Pattern is an Irish term meaning either a saint's feast day, or the various devotional activities that take place on the feast day at sites associated with the saint's life. It is thought to derive from the word patron, as in a patron saint.
A notable example of a pattern takes place on the eve and day of July 24 at Saint Declan's Ardmore, County Waterford. Patterns also take place in Tuosist parish, near Kenmare County Kerry, on July 8, the feast of Saint Killian, and at Urlaur in County Mayo on August 4.
Typically a pattern involved a procession by one or more communities to a nearby holy well named for a saint; the water believed to have medicinal healing properties. Patterns were a common part of Irish rural tradition until the reforms of Cardinal Cullen from the 1850s.
Famous quotes containing the word pattern:
“It is a very true and expressive phrase, “He looked daggers at me,” for the first pattern and prototype of all daggers must have been a glance of the eye.... It is wonderful how we get about the streets without being wounded by these delicate and glancing weapons, a man can so nimbly whip out his rapier, or without being noticed carry it unsheathed. Yet it is rare that one gets seriously looked at.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)