Saint Kevin’s Day & the Patron at Glendalough
Glendalough, Wicklow –
Saint Kevin’s Day – 3 June,
The Patron, Festival of Saint Kevin at the Seven Churches, Glendalough, 1813 – Joseph Peacock
Mr & Mrs S.C. Hall;
‘until very recently (the peasantry), honoured the memory of the patron saint by assembling in the churchyard to drink and fight, but this custom was put to an end by the parish priest who, a few days before one of our visits, had actually turned the whiskey into a stream, gathered the shillelaghs into a large bonfire and made wrathful and brutal men,who had been enemies for centuries, embrace each other in peace and goodwill over Kevin’s grave.’
Hall’s Ireland, 1842
The more disreputable activities described above did not cease before 1842, as the Hall’s maintain, but continued until at least 1862, when Cardinal Paul Cullen suppressed the pilgrimage.
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