Guide
Croagh Patrick: A Rare Brocken Spectre and Ringed Glory
Croagh Patrick is County Mayo’s distinctive 764-metre conical, quartzite mountain, sitting above Clew Bay. Named for Ireland’s patron saint after it was said he fasted here for 40 days and 40 nights after his return to Ireland to save the pagan Irish; and climbed by pilgrims for centuries, it is an especially fitting place to witness a human shadow surrounded by a halo-like ring of light.
Every year on Reek Sunday, the last Sunday in July, thousands climb in prayer and penance, with some still making the ascent barefoot. The present chapel on the summit was dedicated in 1905.
I have climbed Croagh Patrick several times, on Reek Sunday and at other times of year. On my visits, the July summit has often been enveloped in cloud, while my winter climbs have generally brought the clearest views. One cold January afternoon produced something much rarer.
What is a Brocken Spectre?
A Brocken spectre is your own shadow projected onto cloud or mist, usually while you are standing on a mountain with the sun behind you. With no clear sense of distance or scale, the shadow can appear enormous and strangely ghostlike.
It is sometimes surrounded by concentric rings of colour known as a glory, resembling the haloes depicted around saints in religious art. Each observer sees a glory centred on their own position; a photograph records the glory centred on the camera’s antisolar point.
The phenomenon takes its name from the Brocken, a frequently mist-covered peak in Germany’s Harz Mountains, where sightings became associated with ghostly figures and mountain folklore.
On any mountain, a Brocken spectre is an extraordinary sight. On Croagh Patrick—an ancient place of pilgrimage named for Ireland’s patron saint—the appearance of a human shadow surrounded by rings of light resembling a saint’s halo carries an added resonance.
Saint Patrick, James Joyce and the Brocken Spectre
The effect provides an uncanny meeting point between the mountain’s Christian associations and its older atmosphere of folklore and mythology. A figure appears upon the cloud, encircled by a glory, above the mountain traditionally associated with Saint Patrick’s fasting, spiritual struggle and banishment of forces from pre-Christian Ireland.
The relationship between the Brocken spectre, Croagh Patrick and James Joyce has attracted academic attention. In Finnegans Wake, Joyce repeatedly echoes the landscape around Dublin Bay with a western “shadowland” centred on Croagh Patrick and Clew Bay. Howth Head finds its uncanny counterpart in Croagh Patrick—the “peatrick”—while Saint Patrick and the mountain become entangled with Ireland’s religious, folkloric and mythological history.
In her study The Riddle of the Brocken Spectre: Reading Finnegans Wake on the Top of Croagh Patrick, Katherine O’Callaghan argues that Joyce connects Croagh Patrick with Germany’s Brocken Mountain, from which the phenomenon takes its name. She interprets the climactic confrontation between Saint Patrick and the Pagan Archdruid as occurring, in one of the novel’s overlapping layers, during an appearance of the Brocken spectre.
Citation: Katherine O’Callaghan, “The Riddle of the Brocken Spectre: Reading Finnegans Wake on the Top of Croagh Patrick,” James Joyce Quarterly, Vol. 56, Nos. 1–2 (Fall 2018–Winter 2019), pp. 133–153.
What conditions create a Brocken Spectre?
You need sunlight behind you and cloud or mist opposite, usually below your position. The sunlight casts your shadow onto the water droplets, while light scattered back towards you creates the coloured glory around it.
A lower sun can produce a longer and more dramatic shadow, but Brocken spectres are not confined to winter. The essential ingredients are sunlight, mist and the correct alignment.
Those conditions came together during my ascent at the end of January 2008. After a slow climb over what was then the loose upper slope, we reached the church-topped summit as cloud drifted below us and the sun emerged behind.
For a few minutes, the shadow of photographer and camera appeared against the mist, surrounded by a complete ringed glory, with the islands and water of Clew Bay visible beyond.
Photographing Croagh Patrick
A Brocken spectre cannot reliably be placed on a photographic shot list. It depends upon recognising a fleeting combination of light, cloud and position—and being ready when those conditions appear just like the northern lights.
That responsiveness to weather and changing light is central to my private Mayo photography experiences. Although no particular atmospheric phenomenon can be guaranteed, each experience is shaped around the conditions and the best photographic opportunities available on the day.
Leave your comment
Comments are emailed to Panoramic Ireland and are not published automatically.
Thanks — your comment is in. We'll reply by email shortly.