St Patrick’s Purgatory, Lough Derg survives today as a living remnant of the early Irish Church, spanning some fifteen centuries of native tenacity, and witness meanwhile to European fame, puritan persecution and Catholic revival. As such much has been reputed about and reported on in relation to Lough Derg.
Editors Mary McDaid and Pat McHugh sum it up in their introduction to Pilgrims’ Tales: ‘The place and the experience are such that only a morsel of its narrative can ever be told.’