All the Themes of Hagiography

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Nótaí na nEagarthóirí:Editors’ Notes

Our issue opens at midnight in Donegal on the Feast of St. Colm Cille’s death.There, anthropologist Dr. E. Moore Quinn, as participant-observer, followsthe annual performance of An Turas Cholm Cille, a pilgrimage of fifteen sta-tions traditionally associated with the sixth-century saint. Walking us alongthe route widely thought to be the oldest continuing pilgrimage in Ireland,Quinn also takes us through some anthropological theories, folklore studies,oral traditions, and local interpretations that seek to understand both the localevent and the phenomenon of pilgrimage itself. Quinn finds Fiona Bowie’sideas on the “typology of place” and the allegorical nature of pilgrimage espe-cially helpful; yet, as we journey with Quinn and several dozen others, wesense that these analyses take us only so far, for the experience itself is essen-tial to its meaning. E.Moore Quinn is the author of Irish-American Folklore inNew England (2009) and of articles in Irish Studies Review, Éire-Ireland, andAnthropological Quarterly.

When the Irish economy tumbled in 2008, everyone—elected officials, opinionleaders, and the general public—found themselves in the midst of what wasquite literally a crash course in Economics. As Dr. Timothy White notes, sub-stantial scholarship and popular history has emerged to explain the suddendownturn, and some facts are clear—notably, that the roots of the crisis lie inan overheated construction industry and a corrupt and reckless financial sec-tor. Less clear toWhite are the reasons that commentators find so little to hopefor in the Irish economy.While admitting the deep pain and far-reaching con-sequences of the crash, he argues that the Irish economy has been fundamen-tally transformed: many of the policies that brought the affluence of the Tigeryears may yet provide a basis for future prosperity. TimothyWhite is the authorof numerous articles on Irish politics, which have appeared in Irish Studies

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E. Moore Quinn

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“All the Themes of Hagiography”:An Turas Cholm Cille Revisited

The bell tower of the Church of Ireland hovered darkly as some thirty pilgrimsgathered with hushed voices at the gravel lot outside the cemetery walls ofGleann Cholm Cille, a breac-Gaeltacht—that is, a partially Irish-speaking—village in County Donegal. It was nearing midnight, June 9, 2010, and the offi-cial performance of an Turas Cholm Cille, or “Colm Cille’s Penitential Sta-tions,” reputedly the longest surviving pilgrimage in Ireland—and, covering adistance of three and a half miles, or five kilometers, also the longest walk of allIrish pilgrimages—was about to begin.1

Historically, most pilgrims have undertaken the journey barefoot, but thisyear, everyone’s feet were clad. Within the next four hours, those gatheredwould face what an early twentieth-century writer called “the calvary of theTuras.”2 In silence, they would stop at fifteen “stations” to circle, genuflect, prayindividually and collectively, recite fifteen decades of the rosary, and outline thevillage’s sacred contours in single file.

Those villagers who stayed secure at home peering from windows and door-ways would observe the boundaries of their sacred world delineated by bodiesmoving through space, etched by the light and shadow of flickering lamps. Thenext day, the anniversary of the death of the founder saint, they would talk aboutthe impressions made as we circled Saint Colm Cille’s chair, where he had rested,his bed, where he had slept and where we had lain in imitation of him, and hiswell, where we had drunk and collected his healing water. The pilgrims would

new hibernia review / iris éireannach nua, 14:4 (geimhreadh / winter, 2010), 9–26

1. See: Daphne D. C. Pochin Mould, Irish Pilgrimage (Dublin: M. H. Gill and Son, 1955), p. 103, andCríostóir Mag Fhearaigh, “The Turas, A Pilgrimage in Gleann Cholm Cille,” Ulster Folklife, 36(1990), 89. There are numerous spellings of this Irish name, the village, and the pilgrimage; here,unless the words are spelled differently in a quotation or title, I use the uniform Irish spellings ofColm Cille, Gleann Cholm Cille, and an Turas Cholm Cille.2. E. Canon Maguire, D. D., A History of the Diocese of Raphoe, volume 1 (Dublin: Browne andNolan, 1920), p. 458.

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marvel at how we had crossed a dark and silent landscape to find cross-inscribedstone slabs that have stood for more than one thousand years.

I have consistently been one of those pilgrims. Gleann Cholm Cille is the siteof my anthropological fieldwork to which, as a participant observer, I havereturned frequently since the mid-1990s to study such matters as the revitaliza-tion of the Irish language, the discourse of tourism, the legacy of Father JamesMcDyer’s “Save the West” campaign, and, of particular interest, the annual per-formance of an Turas Cholm Cille. When the 1400th anniversary of the saint’sdeath was commemorated in 1997, I presented my findings to the communityby comparing an Turas Cholm Cille to other pilgrimages like Santiago de Com-postela, Mecca, and Benares. This religious ritual continues to draw partici-pants—usually numbering thirty to fifty each year—though there was a sig-nificant rise in participation in the anniversary year of 1997. The walk is toorigorous for the elderly; most of the pilgrims are middle-aged, though youngerpeople do take part every year.

A number of scholars have written about pilgrimage in Ireland, approaching thesubject from varied angles.3 The anthropologists Victor and Edith Turnerexplore the penitential stations of Lough Derg for their elements of anti-struc-tural communitas and their ability to free pilgrims from the confines of rigidi-ty, hierarchy, rationality, and abstraction.4 Mary Lee Nolan, a comparative geo-grapher, addresses the nontypical features of Irish pilgrimage in relationship toits Continental model where in the past, tombs of martyrs, saints’ physicalremains, and Marian devotions attracted worshippers. Nolan contends that inIreland, the dedication to particularly local saints, resistance to British rule, anda shrine’s remoteness have motivated Irish women and men to walk the stations.She eschews the Turners’ ideas of “nuclear paradigms”—that is, patterns of pil-grimage upon which adaptations were grafted—and insists that more than athird of Ireland’s sacred sites were “pagan Celtic religious centers.”5

