The Wild Rover_ A Blistering Journey Along Britain_s Footpaths - Mike Parker [87]
This was a coy reference to the hullabaloo of autumn 2009, when Dublin healer and soi-disant mystic Joe Coleman declared publicly that Mary herself had appeared to him and promised that she would be back at Knock on the afternoon of 11 October. Twenty thousand pilgrims came to see. Expectation and excitement built up as Coleman secreted himself in the basilica. He appeared outside, and processed through the crowd holding a huge crucifix. Folk trampled on each other to touch it. And then the sun came out from behind a cloud. People started clapping, and saying that they could see the Virgin in it. Cameras and eyes were pointed straight at the sun. After a minute or so squinting at it, people started to see strange shapes and had the sensation that the sun was spinning around. They shrieked and hollered. It’s a miracle! Or it could have been the warning signs of retinal detachment: cases of solar retinopathy soared in Ireland in the months after. Either way, Coleman announced that Mary had enjoyed herself so much, she’d be back again on 31 October. Only about a quarter of the crowd came back this time, and it wasn’t quite as sunny. It had caused enough of a ruckus though for the Church to put up posters at the airport and distance themselves from Coleman and his visions. The Archbishop of Tuam stuck a tart message on his website: ‘Unfortunately, recent events at the Shrine obscure [our] essential message. They risk misleading God’s people and undermining faith. For this reason such events are to be regretted rather than encouraged.’ It would seem that the Blessed Virgin has an Appear By date on her, except of course when she returns as an image in a tree trunk or a pizza.
This was exactly why I wanted to go and do my pilgrimage in Ireland. A country where some nutter could make thousands of people travel across the country to convince themselves that they had seen the face of God in a cloud is somewhere that takes this stuff deadly seriously. A place where people might sink to their knees, burst into tears, shriek in Latin or tongues and wave their stick at the heavens. You just wouldn’t get that in the C of E. The week before I left, an old episode of Father Ted had been on TV. In it, Mrs Doyle is heading off on her Lenten retreat, which includes a pilgrimage up St Patrick’s Hill, a barely disguised Croagh Patrick. Dougal asks Ted what’s so special about the hill, and Ted replies: ‘Ah, it’s a big mountain. You have to take your socks off to go up it, and once you reach the top, they chase you back down again with a big plank. It’s great fun.’ Mrs Doyle is not impressed: ‘Oh, I don’t want it to be any fun at all, Father. I want a good, miserable time.’ My sentiments entirely, and I was sorely disappointed that it wasn’t Ryanair operating the route I needed into Knock.
Croagh Patrick took its name from the 40 biblical days and nights that St Patrick spent on its summit in AD 441. He’d travelled there from Ballintober Abbey, 20 miles further inland, along an ancient track that is believed to have been constructed to ferry druids and pilgrims from the seat of the Kings of Connaught to the holy mountain. The path, called the Tóchar Phádraig, or Patrick’s Causeway, has been re-opened over the past 25 years, though it passes across 63 different pockets of private land and is only freely open on a few days of the year. One of those days was Reek Sunday, and the Abbey was organising a pilgrimage for those who wanted to process to the Reek along this venerable route, before joining the rest of the throng ascending the mountain. I signed up immediately, and booked a B&B for the weekend in Ballintober.
It all fitted: Ballintober Abbey had played a major part in my fondly remembered trip of 20 years ago, for I’d had two startlingly different experiences there just a couple of days apart. The first was with a friend, a very English and very Anglican priest, who had come visiting