York" accurately recording Gogarty's date and place of death.
In I Follow St Patrick, Gogarty tells of retracing St Patrick's journey from Wales to Ireland, his escape and eventual return as a Christian missionary. The author travels from St David's Head in Wales, to Saul in Co Down and Slemish in Antrim; to Slane and Tara and Trim in Meath, and then west to Granard and on west again, to Croagh Patrick in Mayo and Cahir Island, the tiny place off Inisturk littered with early Christian graves.
In an introductory note, a mere four paragraphs in length, Gogarty describes his own mission thus. “The present author’s objective is not biography so much as geographical history. And his aim is, by describing the places which the Saint visited and sanctified in our island, to draw from these, as from well-springs, inspirations which shall be truly traditional, pure, and undiluted by modern distractions and fatuous ideas of patriotism . . .”
There are nine paintings by the renowned English book illustrator, Bip Pares, scattered through the 336 pages. They are landscape watercolours, all in degrees of blue, from deep, almost black/blue, to a pale powder-blue wash. Each shows a place of importance to the narrative – the Road to Slemish, Lugnaedon’s Stone at Inchagoill Monastery on the island of the same name in Lough Corrib, and, of course, Croagh Patrick, the holy mountain the saint made his own.
Gogarty scaled the Reek, as Croagh Patrick is known locally, at 3am in July, setting out from his home in Renvyle. His writing is beautifully descriptive.
“There was one star out at sea high up over a dark wall of cloud, like the last fruit of the bough in some heavenly orchard, when I rose to begin the journey to Croagh Patrick mountain, 30 miles distant from the place where I lay . . .
“Long fields of heather slope gently upwards at first, and then they become plateaux filled with large heather-bells and delightful little yellow sessile roses. But soon the rock breaks through and the mountain bares its arms. I sat to get my breath when I had climbed about 800 feet. It was almost dark. Blankets of thick fog obscured everything. The silence was
full of rest. It was doing me
good . . .”
It was exactly so for me and my daughter Natasha when we made the same journey, at the same time of day, last Reek Sunday at the start of a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela. “Here and there a climber fell forward,” writes Gogarty, “but not far, for the hill was becoming somewhat perpendicular. I withdrew from the human stream and sat down on a wet rock. I looked on the people as they passed. Country people for the most part, and here and there a country girl spoiled by some absurd fashion from the ready-mades of England that looked wholly out of place in this environment. Will no one tell the country girls that nothing is more becoming than a shawl and that bare feet are better than cheap, high-heeled shoes?”
He should have seen what we saw! Ugg boots and flip-flops, stiletto heels straight from Saturday night/Sunday mornings discos . . . But for all the inappropriate – at times dangerously inadequate – clothing, the ritual endures and no doubt this St Patrick’s Day, there will be many scaling the Reek, and many more during the summer months.
Gogarty's book contains a translation (by Jack Lindsay) of The Confession, one of the two surviving samples of the saint's writings (the other is his Letter to Coroticus). Paragraph 60 of The Confessionis the one that attracts me most. In it, Patrick writes of the sun which "rises by God's command on our behalf every day".
“But it will never reign,” he wrote, “nor will its Splendor endure; but all who worship it, wretched men, shall stumble upon their punishment.”
This, surely, is why Patrick went to the distinctive mountain on the shores of Clew Bay in 441AD: to challenge the sun worshippers and convert them. They had been there perhaps as long ago as 4000BC and left behind abundant evidence of the importance they attached to the rising and the setting of the sun, their giver of life. But they took Patrick at his word and became Christian. And so the Reek, a place of pagan significance and ritual, metamorphosed into Ireland’s most enduring place of Christian pilgrimage.
Gogarty concluded his journey in the steps of the saint noting: “Ireland without St Patrick is unthinkable. Every person on our island shares something of the personality of that steadfast and enduring man who is spoken of more frequently with affection that with awe”.
Here’s hoping the sun shines today, whatever your beliefs.
Peter Murtagh's book, co-authored with Natasha Murtagh, Buen Camino! – A Father-Daughter Journey from Croagh Patrick to Santiago de Compostela, is published by Gill and Macmillan on March 25th