Saints Island

Saints Island is a ruined monastery in Lough Derg, County Donegal, where St. Patrick reportedly placed Dabheoc as first abbot during the fifth century. The Augustinian priory served pilgrims bound for St. Patrick's Purgatory until suppression near the end of the sixteenth century. Now drystone walls, a gravel path and a jumbled graveyard stand above the water, preserving the rhythm of a route that once carried whole continents toward a cave of fire and mercy.