¹Pochin Mould, Daphne D. C. "The Irish Pilgrimages." The Furrow, 5.3 (1954): 131.

²Herity, Michael. Gleanncholmcille: A guide to 5,000 years of history in stone. Dublin: Na Clocha Breaca, 1998. Introduction by Fr. James McDyer.
Fr. McDyer in his autobiography writes of his experience with the turas on Tory Island prior to his tenure in Gleann Cholm Cille. He doesn not, however mention the turas in Gleann, where he spent the most significant years of his career.
Fr. McDyer, best known for his social activism and his efforts to organize community-own enterprises (including the successful Folk Village) said about his work:
"Action! Action against injustice, inertia, hypocrisy and greed! It is for this that my whole being has yearned. In this I am moved by the old Irish mythological leader, Fionn Mac Cumhall, who instructed his harpist to play "not the music of things that are said, but the music of things that are done." McDyer, James. Fr. McDyer of Glencolumbkille. Dingle, Co. Kerry, Ireland: Brandon, 1982. 116-17.

³Quinn, Moore E. "Portrait of a Mythographer; Discourses of Identity In the Work of Father James McDyer." Eire-Ireland Journal of Irish Studies Spring-Summer (2003): 130-31.
The author states, regarding the revitalization of the Turas and other authetic Celtic practices, "This model dominated the political landscape during the formation of the Irish state. Prime Minister Eamon de Valera attempted to create a sense of Irishness by revaluing the West of Ireland in terms of its 'heroic past.'"

⁴Lacey, Brian. Colum Cille and the Columban Tradition. Dublin: Four Courts, 1997. 33.

⁵O'Cuinneagain, Liam. "Stations of the Turas." Message to the author. 9 Aug. 2010. E-mail.

⁶Herity 17.

⁷Lacey, Brian."Constructing Colum Cille." Irish Arts Review 21.3 (2004): 120-23.
Regarding the uncertainty of the dates of the Colum Cille's death, the author writes, "Despite the widespread belief that he died in 597 (his alleged 1400th anniversary was commemorated in 1997), it is now almost certain that he died in 593."
Colum Cille, siimilar to other early saints of the Celtic church, was a possessed of characteristics that may not today be regarded as "saintly." Lawrence Taylor writes, "The wandering Irish saints prophesy, cure, win battles, even raise the dead. They also curse. They are indissolubly associated with the landscape, and share its ambivalence and bouts of tempter...Like the Hebrews they were tribespeople, not townspeople, the shamans of a pastoral folk who themselves moved in the landscape." Taylor, Lawrence J. Occasions of Faith: an Anthropology of Irish Catholics. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 1995. 43.

⁸O'Cuinneagain, Liam. "Turas Cholm Cille" Message to the author, quoting Séamus McGinley. 13 May 2014. E-mail.

⁹Lacey. Colum Cille and the Columban Tradition.10.

¹⁰Harbison, Peter. Pilgrimage in Ireland: the Monuments and the People. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse Univ., 1992. 106.

¹¹Lacey. "Constructing Colum Cille." 121.

¹²Lacey, Brian. Colum Cille and the Columban Tradition. Dublin: Four Courts, 1997. 87-8.

¹³O'Donnell, Manus, Andrew O'Kelleher, Gertrude Schoepperle, and Richard Henebry. Betha Colaim Chille. Life of Columcille. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois under the Auspices of the Graduate School, 1918. 5.
One of the enduring legends of the saint is that his mission to the Picts in Iona was occasioned by his exile from Ireland under duress after he had lost both a "copyright" suit and the ensuing ferocious battle. In this story the saint made an unauthorized copy of a Psalm book, and the high king ruled that he was required to return it to the owner of the original, reasoning that "To every cow its calf, to every book its copy." It is, however, more likely that Colum Cille's journey to Scotland was entirely voluntary. This book may be read in its entirety here.

¹⁴O'Donnell 7.

¹⁵Lacey, Brian. Colum Cille and the Columban Tradition. Dublin: Four Courts, 1997. 8.