An Turas Cholm Cille Revisited

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3. Classic works on the subject of Irish pilgrimage include Philip Dixon Hardy, The Holy Wells ofIreland (Dublin: Hardy and Walker, 1840) and Máire Mac Neill, The Festival of Lughnasa: A Studyof the Survival of the Celtic Festival of the Beginning of Harvest (Oxford: Oxford University Press,1962). More recent works that address the subject include, but are not limited to, Walter L. Brenne-man, Jr., and Mary G. Brenneman, Crossing the Circle at the Holy Wells of Ireland (Charlottesville:University Press of Virginia, 1995); Michael P. Carroll, Irish Pilgrimage: Holy Wells and PopularCatholic Devotion (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999); and Elizabeth Healy, In Searchof Ireland’s Holy Wells (Dublin: Wolfhound Press, 2001).4. Victor Turner and Edith Turner, Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture (New York: Colum-bia University Press, 1978), p. 250; see also Appendix B of this book.5. Mary Lee Nolan,“Irish Pilgrimage: The Different Tradition,” Annals of the Association of Amer-ican Geographers, 73, 3 (September, 1983), 423.

Folklore scholars offer yet another set of perspectives on Irish pilgrimage.Diarmuid Ó Giolláin’s study of holy wells focuses on tradition and the Irish pil-grims’ willingness to endure pain, travel great distances for cures, and engage infaction fighting. He discusses the revival of well worship in the nineteenth cen-tury, when excesses had been eliminated and discourses of cultural nationalismhad moved center stage, and concludes by calling for more ethnographies onpilgrimage and more scholarship oriented to “traditions of the saints to whomthe wells are dedicated.”6

Fiona Bowie, in The Anthropology of Religion (2002), puts forth the conceptof “typologies of place.” This is a heuristic that differs significantly from the per-spectives noted above; her stress is on the pilgrims’ destination. Bowie arguespilgrims are inclined to travel to one of four sacred entities: a sacred person, asacred text, a sacred place, and a sacred object. Crucially, she insists that partic-ipants experience pilgrimage as an allegorical journey.7 An Turas Cholm Cillecontains all of these elements. The movements toward a sacred person, text,place, and object in Gleann Cholm Cille’s “pilgrimage round”—the ritual pro-gression and the prescribed triadic circumambulation of a number of desig-nated stations—function both as a personal metaphoric journey for the indi-vidual pilgrim, and as a resacralization ceremony for the community.

In Ireland, the term “pattern”—from an pátrún, a corruption of “patron”—has been used interchangeably with the word “pilgrimage.” A pattern is thesocial custom of gathering on a fixed day at significant sites like wells, ruinedmonasteries, churches, and mountaintops. Historically, to assemble at suchplaces carried further significance for those who identified closely with Gael-ic placenames reminiscent of myth, literature, and folklore. Patterns in Ire-land—like pilgrimages practiced worldwide—involve moving, often bare-foot, reciting prescribed or individual prayers, leaving votaries behind, andtaking away objects to affirm that one has performed the rite.8 Drinking water


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6. Diarmuid Ó Giolláin, “Revisiting the Holy Well,” Éire-Ireland, 40, 1 and 2 (Spring–Summer,2005), 33. See also John Eade and Michael J. Sallnow, Contesting the Sacred: The Anthropology ofChristian Pilgrimage (New York: Routledge, 1991), p. 26.7. Fiona Bowie, The Anthropology of Religion (Malden MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2002), p. 246.8. For more on pilgrimage scholarship, see: Barbara Nimri Aziz, “Personal Dimensions of theSacred Journey: What Pilgrims Say,” Religious Studies 23, (1987) 247–61; Agehananda Bharati, “Pil-grimage Sites and Indian Civilization,” in Indian Civilization, vol. 1, ed. Joseph W. Elder,(Charlestown, MA: Acme Bookbinding , 1970), pp. 85–230; Ann Grodzinis Gold, Fruitful Journeys:The Ways of Rajasthani Pilgrims (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989); Peter Harbison, Pil-grimage in Ireland: The Monuments and the People (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1992);Michael Herity, “The Antiquity of an Turas (the Pilgrimage Round) in Ireland,” in Lateinische Kul-tur im VIII, ed. A. Lehner and W. Berschin (St. Ottilien: Jahrhundert, 1993), pp. 95–143; Alan E. Mori-nis, Pilgrimage in the Hindu Tradition: A Case Study of West Bengal (Delhi: Oxford University Press,1984); William S. Sax, Mountain Goddess: Gender and Politics in a Himalayan Pilgrimage (New

from wells or streams and bathing the body also constitute aspects of the rit-ual; often, “holy” water is reputed to contain cures for disease and protectionfrom evil. Some suggest that the practice of the pattern continues behaviorsthat are pre-Christian.9 Well worship, for instance, clearly had its pre-Chris-tian origins revalued by early missionaries who appropriated the wells forChristian baptism.10

In Ireland’s past, Christian and non-Christian worldviews were nearly oneand the same. This was, as S. J. Connolly writes,

largely because no conflict between these elements existed in the minds of theparticipants themselves. Whether seen as devotions at the shrine of a Christiansaint or as ritual practices at a well or other site believed to have magical powers,the ceremonies of the pattern fulfilled much the same function. They enabled


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York: Oxford University Press, 1991); and Victor Turner and Edith L. B. Turner, Image and Pilgrim-age in Christian Culture (New York: Columbia University Press, 1978).9. See: S. J. Connolly, Priests and People in Pre-Famine Ireland, 1780–1845 (New York: Gill andMacMillan, 1982), pp. 137–38; Mac Neill, p. 25; Patrick J. O’Connor, Living in a Coded Land: IrishLandscape Series No. 1 (Limerick: Oireacht na Mumhan Books, 1992), p. 30.10. Énri Ó Muirgheasa, “The Holy Wells of Donegal,” Béaloideas, 6, 2 (1936), 143.

