On the last Sunday of July every year, tens of thousands of people climb a cold, steep, quartzite mountain in County Mayo, many of them in the dark before dawn, and some of them still climb it barefoot. The mountain is Croagh Patrick, and the day is called Reek Sunday.
The custom is old, far older than the Christianity that now frames it. Saint Patrick is said to have fasted on the summit for forty days, and a small chapel stands there now, but the pilgrimage sits directly on top of a much older tradition of climbing to a high place at the start of the harvest, the festival of Lughnasa. The mountain was sacred long before it had a saint.
What strikes anyone who goes is that it is not a spectacle staged for visitors. It is a genuine act, performed by ordinary people, often for someone, a promise made, a person remembered, a burden carried up and set down at the top. The reasons are private, but the mountain is shared, and for one grey morning a year it belongs to everyone climbing it.
Source: Born of Ireland