Penitential station

The National Monuments Service's description

On Croagh Patrick Mountain. This penitential station is named ‘Leaba Patrick’ [bed of Patrick] on the 1838 and 1920 OS 6-inch maps. According to Tírechán, St. Patrick’s late 7th-century biographer, St Patrick undertook a Lenten pilgrimage to Croagh Patrick, spending forty days and forty nights fasting and praying on the summit. In later folk tradition, ‘Leaba Patrick’ was believed to be where he rested during this ordeal. It is evident now as a natural-looking hollow in the ground surface. Its exact nature and history are uncertain –it may, for instance, have been the site of an early building or oratory, preserved only in folk memory as the site of Patrick’s bed. The 1838 OS Letters describe it as 'of small dimensions and resembling a dried up well', suggesting that structural remains were then in evidence. At that date, it had already become a prayer station on the pilgrimage round of the summit, where the pilgrim ‘repeats on his knees seven Paters, seven Aves, and one Creed. This done, he walks seven times around the same bed…praying as he goes along.’ (O'Flanagan 1927, 434-7 (216-7)).

Compiled by: Jane O’Shaughnessy

Date of upload: 19 March 2020

References

O'Flanagan, Rev. M. (Compiler) 1927 Letters containing information relative to the antiquities of the county of Mayo collected during the progress of the Ordnance Survey in 1838. Bray.