An Turas Cholm Cille begins and ends at the site of a ruined megalithic monument.The Church of Ireland can be seen in the background.

men to feel that customary observances had been made at the correct time, andthus that something had been done to invoke supernatural protection and assis-tance for themselves and their concerns.11

Within such a worldview, social behaviors could be coupled readily with reli-gious ones; indeed, Irish pilgrims were as wont to engage in trading, dancing,entertaining, and faction fighting as they were to say prayers. This penchant,however—coupled with widely reported carnivalesque activities—irked Britishofficials who, failing to identity with ideas regarding sacred geography, inter-preted the landscape as “but rocks and stones and trees.”12 The pattern, sym-bolizing religious persuasions that could no longer be accommodated by thecolonial order, became “such a rallying-point of devotion and loyalty that itwould simply have to be extinguished if the Catholic religion were ever to bestamped out.”13 This has been a feature of colonial strategies for suppression ofreligious beliefs elsewhere; as William Sax notes in his study of the Himalayas,“a ban on public processions has inevitably been one of the first acts of imper-ial powers, be they central Asian or European.”14 Authorities of the establishedchurch were of the same persuasion, claiming that the pilgrimages were super-stitious and idolatrous, and they too wanted them stopped.15

In Ireland, civil authorities threatened that dire consequences would ensuewere “large and riotous assemblies” allowed to gather. In 1704, an act of the Irishparliament forbade attending patterns, with the penalty of a whipping, fine, orboth.16 As the eighteenth century progressed, Roman Catholic authoritiesjoined with religious and civil ones to ban other popular religious customs; forinstance, an caoineadh, the ritual lament for the dead, became taboo. Even sig-nificant shrines like Lough Derg were targeted. In the Catholic writer AliceCurtayne’s popular history of the Lough Derg pilgrimage, she remarks that inthe seventeenth century Ireland’s native population comprised

only defenceless non-combatants upon whom the conqueror forced thereformed religion. ‘Roman Catholic priests’ were banished by proclamation. Atthis time the ruling power was bigoted to a fanatical degree, and was resolved todestroy every Catholic shrine and memorial in the country.17

An Turas Cholm Cille was singled out for suppression, too, but unsuccessfully—despite Canon Maguire’s 1920 admission that “promiscuous and exciting gath-


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11. Connolly, p. 139.12. Daniel Corkery, The Hidden Ireland (1924: Dublin: Gill and MacMillan, 1967), p. 65.13. Curtayne, p. 68.14. Sax, p. 204.15. Patrick Logan, The Holy Wells of Ireland (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe, 1992), p. 16.16. Logan, p. 16.17. Alice Curtayne, Lough Derg: St. Patrick’s Purgatory (Tralee: The Kerryman Limited, 1956), p. 67.

erings introduced obvious elements antagonistic to religious decorum” in thelocality.18 John O’Donovan, a collector for the Ordnance Survey of 1835,observed:

Though the turas left by Columb in the Old Glen is now condemned by the cler-gy, some of the natives go through it yet with reverence and solemnity, visitingeach hallowed spot where Columb knelt or stood or left any of his sacredfootsteps.19

Indeed, the claim that an Turas constitutes an unbroken tradition remains a keyelement of its popular history; when I asked one of my local consultants aboutthe longevity of the practice, he stated simply, “It never stopped.”20

The fact that the practice entails pain and suffering may also have con-tributed to an Turas Cholm Cille’s longevity; often, as with pilgrimages else-where, the attending hardships fuel interest in the practice rather than quell it,and in so doing increase the locale’s reputation as a place of merit.21 An TurasCholm Cille is described as “certainly one of the hardest, of a penitential stan-dard . . . far above that of Lough Derg,” especially if it is done in bare feet.22 Infact, the people believe that to perform the journey on three consecutive Fridaysis the equivalent of completing the pilgrimage to Lough Derg, for which the pil-grim receives a plenary indulgence. In traditional Roman Catholic under-standing, this translates to immediate entrance into Heaven should the pilgrimdie before having committed any additional sins.23

Perhaps authorities chose to turn a blind eye to the practice at GleannCholm Cille because of its isolated and mountainous terrain. An Turas Cholm


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18. Maguire, p. 454.19. Cited in Liam Price, “Glencolumbkille, County Donegal, and its Early Christian Cross-Slabs,”Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, 71, 3 (1941), 72 .20. Contemporary researchers usually prefer the term “consultant” to “informant,” as the latterterm can connote betrayal. In most cases in this article the identity of local consultants isanonymized and undated. All field notes, transcripts, and recordings of the original conversationsare in the possession of the author.21. Bowie, p. 238.22. Pochin Mould, p. 103. One of the most famous pilgrimage sites in the world, the pilgrimage toLough Derg or St. Patrick’s Purgatory received international prominence as a result of the writingsof Henry of Saltry in 1184. In all probability, the essence of the narrative influenced Dante in hisdepiction of The Inferno. See Harbison, p. 56. See also Peggy O’Brien, Writing Lough Derg: FromWilliam Carleton to Seamus Heaney (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2006).23. “Indulgences” refer to an accumulation of merit meted out in incremental amounts andapplied to balance one’s accrued penance. If sins committed are not properly atoned before death,penance must be “burned off” in Purgatory prior to entrance into the Kingdom of Heaven. A ple-nary indulgence is complete release from one’s penance. In many pilgrimages, participants hold thehope for and the belief in the receipt of some sort of merit for one’s efforts; clearly, An Turas CholmCille is no exception. See Harbison, p. 106; Bharati, p. 85.

Cille represents a distinctly local observance. Although a few former residentsreturn for the ritual each year, and some local “first-timers” arrive to perform ittoday, and although the odd curiosity seeker finds his or her way to “the back ofbeyond” for the annual event, the station does not attract multitudes; in fact,fewer than fifty persons perform the midnight ritual now, even though many inthe community remember it as an essential component of their earlier lives.24

Whenever I asked the elderly residents if they had performed an Turas CholmCille, the answer was always, “Many times.” One consultant described it as afamily “day out” of sorts, undertaken frequently during the summer when,without the dictate of silence, families proceeded from station to station, sayinga few of the prescribed prayers, meeting one another, and generally enjoying afine day in the mountains.

