‘Ireland was seen as a bit like heaven on earth’ – The hidden link between St Patrick’s Purgatory and a pioneering medieval French writer.
Marie de France’s translation of the legend behind the pilgrimage site in Co Donegal is considered one of the most famous and complete versions of the tale.
St Patrick’s Purgatory in Co Donegal has been a pilgrimage site since the fifth century, and the legend behind it was a popular tale across medieval Europe.
By Mark Robinson
March 15, 2026 at 6:00am GMT
An academic has told of the hidden link between the Purgatory of St Patrick in Co Donegal and one of France’s foremost medieval writers.
The ancient pilgrimage site on Lough Derg has long been associated with Ireland’s patron saint, where it is said that an entrance to purgatory was revealed as a means to help him evangelize the local people.
In the 12th century, the legend would feature in a Latin text written by a monk and was widely circulated across Europe.
It centers on the story of an Irish knight who travels to the site seeking penance. After entering purgatory, he is faced with a number of torments, which he overcomes, and tells other about upon his return.
Speaking to The Irish News, Myriam White-Le Goff, a medieval literature lecturer at the University of Artois in northern France, said that the legend circulating came at a time when Ireland was viewed as being more advanced than the rest of the continent.
“At the start of the Middle Ages, Ireland is a place that continental Europe strongly admired,” she said.
“It was the area of Europe that was considered the most refined, both artistically and intellectually.
“It’s true that continental Europe was far behind; we held a bit of a golden image of Ireland. It was a bit like heaven on earth.”
She added that Ireland was sometimes synonymous with “the other world” and that the idea that a door to another world existed inside a cave would not have been “completely crazy” to people in the Middle Ages.
“It’s a land which is as much geographic as it is symbolic. Saying ‘Ireland’ doesn’t necessarily mean that the people thought of Ireland the place. It can mean ‘elsewhere’; this exotic place,” she said.
As the legend of St Patrick’s Purgatory spread around Europe, she said that one of the most notable translations is believed to have been written by Marie de France – one of the Francophone world’s most prominent medieval writers.
“She was one of the first to re-write it,” she said.
“It is often said that she is the first female writer to have written in French,” she said.
“It’s possible that there are others who wrote before her and we don’t have any records of it. But in any case, that’s what a lot of literary historians would say.
“Even if we don’t know who she was or where exactly she came from, we do know that she is someone important who left her mark on history.”
Ms. White Le-Goff noted that, as in her other works, the author tells her audience that she is writing in order to preserve the story, at a time where oral tales were common and, in this instance, so that more people can read it.
However, she also makes some key changes, including the insinuation that even if the reader isn’t religious, they can get to heaven. She noted that this was important at a time when there was much “anxiety” surrounding salvation.
“She places value on the fact that the hero, Owein, is a knight, and that he can save himself and enter salvation, even though he is not religious,” she said.
“In the Latin legend, when he returns to the world of men, he asks the king, ‘What should I do? Should I continue being a knight? Or should I become a monk? Do I need to become religious in order to enter salvation?’.
“The king doesn’t respond. We don’t know his response and so every reader comes to their own conclusion.
“Marie de France makes the king respond. And the king says, ‘No, you can remain a knight because you can enter salvation as a knight’.
“That’s interesting in terms of the validation of the non-religious and it’s also important in the political and literary context of the time.”
Have a bit of a laugh with our selection of funny and ridiculous Irish jokes!
Go on! Have a laugh These silly jokes are guaranteed to make you laugh…against all your better judgement. Go on! Have a laugh These silly jokes are guaranteed to make you laugh…against all your better judgement.
We all know the magical powers behind having a laugh, so we take a look at the best Irish jokes to make you giggle, a sampling of the famous Irish wit and wisdom.
Get ready to embrace the craic and let out some belly laughs with a collection of hilarious Irish jokes! The Irish are renowned for their wit and humor, and their jokes have traveled far and wide, spreading joy and laughter wherever they go. So sit back, grab a pint of Guinness (optional), and prepare to be tickled by these side-splitting, silly Irish jokes that will leave you grinning like a leprechaun!
Enjoy!
Six Irish men were playing poker when one of them played a bad hand and died…
The rest drew straws to see who would tell his wife. One man draws the shortest straw and goes to his friend’s house to tell the wife.
The man says to her, “Your husband lost some money in the poker game and is afraid to come home.”
