IT'S one in the morning and I cannot see where to go. I'm saying to myself "Either you're a masochist or you're due a lot of penance." I edge my way uphill from Murrisk and then, as my eyes adjust to the darkness, a pilgrim path appears before me.

It's like the bed of a mountain stream. The mud and stone contrast with the dark heather. Quickly, you realise that it's a path carved out of tile mountainside not by water but by human feet. Advancing another loo yards, I'm encouraged as rock outcrops before me turn into people.

Later, what appeared to be a handful turns out to be hundreds stretched out in clusters. Some wave torches like searchlights. Quite a few seem to be edging their way very slowly. Then you look down and see the white of bare feet. When it gets steep, people are on their hands and knees. The stones easily cut soft raw hands. What of bare feet?

The number of teenagers, travellers and quite elderly people weaving their way up Croagh Patrick in the early hours of Reek Sunday is striking. I rest while, nearby, two young travellers discuss why so many of their people climb Ireland's holiest mountain. "It's a great penance!" one declares boldly.

The sight of a man circling the stone cairn honouring Benen, Patrick's boy attendant, his head down in prayer, moving purpose fully in a thick mist at two in the morning, may also suggest why the mountain draws more than 30,000 people during a July weekend. Its mysticism continues to be irresistible.

At the summit people stand in silence. The small, whitewashed chapel is closed, awaiting the dawn and early Mass. An elderly woman with a stall is turning on a large Burco kettle. The music on her transistor breaks the silence given her stocks, one can only conclude that she must have had a band of Sherpas to ship that lot to the summit. Yaks would not have made it.

Later when the pilgrim streams turn from hundreds to thousands, the Archbishop of Tuam, Dr Michael Neary, perhaps, finds the essence when speaking at morning Mass at the summit. A pilgrimage to Croagh Patrick makes us aware of our individuality, our strength, our vulnerability our need for a helping hand and our ability to provide others with such."

The story of Croagh Patrick ingrained in Christian tradition was that Patrick overcame Crom Dubh the pagan harvest goddess during the fifth century and, armed with miraculous powers, took possession of the mountain. Here is where he banished the snakes and demons.

But excavations on the mountain within the past year confirm it to be a ritual landscape which attracted people for many centuries before that. Late Bronze Age features especially at the summit, where excavations are evident a prehistoric fort and hut sites all suggest that it is just as much a place for pagan gods as it is for Christian saints. The two, however, seem to be most accommodating of each other.

Maybe that fuller history which has only emerged recently, is embedded in the subconscious of local people, many of whom climb the mountain on the Friday before Reek Sunday, the Friday of Crom Dubh it was an ancient festival held in honour of the first fruits of Lughnasa.

The many hundreds who climbed to the summit this year on Garland Friday, as it is also known, were rewarded with sun, a cooling breeze and breathtaking views of Clew Bay's 366 islands, known on ancient maps of Ireland as Insule Fortunate "the fortunate islands" Those who went that night had clear conditions and the help of the light of the moon.

The pilgrims who went overnight on Saturday were not as fortunate. The delightfully cooling, heavy mist turned to rain, and when the dawn crept in, the reek remained shrouded in heavy cloud.

IN his recently published book Mythic Ireland, Michael Dames recalls that in 1840 William Thackeray had been struck by the spirit of the mountain, which, once climbed, was the scene of a great party at its foot.

Fifty tents were set around "a plain of the most brilliant green grass", where they sold "great coarse damp looking bannocks of bread . . . a collection of pigs' feet ... huge biscuits, and doubtful looking ginger beer. There were also cauldrons containing water for `tay' with other pots full of pale legs of mutton ... The road home was pleasant everybody was wet through but everybody was happy.

Croagh Patrick 1996 the tents are replaced by food stalls and plastic portable loos. No iffy ginger beer, but you can have chips and Seven Up at five in the morning. Some 150 years later, everyone is still wet through but happy a great penance.