¹⁶Pochin Mould 136.

¹⁷Price, Liam. "Glencolumbkille, County Donegal, and Its Early Christian Cross-Slabs." The Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland Seventh 11.3 (1941): 82-84.
The quote just above is from John O'Donovan's translation of the story.

¹⁸O'Donnell 132.
The tale continues (my edits) “And that javelin grew in the place whereas it struck the ground that that time till now, and thus it shall be till Doomsday. Then Columeille blessed that stream, and its venom and enchantment departed therefrom. And he crossed it. And an angel brought him a round green stone, and bade him cast it at the demons, and they should flee before it, and the fog also. And the angel bade him throw his bell Dub Duaibseeh at them in like wise. And Columeille did as the angel commanded him, so that the whole land was yielded to him from the fog. And the demons fled before him to a rock out in the great sea opposite the western headland of that region. And Columcille cast at them that stone that the angel had given him, and his bell Dub Duaibsech. And he bade the demons go into the sea through the rock whereas they were, and be in the form of fish forever, and to do no deviltry against any thenceforth. …And lest folk should eat them, Columcille left a mark on them passing every other fish, to wit, that they should be blind of an eye and red. And fishers oft take them today, and they do naught to them when they perceive them, save to cast them again into the sea. Then required Columcille of God to give back to him his bell and stone from the sea. And lo, he beheld them coming toward him in the likeness of a glow of fire, and they fell to the ground fast by him….And in the place where the bell fell, it sank deep ill the earth, and it left its clapper there. And Columcille said the bell was none the worse without the clapper." This book may be read in its entirety here.

More than 400 years after Manus O'Donnell, Gleann Cholm Cille's Fr. McDyer made good use of the "evil fog" allegory when he reported on his battle with the bureaucrats in Dublin: "But the most powerful bodies were against me...The civil servants hedged by asking for feasibility studies. I reminded them about St. Colmcille and the druids and the efforts of the druids to thwart him by calling up the mists. I said: "The druids have gone but they have left their peers behind in you boys, the senior civil servants. The modern druidical mist is your feasibility study." McDyer, James. Fr. McDyer of Glencolumbkille. Dingle, Co. Kerry, Ireland: Brandon, 1982. 67.

Another brief quotation, supposedly from Colum Cille, was mentioned by Liam Price: "...it is written in early modern Irish, and was composed perhaps in the 15th century. It speaks of Senglenn Coluim, " the old glen of Colum, and of the old glen named from Colum. Na saruigbtear Seinglenn, aitreb na lee nime" ("The old glen will not be harmed, the place of the slabs of heaven.") Price, Liam. "Glencolumbkille, County Donegal, and Its Early Christian Cross-Slabs." The Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland Seventh 11.3 (1941): 32.

¹⁹Harbison 109-10.
Harbison explains that St. Fanad's "cult was overlain by that of St Colmcille, whose relics may have been brought to the valley for safety some time in the first half of the 9th century."

²⁰Herity 8.

²¹Harbison 109-10.

²²Harbison 54.

²³Price 87-88.

²⁴Williams, W. H. A. Tourism, Landscape, and the Irish Character: British Travel Writers in Pre-famine Ireland. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin, 2008. 44.

²⁵Harbison 105.

²⁶Pochin Mould 133.

²⁷Pochin Mould 133.
The author goes on to write specifically about the turas in Gleann Cholm Cille (pp. 138-39) "The midnight barefoot round of three miles in Glencolumbkille is, to my mind, harder while it lasts than Lough Derg. In many cases, these smaller pilgrimages are now headed and directed by the clergy, which is as it should be, for they can do much to concentrate devotion along the right lines, as did their predecessors of the Celtic Church, turning it away from queer superstitious practices on to the real intention of the pilgrimage of prayer and penance and devotion to the local saint and to Our Lady. ...A symbol of the continuity of the Faith in Ireland, of our close link with our native Celtic saints."

²⁸Another hillside sacred well considered here in the Voice from the Dawn project is the Tullaghan Hill Holy Well in Co. Sligo.