The wife says, “Tell him to drop dead!” The man responds, “I’ll go tell him.”
What’s the difference between God and Bono?
God doesn’t wander around Dublin thinking he’s Bono.
There are only three kinds of men who don’t understand women…
Young men, old men, and middle-aged men.
Never iron a four-leaf clover…
You don’t want to press your luck.
The Irish gave the bagpipes to the Scots as a joke…
But the Scots haven’t got the joke yet.
The Irish way…
Now don’t be talking about yourself while you’re here. We’ll surely be doing that after you leave.
There you have it, a barrel full of laughs with these silly Irish jokes that are sure to brighten your day! The Irish have an incredible ability to find humor in everyday situations, and their jokes never fail to bring a smile to people’s faces. So go ahead, share these jokes with your friends, family, and colleagues, and spread the Irish spirit of laughter far and wide.
Remember, a good joke is like a pot of gold—it’s worth sharing with everyone!
This year sees the 40th anniversary of the Falls Curfew.
Four people were killed as a result of the curfew in the lower Falls area which occurred in July 1970. The curfew started on Friday, July 3 1970 when thousands of heavily armed British troops took over the Falls.
It was only broken on Sunday, July 5 when courageous local women organised a march and broke through the shocked line of British soldiers after two days of gun battles.
The Andersonstown News met up with some of the women who were involved in those historic events.
Rosemary Lawlor was a 19-year-old who took part in the march that broke the Falls Curfew. She is now a grandmother with vivid memories of taking part in the march.
At the time of the curfew her husband and baby were were staying in her mother’s house in Ballymurphy after they were burned out of their home in Donegall Pass.
She says on the Friday news first came that there was trouble on the Falls.
“We heard that there was trouble on the Falls and we heard that people weren’t allowed out of their houses,” recalled Rosemary.
On Saturday the women tried to march down the Falls, determined to break the curfew, but were prevented from going past a line of British steel and guns at the Children’s Hospital.
“On the Sunday, though, we organised ourselves much better. Maire Drumm was the main woman and we all had messages to bring in like bread and food for the kids,” said Rosemary.
“Instead of going down into Leeson Street we went down the Grosvenor Road because it was locked off from across the Dunville Park.
“We went down the Grosvenor Road, we were all linking arms and singing. There were hundreds of women with children in prams and all the way down the road people fell in and joined the march.
“We turned into Cullingtree Road and the first street on the left was Slate Street and the soldiers were billeted in Slate Street school and my memory is they came rushing out to us.
“Now I had an aunt who lived on the corner and I remember thinking to myself if anything happens I will run into my aunt Mary’s house.
“We pushed forward and the Brits all came running out, we took them by surprise, some of them were half dressed. We were pushing and they were pushing us back. It was very very scary, they were prepared to hurt us. There was all kinds of fisticuffs going on and this soldier came out and he was obviously an officer because he restored calm. He was half-shaven and he had no shirt on.
“A lot of people were hurt and were lying on the side of the road.
“I had clumps of hair pulled out. But the women forced forward and we won and we got through.”
Rosemary said that the people who had being living under military rule had their spirits lifted tremendously by the breaking of the curfew.
“We defeated the British army and that’s the truth of it, the women defeated the Brits and we got in.”
Rosemary recalled returning home later and how she hadn’t told her mother that she would be attending the daring march.
“At that time my mother didn’t know where I was,” she said. “I had told her that I was just going up to the shop and asked her to mind the child because I didn’t want to take him with me.
“I had told my mummy that I wouldn’t be long, but then she saw me on the TV and when I got back she went ballistic, she called me everything.
“That was my first introduction to protest, and that was me hooked,” she added.
Kevin O’Hara remembers a St. Patrick’s Day when a sentimental sprig of shamrock pinned to his school shirt became less a token of pride than a ticket to being mocked and bruised by classmates, and a window into a childhood braided with strict faith, poverty, and old country longing.
O Paddy dear, an ‘did ye hear
the news that’s goin’ round?
The shamrock is by Law forbid
to grow on Irish ground!
No more St. Patrick’s Day we’ll keep,
his color can’t be seen,
for they’re hangin’ men and women
There for wearin’ ‘o the Green!
