A friend who ascended the hill brought down the following account of it. The ascent is a very steep and hard one, he says; but it was performed in company of thousands of people who were making their way barefoot to the several ‘stations’ upon the hill.
‘The first station consists of one heap of stones, round which they must walk seven times, casting a stone on the heap each time, and before and after every stone’s throw saying a prayer.
‘The second station is on the top of the mountain. Here there is a great altar—a shapeless heap of stones. The poor wretches crawl on their knees into this place, say fifteen prayers, and after going round the entire top of the mountain fifteen times, say fifteen prayers again.
‘The third station is near the bottom of the mountain at the further side from Westport. It consists of three heaps. The penitents must go seven times round these collectively, and seven times afterwards round each individually, saying a prayer before and after each progress.’
My informant describes the people as coming away from this ‘frightful exhibition, suffering severe pain, wounded and bleeding in the knees and feet, and some of the women shrieking with the pain of their wounds.’ Fancy thousands of these bent upon their work, and priests standing by to encourage them!—for shame, for shame! If all the popes, cardinals, bishops, hermits, priests, and deacons that ever lived, were to come forward and preach this as a truth—that to please God you must macerate your body, that the sight of your agonies is welcome to Him, and that your blood, groans, and degradation find favour in His eyes, I would not believe them. Better have over a company of Fakeers at once, and set the Suttee going.
Of these tortures, however, I had not the fortune to witness a sight; for going towards the mountain for the first four miles, the only conveyance I could find was half the pony of an honest sailor, who said, when applied to, ‘I tell you what I do wid you: I give you a spell about’; but as it turned out we were going different ways, this help was but a small one. A car with a spare seat, however (there were hundreds of others quite full, and scores of rattling country carts covered with people, and thousands of bare legs trudging along the road)—a car with a spare seat passed by at two miles from the Pattern, and that just time to get comfortably wet through on arriving there. The whole mountain was enveloped in mist; and we could nowhere see thirty yards before us. The women walked forward, with their gowns over their heads; the men sauntered on in the rain, with the utmost indifference to it. The car presently came to a cottage, the court in front of which was black with two hundred horses, and where as many drivers were jangling and bawling; and here we were told to descend. You had to go over a wall and across a brook, and behold the Pattern.
The pleasures of the poor people—for after the business on the mountain came the dancing and love-making at its foot—was woefully spoiled by the rain, which rendered dancing on the grass impossible; nor were the tents big enough for that exercise. Indeed, the whole sight was as dismal and half-savage a one as I have seen. There may have been fifty of these tents squatted round a plain of the most brilliant green grass, behind which the mist curtains seemed to rise immediately; for you could not even see the mountain side beyond them. Here was a great crowd of men and women, all ugly, as the fortune of the day would have it (for the sagacious reader has, no doubt, remarked that there are ugly and pretty days in life). Stalls were spread about, whereof the owners were shrieking out the praises of their wares—great, coarse, damp-looking bannocks of bread for the most part, or, mayhap, a dirty collection of pigs’-feet, and such refreshments. Several of the booths professed to belong to ‘confectioners’ from Westport or Castlebar, the confectionery consisting of huge biscuits and doubtful-looking ginger-beer—ginger-ale or gingeretta it is called in this country, by a fanciful people who love the finest titles. Add to these, caldrons containing water for tay at the doors of the booths, other pots full of masses of pale legs of mutton (the owner ‘prodding,’ every now and then for a bit, and holding it up and asking the passenger to buy). In the booths it was impossible to stand upright, or to see much, on account of smoke. Men and women were crowded in these rude tents, huddled together, and disappearing in the darkness. Owners came bustling out to replenish the emptied water-jugs, and landladies stood outside in the rain calling strenuously upon all passers-by to enter. Here is a design taken from one of the booths, presenting ingeniously an outside and an inside view of the same place—an artifice seldom practised in pictures.