The parish of Gleann Cholm Cille is traditionally identified as a place ofretreat for Colm Cille, and there is no denying that a strong contributing factorto the pilgrimage’s longevity is the populace’s historical identification with itsfounder saint.25 As late as 1609, at the Inquisition of Lifford, at which GleannCholm Cille’s residents were required to defend their entitlements before theconfiscating English magistrates, certain members of the community laid claimto rights of “coarbship.”26 That is to say, they insisted that their titles and landclaims were inherited in a direct line of Uí Néill genealogical succession.27

Within the village and locality, daily iconic reminders of Colm Cille’s legacy helpto explain the pilgrimage’s continuity; Gerard Cunningham, a resident who haswritten a recent booklet detailing features of the pilgrims’ path, acknowledgedthat, “An Turas has always been something that was just there, part of the cul-tural scenery when I was growing up.”28 Among other things, he was referringto the village’s main signposts of identity, the elaborately decorated cross-pillars,


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24. In the last few years of an Turas Cholmcille, there have been three “walkings” or “travelings” ofit on the appointed date. The first takes place at midnight, another follows in the late morning, anda third, and partial, one takes place in the early evening. The third may proceed only as far as theholy well, at which the rosary is said. Schoolchildren, strangers, and interested outsiders are morelikely to participate in the late morning event.25. Aidan Manning, Glencolumbkille 3000 b.c.–1885 a.d. (Ballyshannon: Donegal Democrat, 1985).26. The Inquisition of Lifford, a set of English pre-confiscation hearings that convened tribalchiefs and principal families in all parishes to hear claims to land, fishing and water rights, may pro-vide the best circumstantial evidence for Colm Cille’s association with the parish. Bishops’ here-naghs, or collectors of official dues, came forward. However, in five parishes, Gleann Cholm Cillebeing one of them, the family heads claimed that they were “the abbot’s comarbh and the bishop’sherenagh.” The original meaning of comarbh meant the abbot who succeeded Colm Cille; the riteof coarbship, or the passing down of land through the abbot’s genealogical line, was peculiar to theCeltic church.27. Manning, p. 9.28. Gerard Cunningham, e-mail to author, 7 July 2010.

discussed in detail below, encountered by all who pass in cars, on bicycles, andon foot. This anchoring is what Bourdieu, in his theorizing of social physicalpractices, refers to as “bodily hexis”—a means by which, through a “collective-ly recognized capacity to act . . . and . . . to function mimetically, the native vil-lager responds to the landscape.”29

Traditional belief holds that at midnight on June 9, Saint Colm Cille himselfprepares a path through the valley floor for those traveling the stations. It is onthat day that maximum benefit is to be obtained from traveling to the holy well,which is surrounded by a cairn of stones of more than twenty meters in length.As pilgrims approach the center of An Turas Cholm Cille, they toss three of theirown collected stones upon the cairn, then drink and collect its well water. As inother places in Ireland—but in Donegal in particular—“this sacred moment isthe re-actualization of the patron’s original consecration of the well.”30

In my field research, villagers repeatedly mentioned St. Patrick’s prophesy,“One would come after him who would be greater than him; that person wasColm Cille.” Likewise, I heard that “St. Patrick blessed all of the places in Irelandexcept Gleann. It was Colm Cille who had to do that.” Indeed, Srath na Circe,still identifiable on the landscape, is the location where according to local tra-dition and the Annals of the Four Masters,31 Colm Cille drove out the devils:

When Padraic had banished and driven away the evil spirits from Cruachan Aiglethat is today called Cruach Padraic, there went a throng of them to the place thatis now called Senglenn Colmcille in the region of the clann of Conall Gulban tothe north. And they were in that place from the time of Padraic to the time ofColmcille. And they raised a fog about them there, so that none might see thepart of the land that lay beneath the fog. And of the river that forms a boundaryto the north they made a fiery stream so that none at all might go across it. Andwho should touch of that stream little or much, he should die immediately. Andthe angels of God revealed this thing to Colmcille. And he went with many oth-ers of the saints to drive away the demons and banish them out of that place. Andthey made a stay beside the fiery stream we have mentioned. And they had notbeen long here when the Devil hurled a holly rod out of the fog across thestream. And it killed an Cerc, Colmcille’s servant, with that cast, so that Srath naCirce is the name of that stream thenceforth.32


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29. Pierre Bourdieu, The Logic of Practice (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 1990), p. 69.30. See: Ó Giolláin, p. 25; Ó Muirgheasa, p. 151.31. In the sixteenth century, four Ulster scholars, one of them Manus O’Donnell of Colm Cille’s lin-eage, compiled the Annals of the Four Masters, a compendium of Ireland’s history from earliest timesto the present. Not surprisingly, considering O’Donnell’s background, these annals are replete withlaudatory narratives and legends about the saint.32. Manning, p. 94.

The passage concludes with Colm Cille blessing the land from which the evilones had been banished, and bestowing “the right of sanctuary” from then on.33

A “saint” by vox populii—that is, never officially canonized—Colm Cillehas entered the realms of history, hagiography, folklore, and politics. Alongwith Saints Patrick and Bridget, he is one of the three great saints of Ireland. Hisname translates to “dove of the church.” Of royal lineage, he was princely heirto the Cenél Conaill dynasty and one of the famous Northern Uí Néill.34 Bornaround the year 521, when Christianity had yet to prevail in Ireland, Colm Cillewas Ireland’s most famous missionary; by the time of his death, he had estab-lished a confederation of monasteries that included Durrow and Kells in Irelandand Iona in Scotland. These preserved their importance until the end of theeighth century.35 The saint’s mission to Iona in 563 is noteworthy because it ini-tiated the practice of “white martyrdom,” a practice that continued well into themiddle ages, whereby Irishmen, monks in particular, undertook voluntary exilefrom Ireland for the sake of their faith.36

Additional aspects of Columban monasticism may help to explain the per-sistence of its legacy in Gleann Cholm Cille. One of the most important con-cerns the decision to model monastic abbotship, kinship, and inheritance on thesecular Irish structural framework. Much like the arrangement of royal tribalauthority, Irish monastic churches were grouped into federations under theleadership of the founder and his “heirs.” This became the characteristic featureof Irish church organization, and differed significantly from that of England andthe Continent.37 It ensured that the Columban tradition would endure.38 More-over, Colm Cille forged links between religious and laity, organizing and con-trolling his monastic foundations along established Uí Néill kingship patterns.Using Iona as his base, he traveled throughout Scotland, establishing a Christ-ian beachhead that had the double advantage of strengthening religious as well