– The Wearin’ o’ the Green, c. 1795, Anonymous
“STAND STILL, CAN’T YOU!” my Irish-born mother complained as she affixed to my blue school uniform shirt an Erin Go Bragh pin adorned with clay pipe and green ribbon.
“It’s St. Patrick’s Day! And look, shamrock,” she cooed, securing a generous bunch behind the tin button. She stepped back to admire her handiwork.
“There now, a lucky Irish lad, you are.”
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Oh, yes, lucky me. Lucky me to be going to school decked out in a girly corsage so class bullies could blacken my two eyes with potato fists.
Lucky me to be wearing a three-quarter-length tweed coat I called a “gyp,” feeling gypped out of a normal coat by this relic from the old country.
Lucky me never to miss early Mass during the six bone-chilling weeks of Lent.
Lucky me to be spending summer vacations visiting holy shrines, while all the other kids were going to amusement parks.
Lucky me to be so poor that a young curate once proposed our family should grace a billboard for the diocese’s annual Catholic Charities appeal, though Dad would assure us we were “not poor, but simply rich in poverty.”
Oh, yes, being Irish was a lucky thing, like having tons of homework on Trick-or-Treat night.
At school that morning, I slouched over my desk, trying desperately to hide my dainty spray of clover.
“Sit up straight, Master O’Hara,” scolded my fourth-grade teacher, Sister Maria Thomas. Her stern command straightened my spine like a swift boot up the behind, whereupon she caught sight of my tiny bouquet.
“What’s that greenery you’re wearing?” Her voice went soft, almost lilting, as she walked toward me.
“Shamrock, Sister.” My face turned red as every head in the classroom swiveled to look at me.
“Goodness gracious, shamrock!” She swooned, clasping her hands over the white bib of her black habit. “Where did you ever come by it, tell me?”
“My grandmother in Ireland sent it to my mom in a letter.” I turned all hot and itchy under her gaze.
“Isn’t it lovely?” She fingered the tiny leaves. “So much smaller than the clover that grows here in New England.
“Class, do you know St. Patrick converted the pagan Irish by using the shamrock’s three petals to explain the Holy Trinity?
“Now, Kevin, walk down the aisles so your fellow classmates can have a look. Imagine, genuine shamrock from the Emerald Isle!”
I would rather have run the gauntlet of Iroquois that clubbed old Father Isaac Jogues and Brother Rene Goupil in Auriesville, New York – one of our vacation hotspots. Sure enough, the girls smirked at my awkward fashion parade, while the boys took to calling me St. Kevin of the Sissies.
After my march of misery, I bee-lined it back to my desk, but Sister had another idea.
“Kevin, you must show your shamrock to Sister St. Regina. It would please her so.”
I walked out of the classroom to an accompaniment of snorts and giggles, and to the principal’s office, where I found Sister St. Regina sitting meditatively at her desk, suspended in prayer. She was a kindly old nun of failing health, and we vied for the privilege of carrying her black satchel back to the convent after school.
“What is it, child?” Her weak, watery eyes lifted themselves from her book of daily prayer.
I shifted from foot to foot. “Pancake . . . er, Sister Maria Thomas, wants me to show you my shamrock from Ireland.”
She beckoned me to her desk, where she touched the shamrock’s delicate leaflets with thin-veined fingers. Suddenly she began to weep, and she reached into her deep, mysterious black pockets for a handkerchief. Now, nuns often got angry, and many even laughed and sang, but I’d never seen one cry before.
At home that evening, after the family rosary, I told my parents how Sister Saint Regina had bawled her eyes out when I showed her my sprig of shamrock.
“I suppose the poor dear hasn’t seen any in years.” Mom nodded gravely. “She’s a Leahy by birth, coming from Ireland as a young girl.”
Seeing my jaw drop at the notion of nuns having any existence outside of convent, church, and school, she explained, “Most of the Sisters at St. Charles are Irish. Let’s see, There’s Theresa Gabriel Cawley, Mary Angelita McCarthy, Maria Thomas O’Connor, Helen Catherine Shine, Helen James Meagher, Stephen Maria Murphy…”
Boy, that was something to hear. Whenever I thought about where nuns might have come from, I imagined them to be either clip-winged angels sent to Earth to tend to God’s flock, or hatched from black-and-white speckled eggs on Easter Sunday. They never spoke of parents or siblings, but only of God the Father or the Blessed Mother, having no family but the Holy Family and their own cherished sisterhood.