²⁹Harbison 196.
Harbison here states, "The Glencolmcille pillars are unlikely to have acted as gravemarkers and were almost certainly erected in connection with pilgrimage activity in the valley." However an earlier publication he states, "The most conspicuous remains of this monastery are the pillars decorated with cross-motifs and geometric designs which may originally have been grave-slabs, but are now the centres or 'stations' of the pilgrimage..." Harbison, Peter. Guide to National and Historic Monuments of Ireland: including a Selection of Other Monuments Not in State Care. Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1992. 68.

³⁰Pochin Mould 136.

³¹Taylor, Lawrence J. Occasions of Faith: an Anthropology of Irish Catholics. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 1995. 58.
"They are yet anxious to perform the lustrations and purifications, which so much prevailed in the early ages of christianity, and though the turas left by Columbkille in the old Glen is now condemned by the clergy, some of the natives go through it yet with reverence and solemnity, visiting each hallowed spot where Columbkille knelt or stood or left any of his sacred footsteps..."
Here Taylor is quoting from: O'Donovan, John, Thomas O'Connor, P. (Patrick) O'Keeffe, and Michael Herity. Ordnance Survey Letters Letters Containing Information Relative to the Antiquities of the County of Donegal Collected during the Progress of the Ordnance Survey in 1837, 1838, and 1839. Dublin: Four Masters, 2002. 120-21.
In a note on p. 253 Taylor writes, "The 'Outrage Papers' contain crime reports for the period, and while faction fights seem to have been typical in the north, and to some extend to the east of southwest Donegal, the region itself is not much represented. This might of course be a function of reportage—the absence of police in the area—but both Ewing and O'Donovan, who traveled through the entire region taking notes—make a point of observing the quiescence of the region."

³²Pochin Mould 137.

³³Hastings, James, John A. Selbie, and Louis H. Gray. Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics. New York: Scribner's, 1919. 21.

³⁴Hardy, Philip Dixon. The Holy Wells of Ireland: Containing an Authentic Account of Those Various Places of Pilgrimage and Penance Which Are Still Annually Visited by Thousands of the Roman Catholic Peasantry. With a Minute Description of the Patterns and Stations Periodically Held in Various Districts of Ireland. Dublin: Hardy, & Walker, 1840. iii.
This book may be read in its entirety here.
Hardy's book is very much an artifact of the racist, anti-Catholic views commonly held in Protestant communities of nineteenth-century Ireland, which often looked upon the rural poor of Ireland as almost a sub-human species. See this illustration from the book. The author supplements his own observations with those of other with similar views about the excesses of the "patterns." On p. 89 he quotes from Crofton Croker, Researches in the South of Ireland, (1824) "Scene at River Lee." "The tents are generally so crowded that the dancers have scarcely room for their performance: from twenty [94] to thirty men and women are often huddled together in each, and the circulation of porter and whiskey amongst the various groups is soon evident in its effects. All become actors, - none spectators, - rebellious songs, in the Irish language, are loudly vociferated, and received with yells of applause - towards evening the tumult increases, and intoxication becomes almost universal. Cudgels are brandished, the shrieks of women and the piercing cry of children thrill painfully upon the ear in the riot and uproar of the scene: indeed the distraction and tumult of a patron cannot be described. At midnight the assembly became somewhat less noisy and confused, but the chapels were still crowded: on the shore people lay 'heads and points' so closely that it was impossible to move without trampling on them; the washing and bathing in the well still continued, and the dancing, drinking, roaring, and singing were, in some degree, kept up throughout the night."

³⁵0 Giollain, Diarmuid. "Revisiting the Holy Well." Eire-Ireland 40.1&2 (2005): 32-33.

³⁶Taylor 65-67.
Talor writes, "...many clergy so successfully captured and tamed such devotions that some began to look further, reviving defunct pilgrimages in order to reinvigorate what could now be perceived as quaint local custom. Once securely positioned as patrons of the pilgrimages, local clergy would sometimes promote other devotions at the site, with lay support..."