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33. For another prophecy regarding Gleann Cholm Cille being granted sanctuary status, one thatallegedly predates the coming of Christianity, see Brian Lacey, Colum Cille and the Columban Tra-dition (Dublin: Four Courts Press), p. 14.34. Máire Herbert, Iona, Kells and Derry: The History and Hagiography of the Monastic Familia ofColumba (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988), p. 10. The Ui Néill dynasty ruled the northern half of Ire-land from the sixth century and maintained a strong influence into the sixteenth.35. Dáithi Ó h Ógáin, The Hero in Irish Folk History (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1984), p. 26.36. Herbert (p. 28) points out that exile was a built-in component to Irish society in the sixth cen-tury, and that it, like so many other customs and institutions, was appropriated by the early church.In other words,“the secular legal attitude to exile had been assimilated into a Christian framework.”Lacey, p. 21. See also Thomas Mowbray Charles-Edwards,“The Social Background to Irish Peregri-natio,” Celtica, 11 (1976), 43–59.37. Kathleen Hughes, The Church in Early Irish Society (London: Methuen, 1966).38. Herbert, p. 35.

as secular familial bonds. Serving as abbot over the community of monks atIona, he exercised an undisputed authority over each of his network monaster-ies, operating communication networks and maintaining jurisdiction on bothsides of the Irish Sea. Reliable sources indicate that he returned to Ireland whenreligious or secular interests demanded.

Despite the abundance of Columban folklore in Gleann Cholm Cille, a his-torical controversy surrounds the issue of whether or not the saint ever visitedthe valley. The locals traveling the stations on the prescribed day to be with hispresence and to recall the stories told and retold about Colm Cille have nosuch doubt. When one deals with folk belief, Máire Herbert counsels that“remembered fact” is “reshaped over time into a structured mould, and trans-mitted as part of a corpus of oral tradition. There is a tendency to smooth theparticular and the irregular, to slough off what is no longer of relevance, and toavoid temporal precision.”39 This perspective enables us to situate the belief ofone resident who said, in reference to the cross-inscribed inscriptions found onthe stations of An Turas Cholm Cille, that “‘Twas Colm Cille himself who putthe marks on these stones, to remind us of our faith.”40

If the saint visited Gleann Cholm Cille, in all likelihood he traveled via theancient road where an Turas Cholm Cille both commences and terminates.Thought to be a monastic pilgrimage route, it is one of the two main thor-oughfares leading out of the village.41 Along it is located the local Church ofIreland, built on the site of an older Catholic church. Once a monastery, itsland was deemed “termon” or sanctuary.42 The present Church of Ireland isknown as the Church of St. Columba, the Latinized version of Colm Cille.

It may be difficult to determine whether or not Colm Cille was ever in the val-ley, but we do know that Ireland’s oldest surviving manuscript, a psalter calledAn Cathach (The Battler), is believed to have been written by the saint himself.43

Representing an artistic style operative between the sixth and ninth centuries, itpresaged the illuminated manuscript scriptural tradition that produced the Bookof Durrow and culminated in the Book of Kells—both known as Leabhar Cholm-


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39. Herbert, p. 19.40. Some element of truth may be at work in his statement, for missionaries at the time abided bythe words of Pope Gregory I regarding conversion by overlaying Christian images on existing“pagan” structures: “For that which a written document is to those who can read, a picture is to theunlettered who look at it. Even the unlearned can see in that which course they ought to follow; eventhose who do not know the alphabet can read there.” (cited in Diana L. Eck, Dars’an: Seeing theDivine in India (Chambersburg, PA: Anima Books, 1985), p. 43.41. Herity, p. 17.42. Maguire, p. 457.43. Lacey, p. 37.

cille, or Colm Cille’s Book.44 As pilgrims circumambulate many of the cross-inscribed slabs, they encounter the Celtic artistic features of these manuscripts—an eschewal of the straight line, a fondness for movement within blank curvi-linear spaces, and an oddly asymmetrical symmetry that demands a closer look.45

One man, a leader of an Turas Cholm Cille and an acknowledged keeper ofthe sacred trust in the eyes of the community, indicated to me that the carvedimage at Stad a Tri-Deag (Station Thirteen) is similar to one found in a folio ofthe aforementioned Book of Durrow. It bears mentioning that Colm Cille found-ed a monastic site at Durrow around the year 585. The archaeologist MichaelHerity extends the artistic comparison, noting that a circular stud of light greenglass found in a crannog and dated to about 700 a.d. bears a likeness to StationThirteen.46

The most iconic example of intertextual Christian symbology can be seen atStad a Dó, the second station of an Turas Cholm Cille. It rises on a dry-walledaltar above an arresting rock outcrop. Although two-dimensional, as an objectof cult or ritual worship it can be compared to Lia Fáil, the Stone of Destiny atTara, sometimes called the stone penis of Tara,“the most daring phallic symbolof ancient Ireland.”47 Stád a Dó can be said to serve as what Diana Eck has called“visual theology.”48 It stands six feet in height and overlooks the entire valley.Inscribed on both sides, its east face employs a tripartite image similar to thosefound on Irish metal and jeweled objects of that time period.49 Like the major-ity of cross-inscribed slabs that dot the Irish landscape, this cross pillar repre-sents earlier ideas of craftsmanship and cosmology. As Françoise Henry notes,in its early phase

Irish Christian Art lived on false premises. It was a pagan decoration mas-querading under the guise of an ecclesiastic art. The ornaments which wereused for crosiers [and] shrines . . . which covered cruciform slabs or standingcrosses, were none other than the old La Tène spiral . . . and half-disguised figu-rations of Celtic gods.50


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44. Bernard Meehan, The Book of Durrow (Dublin: Town House and Country House, 1996), p. 89.45. For further explanations of Celtic artistic features, see Meehan, p. 14.46. Michael Herity, Glencolumbkille: A Guide to 5,000 Years of History in Stone (Gleann Cholm Cille:Tógra Ghleanncholmcille Teoranta, 1971), p. 25.47. O’Connor, p. 35. Reputedly, the Lia Fáil cried out whenever it came in contact with a man des-tined to become king.48. Eck, p. 41.49. Herity, p. 33.50. Françoise Henry, Irish Art in the Early Christian Period (London: Methuen Press, 1947), p. 186.See also I. M. Stead, Celtic Art (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1985), p. 7. The practice of for-mulating and inserting new ideas and applying them to older beliefs and traditions was widespreadthroughout the expansion of Christian culture.


