The Road to Santiago: Pilgrims of St. James

; but after two or three verses we could continue no more, such were the floods of tears we shed and the sobs that choked our song. Only when we had exhausted our weeping did we take up the Te Deum afresh and we went on singing as we descended Mountjoy and until we reached the outskirts of the city.’ *
    The pilgrims who arrived at Mountjoy on horseback used to dismount and walk on foot the rest of the road to Compostella, following the example of the saintly Queen, Isabella of Portugal, who made the pilgrimage to the Apostle in July 1324. According to Uria many of the pilgrims walked the last miles of the pilgrimage barefoot.
    According to the Historia Compostelana, in 1105, Archbishop Gelmirez built a church on Mountjoy and yearly processions went thither from the basilica of Santiago on the day of St. Mark. On the way down Mountjoy the pilgrims were accustomed to enter the shrine of San Lorraine who had been miraculously carried through the air by St. James on his charger and deposited at the gates of Compostella. The eagerness of the pilgrims old and young to reach the gates of the holy city is described in the following French pilgrim song:

    Quand nous vinismes à une mille
    Près de la fameuse ville,
    Monsieur Saint Jacques le Grand,
    Je me sentois plus habil
    A cheminer que devant.

    As I walked down the slope alone towards Compostella, I cast my mind back twenty-four years to my first visit to the city of the Apostle. On that occasion I had plenty of company, but we had plodded on past San Marcos like blind men, through fog and mist, singing Irish and Galician songs to warm ourselves and keep our spirits up. In those days the Camino francés was a magic road full of romance and adventure for which I craved. Santiago had always been the favourite saint of vagabonds, for he had been the Far-Wanderer and he knew their failings and could sympathize. And looking back, my various journeys along the Jacobean road became a huge rambling peregrination through life with many deviations into side roads and bypaths in quest of other shrines, but always with the firm intention of picking up again the trial to the tomb of the Apostle.
    At last I reached the Francigena Gate where the Camino francés, which begins in the Rue St. Jacques in Paris, ends. At the door of the neighbouring church of Santo Domingo, I found myself surrounded by a mob of pilgrims, and among them Galician friends into whose care I committed myself. We proceeded along the narrow streets to the offices of the confraternity of St. James and I was given my scallop shell, which for eleven hundred years had been the badge of kings, prelates and beggars alike. Armed with my emblem I joined the throng of pilgrims who were slowly making their way through the crowds to the cathedral. The two celebrated streets Rúa Nueva and Rúa Villar were thronged with visitors from many countries and I heard more French, English and German than Spanish. Inside the cathedral the pilgrims marched up one of the side aisles towards the high altar in order to give the traditional embrace to the bust of the Saint before descending to pray in the crypt.
    Not feeling in the mood for company, I left my companions and went over to the little chapel of La Corticela, which in early days had been the special gathering-place of the foreign pilgrims. At this hour of the evening there were few worshippers. Here I was able to recapture the memories of the many years since my first pilgrimage to St. James. On four occasions I had visited this shrine and the Road of Santiago had at times loomed largely in my life, but it now seemed to me as though all my years in Spain had been in some strange way associated with my wandering over the pilgrim roads. As Irishman and Celt I had set out from my island following the pilgrim way, but every now and then I had deviated from the road of the Apostle, whether to pay homage to the shrines of other saints or else to follow paths alien to the world of the spirit. And now in the fullness of my age I had followed the road once more in an attempt to gather up the memories of a lifetime. As I sat meditating in the silent chapel, the murmur of the crowds of pilgrims in the cathedral and outside in the streets came to me like the gentle roll of the ocean tide, and I repeated to myself the lines of Sir Walter Raleigh:

    Give me my scallop-shell of quiet,
    My staff of faith to walk upon,
    My scrip of joy, immortal diet,
    My bottle of salvation,
    My gown of