Pilgrimages in Donegal

 Pilgrimages to a variety of ancient ecclesiastical sites in Ireland are commonplace today, but below is an article from 1877 when things were rather different. It is a report in the Australian press of a lecture given by a priest who commended the importance of visiting traditional holy sites, in this case the Doon Well in County Donegal. I found this piece interesting not just for the choice of Donegal rather than some of the more famous places Father Barter listed towards the end of his talk, but also for the way in which he linked the Doon well to Lourdes, which had grown in fame and popularity throughout the Catholic world since the apparitions to Saint Bernadette there nearly twenty years earlier. I noticed a typically Victorian presentation of Irish holy places as wild and remote, an idea, then as now, central to 'Celtic Christianity' and a sense of a lost earlier and purer age. Here it's perhaps best summed up by the author's reference to 'the remote glens of Donegal, where the relics of some of the greatest of our Irish saints are not enshrined in gold or silver, but in crumbling walls, swathed in green ivy'. The writer recalls memories of the Penal Era as well, here too Victorian writers often presented the liturgy offered at the Mass Rock in a lonely glen as surpassing in spiritual quality the glories of High Mass offered in a European cathedral. I was unable to find out any further information on Father James Barter but for further information on the Doon Well you can do no better than this post by Dr Louise Nugent on her Pilgrimage in Medieval Ireland site:

IRELAND. 

PILGRIMAGES IN DONEGAL.

The Freeman reports the following lecture which was recently delivered by the Rev. James Barter, at the rooms of the St. Kevin's branch of the Catholic Union:— 

The rev. lecturer said a thick rain was falling when he drove late one evening last summer over the long and steep hill of Meenaroy, near Letterkenny, in the county Donegal. Looking before him into the dim twilight he saw a figure moving forward with much difficulty. Soon he came up with a peasant carrying a parcel on his back, who told him he was returning from a pilgrimage to "Doon Well," with a few bottles of its miraculous water, and that his home was still distant thirty miles off, near those mighty cliffs on the western coast of the county beneath which the waves of the wild Atlantic rave and roar for ever. The peasant went on to talk with enthusiasm of the supernatural powers of his precious burden, while he listened, and fancied he heard in the moaning of the wind the sneers of modern unbelievers, directed, however, with harmless effect, against the strong faith of the humble pilgrim. (Applause.) As he descended into the valley of Lough Finn he looked back upon the poor man whom he had just left, and he was swaying under his heavy burden and the pelting rain. He watched him until his bent form receded into the darkness, and that vision was stamped upon his memory. This incident suggested the idea of seizing the present occasion to awaken the memories of those places in his own native mountains consecrated by the piety of a thousand years. The present seemed to him a fitting time to tread again these holy scenes. (Applause.) The old devotion of France for her ancient shrines, which had been swept away by the shock of the Revolution, had been revived. Within the last few years the apparition of our blessed Lady to the poor girl, Bernadette Soubirons, in the grotto at Lourdes, has poured balm into the wounds inflicted on that great Catholic nation by blasphemers who set up the Goddess of Reason in Paris. Summer after summer a long stream of pilgrims, even from our own shores, poured out upon the scene of that apparition, and their gratitude for favours there received has crowned the rock of Massabielle with one of the finest temples of modern times. While wealth and fashion hurry through the gay cities of the Continent to swell the tide towards this favoured shrine and the celebrated sanctuary of Paray le Monial, it was, he thought, "a holy and wholesome thought" for such of his countrymen as declined to be dragged at the chariot wheels of fashion to gird their loins with the coarse cincture of the pilgrim of olden time and retire, into the remote glens of Donegal, where the relics of some of the greatest of our, Irish saints are not enshrined in gold or silver, but in crumbling walls, swathed in green ivy. (Hear, hear.) Here the vastness of the solitude would enable one to commune more fervently with God—the heart would be moved more deeply by the earnest piety of a fine people, and the will strengthened by the example of their pure and simple lives. (Applause.) 

After a brilliant description of the scenery surrounding the Rock of Doon, the lecturer related some of the historic memories connected with it. He said it was under the shadow of that rock the Catholics of the neighbourhood had to hear Mass in the dark days of persecution. It was upon that rock the O'Donnells were inaugurated chieftains of Tyrconnell, and it was here the ill-fated Sir Cahir O'Doherty fell, fighting for his rights against the English, in 1608, when he rose in rebellion to revenge the outrage offered him by Sir George Paulett, Governor of Derry. (Applause.) Close to this Rock of Doon, said the lecturer, is a well, blessed by a holy priest who lay concealed in these mountains. This was the sacred fountain from which the poor man whom he had met on the bleak Meenaroy fetched his burden, and it was the object of one of the most frequented pilgrimages in Donegal. On special or station days pilgrims might be seen in long procession winding over the mountain path leading to this privileged spot. They go round the well—some on their knees—reciting the rosary - and other prayers in tones so solemn and subdued that in the distance they came swelling on the ear like the tender wailing of the "Miserere." (Applause.) The holy places of Palestine were then sketched, and the enthusiasm with which they were frequented by pilgrims from the west down to the tune the Crusaders were expelled from Jerusalem by the Moslem. What had occurred, said the lecturer, in the Holy Land in early Christian times, and at Lourdes in our own day, was repeated at the well of Doon and at many another holy well and shrine in Ireland, for the hand of God had not been shortened. In Donegal there was not the Holy Sepulchre, nor the Mount of Olives, nor Calvary, but we had the penitential retreat of St. Patrick in the Island of Lough Derg, and numerous spots sanctified by the presence of St. Columba, now marked by a rude cross, or a blessed well, or the grass-grown remains of a chapel. Over twelve centuries had passed away since Columba's time, but his memory was still cherished by the people of his native mountains, and the faith of which he was the great apostle was still as green in their hearts as the wooded slope at Gartan on which he was born. These holy places were now sadly neglected. Sheep and cattle grazed within their hallowed precincts. He was sure they would join him that evening in the expression of a hope that a faithful people would help, before many years, to build upon these privileged spots, if not imposing structures, at least neat chapels, in which the local clergy could hear the confessions of the pilgrims on station days. It was not in Donegal alone these places of pilgrimage were to be found, for Glendalough, in Wicklow, Clonmacnoise, on the Shannon, and St. Brigid's, in Clare, were celebrated among the shrines of Ireland. There was Gougan Barra also, the famous sanctuary of St. Finbarre, rising out of the smooth lake, with a crown of moss on its brow, in which the traveller could read another lesson on the neglect with which the shrines of our country were treated. But he story of Gougan Barra and the other celebrated pilgrimages of Ireland remained to be told as it deserved. He had begun at least to give the history and scene of the holy places at Tyrconnell.