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The interlacings and patterns of Gleann Cholm Cille’s cross pillar decoratedstones epitomize Celtic Christian art, where no great divide separates the worldof spiritual beings, saints, and angels from that of the quotidian and mun-dane.51 In this way, the valley’s standing stones serve as “sacred texts”; this is howthey possess “all the themes of hagiography.”52

If the inscribed slabs and the institutional edifices on the landscape serve astextual markers of identification with St. Colm Cille, there are still other, lesssubtle yet equally valid markers that emerge in the names given to individualpilgrimage stations where prayers are said. Among these are Baile na nDeamhan(“Townland of the Demons”), where the demons are alleged to have attackedColm Cille; Seipéal Cholm Cille (“Colmcille’s Chapel”); and Umar Ghlinne—literally, “Trough of the Glen,” but more commonly referred to as “Colm Cille’sBoat”—where pilgrims wash their feet in water that lies in the depression of avessel-shaped flagstone. These and other vivid associations of place reinforceone’s sense that a chthonic connection exists between people, landscape, andsaint, a link that, as Lawrence Taylor notes, still “retains its wildness, its pointsof power and strangeness.”53 The latter come to the fore in pilgrims’ reflectionson their sense of the distinctive quality of place and their experiential accountsof an Turas Cholm Cille. The potent effects of the saint and his actions withinthe village surface in locals’ accounts of the saint’s many exploits, prophecies,curses, and death-dealing dicta. One such tale was collected for the NationalFolklore Collection in 1937.54

51. Philip Sheldrake, Living Between Worlds: Place and Journey in Celtic Spirituality (Cambridge:Cowley Publications, 1996), p. 80.52. Pochin Mould, p. 102.53. Lawrence Taylor, Occasions of Faith: An Anthropology of Irish Catholics (Philadelphia: Univer-sity of Pennsylvania Press 1995), p. 44.54. In the 1930s, the Irish Folklore Commission undertook a project among school children bysending them home with a questionnaire that the children were to complete with their parents,grandparents, and other adult relatives. The questionnaire asked for community details and specificsthat the elders believed should be recorded and remembered. This narrative was collected in GleannCholm Cille during that time:

Nuair a bhí Naomh Colmcille ina comhnuide ar an Bhiofán bhí sé an-mhór le fear ar an baile,agus thiceadh sé ag . . . go minic. Shíl an bhean go rabh Colmcille ag cur an fear amuigh agusd’amarc sí amach agus chonnaic sí Colmcille ag teacht. ‘Gabh sios i luighe tusa agus leig ort gobhfuil tú tinn,’ ar sise. Chuaidh an fear síos i luighe agus thainig Colmcille isteach.“Cá bhfuilan fear inniú?” ar seisean. “Tá sé tinn,” ar sise. “Bhal,” arsa Naoimh Colmcille, “má atá sé tinn,go rabh sé slán, agus muna bhfuil sé tinn, go b’fagaidh sé bás.” Annsin, d’imigh sé amach aguschuaidh an bhean síos go ninnseachad sí an rud a dubhairt Colmcille d’on fear. Bí an fear inaluige sa leabaidh agus é marbh [sic] (11 Samhain 1937).

The translation is by the present author.

When Colmcille was living in Beefan, he was great friends with a man of thetownland, and he would come [to visit] often. The woman of the house thoughtthat Colmcille bothered the man [literally, ‘put him out’]. And she looked outand she saw Colmcille coming. “Go lie down in your bed and pretend that youare sick,” she said [to her husband]. The man went to lie down, and Colmcilleentered. “Where’s the man of the house today?” he asked. “He’s sick,” said she.“Well, if he’s sick, may he be well, and if he’s not sick, may be die.” Colmcille wentoff then, and the woman went down so that she could tell her husband whatColmcille had said. He was lying in the bed, and he was dead. (November 11, 1937)

This narrative provides an example of what Betty Heimann has described as“visible thought.”55 It is repeated frequently in Gleann Cholm Cille, usuallyaccompanied with a physical gesture in the direction of the townland of Beefanwhere one finds the heart of the pilgrimage—stations four through seven, com-prising Colm Cille’s chair, chapel, bed, and well. When I last heard the story, theteller waved his hand in the direction of the area and asked, “Sure, ye knowwhere Beefan is, do you not? Aye, ye’ve been to his bed and his well? Ye’ve trav-elled the Turas?” The intimate connection of landscape with moral social orderserves a similar function in other cultures; its prescription for societal normsand sanctions are conveyed by means of repeated telling.56 The man who nar-rated this story to me concluded,“It is rare that I travel an Turas without think-ing of the death of that man who hid at the coming of Colm Cille, and what thatmeant for him and his wife.”

His remark indicates a blend of the sacred and secular. When he is in visualor physical contact with that specific part of his environment, an ideological per-ception of it is operative. His political mythology—his “bodily hexis” in Bour-dieu’s term—has endured to such an extent that he feels, thinks, and behaves inaccordance with his village’s values. This particular narrative relates to the impor-tance of welcoming the visitor and complements the “Rune of Hospitality” thatreminds laity and clergy alike of the importance of generosity:

I saw a stranger yestreen;I put food in the eating place,Drink in the drinking place,Music in the listening place;In the sacred name of the Triune,He blessed myself and my house,


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55. Betty Heimann, Facets of Indian Thought (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1964), p. 58.56. See, for instance: Keith Basso, “Western Apache Language and Culture,” in Essays in LinguisticAnthropology (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1990); Keith Basso, Wisdom Sits in Places: Land-scape and Language Among the Western Apache (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press,1996); and Valentine E. Daniel, Fluid Signs: Being a Person the Tamil Way (Berkeley: University ofCalifornia Press, 1984).

