Pattern Days in Ireland: A Blend of Ancient Spirituality, Tradition, and Celebration

Summer in Ireland, one of the reasons we long to return, is filled with festivals of every kind: craic in the streets and the whirling sound of reels and jigs spilling out from every pub. But summer is also the time of religious remembrances known as Pattern Days, when ancient and suppressed practices are still enacted with the same spiritual purpose – and the same exuberance.

“Pattern” is a corruption of the word, “patron.” Our friends and relatives in Mayo celebrate their own Pattern Day just as this iIrish reaches its readers. On August 4th, in Kilmovee, a town on the border of Mayo and Roscommon, the “Pattern of Urlaur” is commemorated. The festival takes place near the ruins of the fifteenth-century Urlaur Abbey, built for the Dominicans. The Abbey was destroyed in 1654 by –yes, you know it – the cleft-footed soldiers of Oliver Cromwell.

As with the destruction of so many Roman Catholic churches and the wholesale suppression of faith and custom through the Penal laws, the faithful had to find other, secretive ways to practice their beliefs, and so they gathered at holy wells, church ruins, or other sacred spaces. The coalescence of Celtic, pre-Christian spirituality and Roman Catholic practices is evident in the rituals, whether it was the number of times the pilgrims encircled a holy well or the belief in the curative powers of the waters. (You can read a satirical treatment of the miracles of the wells in J.M. Synge’s “The Well of the Saints”).

Most times, the rituals took place without any clerical oversight, a fact that irked the priests and delighted the layfolk. The agents of the British government also were frustrated that the “papists” never ran out of devious circumnavigations of the law. The Pattern Days included lots of censored activities like dancing, hurling, and horse racing, all abetted by a special whiskey-punch drunk into the wee hours (Bridget Haggerty, “Pattern Days in Old Ireland” irishcultureandcustoms.com).

Alas, the revels included episodes of “faction” or “stick” fighting, with shillelaghs readied for combat by being rubbed with “poitin” and cured overnight in the chimney. The winner of the fight supposedly brought luck to the village, but grudges were more likely the root cause, and the one-on-one fighting devolved into melees.

Croagh Patrick Pattern Days are one example of Irish devotional practices associated with specific places, the most famous of which is the ascent up Croagh Patrick. Another place is Station Island in Lough Derg, Donegal. The legend there is that Christ showed Saint Patrick a cave that was the mouth to purgatory, because Patrick was demoralized by converts clamoring for more proof of God. The cave, or St Patrick’s purgatory, would reveal the joys of heaven and the terror of hell when pilgrims prayed at the site.

Station Island
Thus began the practice of journeying to Station Island to walk it barefoot, fasting and praying for three days. Celtic beehive mounds are places for meditation. Seamus Heaney was one such seeker, and his magnificent collection, “Station Island” offers a poetic statement of the experience.

Significantly, Heaney’s longest poem in the collection, called “Station Island,” mixes spiritual thoughts with references to the hellish past and present of the Northern Ireland troubles. Heaney dedicated the book to Brian Friel, who was the co-founder of the Northern Ireland movement, the Field Day, to deploy culture, drama, poetry, fiction, and criticism, to decry sectarian violence, civil rights violations, and the colonial British presence.

If there are few instances where the ancient Celtic culture can be untangled from later Irish iterations, there are similarly few cultural works, especially in Northern Irish literature, where the personal and spiritual elements of life can be divorced from the public, political context.

Suppressed and nearly disappearing in the nineteenth century, some Pattern Days persisted or have been resurrected anew. Several are upcoming; you can plan for your next summer holiday. These are the major ones:

• July 8, Saint Killian, Co. Kerry
  (https://www.irishtimes.com/lifeand-style/people/pattern-mass-acenturies-old-tradition-carved-in-stone-1.1466589)

• July 24, Declan of Ardmore, Ardmore, Co. Waterford
  (https://churchofirelandcork.com/2019/07/31/pattern-day-celebrated-in-ardmore/)

• August 4, Saint Dominic, Kilmovee, Co. Mayo
  (https://dominicans.ie/newsflash/urlaur-pattern-day/)

• August 15, Assumption of Mary, Ballylanders, Co. Limerick
  (https://holywellscorkandkerry.com/2022/02/26/ladys-well-ballylanders/)

• September 9, St Ciaran’s Clonmacnoise, Co. Offaly
  (https://pilgrimagemedievalireland.com/2012/09/10/the-pattern-day-at-clonmacnoise/)

Were I able to jump the pond, I would head to Mayo. I would take part in the Urlaur Pattern, have a snack of “dilisk,” which are sea lettuce flakes, “curatively” high in fiber. I would pray that those evil spirits living in Lough Derg who disguised themselves as black boars in the past (and perhaps political boors in the present) would be banished by the spirits of the Dominicans. And I would offer a prayer for health and happiness for my godson John Haney Drain’s new baby boy, Dominic Drain. May St. Dominic and all the saints of the Pattern Days, send blessings on all our children.

Jeanne Colleran, PhD is a retired provost and emeritus professor of John Carroll University. She currently serves on the boards of Ursuline College, Joseph and Mary’s Home, and the Mayo Society.