Once I spotted a lock of Hellcat’s … er, Sister Helen Catherine’s jet-black hair peeking from beneath her starched white wimple, but that was my only shocking glimpse of a nun’s normal humanity. Otherwise, they were simply creatures of awe and fear.
But now it made perfect sense they were Irish, brought up in homes just like our own, with front rooms so chock-full of holy statues and religious pictures that your right knee would reflexively buckle in genuflection upon entering.
“I pray we can all visit Ireland again someday,” Mom sighed, in her own St. Patrick’s Day reverie, “and when we do, I’ll show you my mother’s winter garden where her shamrock grows.”
Before getting into bed that night, I took a look at the wilted bit of shamrock on my little nightstand and wished I’d given it to Sister Saint Regina. Curled up under the covers, I reviewed the eventful day and recalled how the venerable principal had touched the shamrock as reverently as if it were a relic of her patron saint.
I tossed and turned that long night, pursued by dreams of an Emerald Isle set like a jewel in the middle of a dark wide sea. There were druids and snakes, of course, and a flock of barefoot pagan girls running after St. Patrick through verdant fields. By an ancient standing stone, they begged the bearded man from over the seas to tell them more about his wondrous three gods in one.
In gratitude for his teaching, they offered him sally baskets lined in shamrock and brimming with speckled eggs – a selfless brood of God-loving nuns.
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*This story first appeared in The Boston Globe on St. Patrick’s Day, 2005. Kevin O’Hara is the author of “Last of the Donkey Pilgrims: A Man’s Journey through Ireland.” You can learn more about Kevin O’Hara on his website TheDonkeyman.com.
** Originally published in 2025 and updated in 2026.
JD Vance humiliated as Pope snubs Fourth of July 250 celebrations to stand with immigrants
This isn’t the first display of tension between the Vice President and the leader of the Catholic Church, stemming from the Trump administration’s hardline position on immigration.
Charlie Jones Senior US News Reporter
10:12 ET, 21 Feb 2026
Pope Leo XIV turned down the invite
Pope Leo XIV turned down the invite (Image: AFP via Getty Images)
Pope Leo XIV has given an embarrassing snub to US Vice President JD Vance by declining an official invitation to attend the upcoming July 4th 250th anniversary celebrations in the US – in order to go to an event supporting refugees instead.
The Pope, who comes from Chicago, will mark that date “on the tiny Italian island of Lampedusa – a migrant gateway in the Mediterranean,” according to Christopher Hale, who documents Vatican affairs through his “Letters from Leo” reports.
It is just the latest sign of worsening relations between the Vatican and Washington.
“JD Vance personally invited Pope Leo to take part in the anniversary celebrations. Many assumed Trump and Vance would welcome the first American pope with open arms during this historic jubilee. But Pope Leo never accepted the offer,” Hale reports.
It comes hot on the heels of the Vatican also turning down an invitation to join President Donald Trump’s Board of Peace. Additionally, the Vatican has discreetly confirmed the Pope has no intentions to visit the United States whatsoever in 2026.
“Instead, on the very day of America’s 250th, [the Pope] will kneel on a rocky outcrop closer to Tunisia than to Washington, bearing witness to those dying in desperate search of freedom,” Hale stated. “The contrast could not be sharper.
“President Trump envisions F-35 flyovers and fireworks in the capital’s sky; Pope Leo will stand under the same sun on Lampedusa, greeting strangers at the door.
“Trump wraps himself in the trappings of national glory, while Leo embraces what he calls the ‘moral obligation’ to welcome the migrant and refugee.
“Their clashing itineraries speak volumes about their clashing values,” Hale said.
The new Pope has positioned himself against the Trump administration’s hardline position on migration.
He opened the church’s penitential Lenten season by presiding over Ash Wednesday and lamenting the “ashes of international law and justice” that have been left by today’s wars and conflicts.
Pope Leo XIV’s decision not to participate in President Trump’s 250th anniversary celebration or his Board of Peace “is not a snub for snub’s sake. It is a conscious moral stance.
“The 70-year-old pontiff has made clear that true greatness is measured by our treatment of the least among us, not the size of our parades,” reports Hale.
“He has repeatedly condemned what he calls the ‘inhuman’ persecution of immigrant families, aligning the Church firmly against the mass deportations and border cruelty of the Trump era.”