My cattle and my dear ones;And the lark said in her song:

Often, often, often,Goes the Christ in the stranger’s guise.

Often, often, often,Goes the Christ in the stranger’s guise.57

These words reflect values older than Iona, where “hospitality was a rule.”58

Other subtle configurations of identity with Colm Cille emerge duringeveryday life. One day, while cutting turf with an interviewee, I was encouragedto “leave the bog according to Colm Cille’s directions”—that is, to cut out apiece that would serve as a “step” to indicate where the last cutting had beendone and the new one would begin. “Colm Cille taught that this was the way,”he revealed, and then narrated a legend of the saint running through the bogbeing chased by enemies, and falling where there had been no “proper finish-ing.” Cursing the person who had left the place in such a condition, the saintmandated that ever after, the bog must be left in a “stepped” condition so thatwhat had befallen him would not become the fate of others. “That’s the way wedo it to this day,” the speaker asserted,“just the way Colm Cille told us to do it.”

Whenever one works at turf cutting or encounters the cutaway step, he or sheis reminded of Colm Cille’s admonishing. Functionalist anthropologists arguethat narratives like these serve as examplars of how to finish tasks, or, to broad-en the meaning, of how to live in one’s environs. Community members “needonly hear the name of a given place” or re-hear a story connected to it to under-stand the underlying message.59 One’s identity in Gleann Cholm Cille, as inmuch of rural Ireland, is intimately local. To a large extent this centers around theearth where a person of note left an imprint. As Christian Keller observed in histheorizing of landscape study,“Place names are monuments,” the mere mentionof which produces associations far beyond that of geography.60

Connections with an Turas Cholm Cille’s placenames also evoke beliefs inhealing mechanisms of many kinds. Of key importance are the objects locatedat sites that—once the objects have come in physical contact with the pilgrim’sbody—produce cures and effect physical and spiritual renewals. At Cloch anAonaigh, “The Stone of the Gathering,” pilgrims flatten their backs against thestone and renounce the world, the flesh, and the devil; they slip their fingers


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57. Kenneth MacLeod, “Two Gaelic Runes,” The Celtic Review 7, 25 (February, 1911), 50–51.58. F. W. Fawcet, Columba: Pilgrim for Christ (Strabane: Camus Juxta Mourne, 1997), p. 14.59. Taylor, p. 61.60. Christian Keller,“The Theoretical Aspects of Landscape Study,” in Decoding the Landscape: Con-tributions Toward a Synthesis of Thinking in Irish Studies on the Landscape, ed. Timothy Collins (Gal-way: Centre for Landscape Studies, 1994), p. 88.

through the stone’s hole and peer through it to see heaven. At Colm Cille’swell, they drink its holy water and fill bottles to carry home, casting away newlypicked up stones in a communal clearing of the land—an example of what theTurners calls “the essential and generic human bond of communitas”—andsurrender rosary beads, scarves, pieces of fabric, even earrings.61 These are actsof relinquishment as well as of desire, the conscious freeing of oneself from careand the simultaneous wish for renewal. One pilgrim told me after an TurasCholm Cille in 2010 that she found the night “to be very powerful and magical.”

Other objects are approached between midnight and dawn; these includesacred stones with which pilgrims encircle their bodies, bless themselves, andinteract in other physical ways. For instance, at the saint’s chapel, while kneel-ing in Colm Cille’s bed after having just lain in it and turned three times to theright, pilgrims lift a stone (sometimes called the saint’s pillow) located in anopening over the “head” of the bed, and place it on both eyes, one after theother, as a cure for vision problems. Following the performance of this act, theyproceed single file to dig from the sacred soil beneath Leac na mBonn (“Stoneof the Feet”), a large flat rock where wishes are made, procuring the dirt toensure that their boats will never sink nor their houses be affected by fire orlightning.62 When I took part in the 2010 Turas, I witnessed a variation on thetradition when one pilgrim told everyone present that the sacred clay was pro-tection from being drowned.

Ultimately, tradition is conservative in nature—but that does not mean itspractices grow static. Even recent ethnographic descriptions of an Turas CholmCille vary widely.63 It is important to acknowledge that those who take part inlongstanding rituals like this pilgrimage do, in fact, innovate and adapt whilesimultaneously drawing attention to the fundamental aims of the rite and itsrecognizable features that are repeated generation after generation.64

One of the most extraordinary aspects of an Turas Cholm Cille is the mannerin which it replicates a structural aspect of a megalithic history that is 5,000-years-old. Throughout Ireland, there are numerous court tombs, or court


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61. Turner and Turner, p. 250.62. Eileen Moore Quinn, “‘Nostalgia is Our Future’: Self-Representational Genres and CulturalRevival in Ireland.” Ph.D. dissertation, Brandeis University 1999, p. 369.63. For instance, Lewis’s 1837 record of the “patron” indicates that there are twelve stations; Taylorsets them at thirteen, and Mag Fhearraigh (1990) argues for fifteen. During my experience of anTuras, the number has been established at fifteen.64. Pádraig Ó Riain, “The Saints and Their Amanuenses: Early Models and Later Issues,” in EarlyIrish Literature: Media and Communication, ed. Stephen Norman Tranter and Hildegard L. C. Tris-tam (Tubingen: Narr, 1989), p. 268.

cairns. Found all over the Atlantic European littoral and built of megalithic rock,the structures date to approximately 3,000 bc. They usually contain a largecourt area, presumably used for ceremonial rites, flanked by a number of small-er galleries in which have been found cremated and inhumed burial remains.65

Three such tombs in GleannCholm Cille represent a rareneolithic burial type known asthe centre-court tomb style; oneof these, Fearann Mhic GiollaBhríde (Farranmacbride, alsoknown as Mannernamortee, orMainnear na Mortlaidh, “TheEnclosure of the Dead”), is thelargest known court cairn in Ire-land. It is 57 meters (190 feet) inlength, with a large central area20 meters long and 10 meterswide. At each end, two burialchambers lie in tandem. Twoadditional single chambers lie in

close and symmetrical proximity to the end chambers; in other words, a largecentral court is balanced on two ends.

Farranmacbride is located at the base of Ballard, one of the mountainoustownlands pilgrims encounter along their journey. As they move from one endof the valley to the other, their physical bodies circumscribe, metaphorically, thegrand ritual space of their village’s ancient burial site. Each body thus maps thecontours of Gleann Cholm Cille’s oldest religious space, and also the broad out-line of Farranmacbride’s “floor design.”

It would be incorrect to assume that the pilgrims’ path has always beenconfigured in this way; in fact, some scholars argue that a conflation of saints’cults occurred in Gleann Cholm Cille during the formative years of Irishmonastic Christianity.66 However, it is important to remember that the internaldimensions of pilgrimage are as endemic to the journey as are the physical


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65. Other names include “lobster-claw cairn” and “horned cairn,” both used to describe the designsand/or distinctive features of these court cairns.66. See: John J. Silke,“Some Notes on Early Christianity in Donegal,”Donegal Annual, 39 (1987), 15;Lochlann McGill, In Conall’s Footsteps (Dingle: Brandon, 1992); Michael Herity, “Early ChristianDecorated Slabs in Donegal: An Turas and the Tomb of the Founder Saint,” in Donegal: History andSociety, ed. Willam Nolan, Liam Ronayne, and Máiread Donleavy (Dublin: Geography Publications,1995), pp. 25–50.

Pilgrims queue to drink the holy water of Saint ColmCille's well. Many bottle it and carry it to loved onesunable to make the journey. Votaries of various kindsare left behind.

ones. We must also consider the inner path of the spiritual traveler, for whom,as Fiona Bowie notes, “all of life and its struggles are regarded as a journeytowards perfection with heaven the goal. Hindu, Buddhist, Islamic, Sufi, andChristian traditions have all developed this ideal of an interior pilgrimage.”67

Whatever we may speculate about earlier iterations of the ritual, in the latetwentieth and early twenty-first centuries, pilgrims re-inscribe the broad outlineof the court tomb design during the performance of an Turas Cholm Cille.Traveling west along the valley floor, they encircle the most important stations.Their rounds begin and end at a megalithic edifice that—despite having lost itsname and having been co-opted by a variety of religious structures through thecenturies, maintains its power as what Mikhail Bakhtin terms a “chronotope”—that is,

a point in the geography of a community where time and space intersect andfuse. Time takes on flesh and becomes visible for human contemplation; like-wise, space becomes charged and responsive to the movements of time and his-tory and the enduring character of a people. . . . Chronotopes thus stand as mon-uments to the community itself, as symbols of it, as forces operating to shape itsmembers’ images of themselves.68

At some deep level, what is being undertaken by the Turas pilgrims amounts toan exploration of epistemology, that branch of philosophy concerned with howwe acquire or understand knowledge.. If Michel Foucault is correct in his insis-tence that in any given culture “and at any given moment, there is always onlyone épistémé that defines the conditions of possibility of all knowledge,” then itis clear from an Turas Cholm Cille that the current épistémé of the village isinformed by its connection to Colm Cille.69

On the other hand, perhaps Foucault is only partially correct. John Weight-man, a recent critic, argues that Foucault fails to realize that

all possible ways of perceiving the world coexist at any one time, at least in theform of embryos that may or may not develop. The fact that a particular world-view is dominant in a given society at a given moment does not mean that oth-ers are absent; any one of them may be waiting in the wings to take over.70

Other ideas about viewing the world are, indeed, waiting in the wings in GleannCholm Cille; the older values are not as firmly in place today as they were pre-


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67. Bowie, p. 249.68. M. M. Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination, ed. Michael Holquist, translated by Caryl Emersonand Michael Holquist (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981), p. 7. 69. Foucault, p. 168.70. John Weightman, “On Not Understanding Michel Foucault,” American Scholar 58, 3 (Summer,1989), 394.

viously. For instance, when I asked an artist in the community if he planned toperform an Turas Cholm Cille in 2004, he dismissed the suggestion: “That’s onlyfor na strainséirí (the strangers).”

We come back to the story about Colm Cille’s treatment of the prevaricatingcouple. In former times, lying and inhospitality were deemed capital crimes, andwere punished accordingly; today, such transgressions are treated very differ-ently. For example, on an earlier research trip in the summer of 1997, I heard thesame narrative from a group of children who had gathered to show me theirschool reports for Colm Cille’s anniversary celebrations. One, an eleven-year-old girl with whom I had traveled the stations previously, admitted, “Well, Idon’t know if he was a saint. He wasn’t very nice. He caused a war. He even killeda man.” Her report praised the saint; she had even composed a poem detailinghis virtues—but, for her, his imposition of a punishment of death seemed outof proportion to the couple’s acts of pretense.

Her doubts as to Colm Cille’s “saintliness” indicate a cognitive transforma-tion in terms of villagers’ connectedness and identification with the foundersaint. Although, like her elders, the eleven-year-old girl interpreted her cultur-al landscape in terms of Colm Cille’s dwelling, sacred bed, holy well, and so on,she nonetheless felt justified in questioning some of his behavior. Her uncer-tainties about just how praiseworthy the saint really was became a factor thatqualified her identification with him as well as with his landscape—which,after all, was also her landscape. These bouts of ambivalence are significant: inGleann Cholm Cille, they index a cultural identification with land and saint inthe process of transition.

Still, on the ninth day of June last summer, I and nearly three dozen assem-bled pilgrims stepped forward, as pilgrims had done for centuries. I am sure thatmany felt—as I did—that in following this traditional route, we were joining ina moment steeped with the presence of history. For those who had lived inGleann Cholm Cille all of their lives and those who had participated in the rit-ual of an Turas before, the terrain was at least partially familiar, as were the icon-ic stations with which we were about to interact. Yet, among us there existed anawareness that we were engaging in elements of uncertainty and strangeness,stepping beyond the routine and familiar. This, too, would be part of our expe-rience; as one of my fellow pilgrims, Dolores Whelan, would later reflect, “sur-rendering to the path is at the heart of a pilgrimage.” The sky was clear. Themountains of the Slieve League range loomed large. Our footfalls were the onlysound we made as we stepped into the night.

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All the Themes of Hagiography