Romantic Ireland. Volume 2/2

Here one is in the immediate vicinity of Tara and its famous hill, the site of Ireland’s most celebrated and splendid kingly residence.

Between Tara and Kells is Navan, which, of itself, is an ordinary “market town,” with nothing to commend it to the lover of beauty and history but its immediate vicinity to the junction of the rivers Blackwater and Boyne. This particular spot, just below Navan, is one of exceptional charm, though, as has been truly said, “the people of Navan have turned their backs upon it,” and from scarce a spot in the town itself can a glimpse of either stream be had.

Navan has a past decidedly more interesting than its present. Its ancient patronymic was Nuachongbhail, and it was one of the earliest fortified places in the county of Meath. Hugh de Lacy walled it around; but remains of this work have now almost disappeared, though there are still some very tangible evidences of the “earliest style of fortifications known in Erin” in the Great Moat of Navan.

The Round Tower of Donaghmore, the most perfect of its kind in Ireland, and the ruins of Donaghmore church, are near by. Professor Flinders Petrie ascribes the date of the tower to the tenth century. It is one hundred feet in height, and its base circumference is sixty-six and a half feet. He further describes the remarkable doorway as having “a figure of Our Saviour, crucified, sculptured in relief on its keystone and the stone immediately above it.” This fact should establish beyond all doubt that the motive of these great round towers of Ireland, or at least of this particular one, was Christian and not pagan.

One is bound to visit Kells if only to take cognizance of its famous market-cross. Kells, in the county of Meath, is, or should be, coupled, in the minds of visitors, with the name of Tara. They have nothing in common, but they are neighbours, and properly should be seen in connection with each other. Tara presents, at first glance, nothing more than a small conical elevation rising above the Boyne; but its memories as the residence of the magnificent Cormac, St. Patrick, the Druids, the law-givers, the bards, and all the ancient prehistoric civilization which centred around it, are very great.

Kells is a dozen or more miles from Tara, and should not be confounded with Kells in Kilkenny. Kells was granted to St. Columba in the sixth century, and a small house still exists which is fondly believed to have been either the oratory or the residence of the saint.

In the market-place of Kells was built a castle, in 1178, and opposite to it was erected a stone cross, reputedly the most beautiful of its class known. As to just what was the precise and full significance of these famous crosses, which abound in Ireland, authorities, self-styled ecclesiastical experts, and genuine archæologists alike, fail to agree. Certainly nothing has puzzled people more than the scenes depicted on the bases of some of the crosses. At Kells, for instance, there is, on one side of the base, a hunting-scene, where a man with a shield and spear, preceded by a dog, pursues a collection of animals, among which we may distinguish two stags, a pig, a monstrous bird, and three other animals. On another side there are two centaurs, one armed with a trident, the other with bow and arrow, and having a bird on its back. There also is a bird with a fish in its talons, and another bird on a quadruped of some kind. On the third side there is a contest between foot-soldiers, and on the fourth a procession of four mounted warriors.

Primarily, of course, the significance of these crosses was Christian, but whether or not of the superstitious order, as were the gargoyles and grotesque water-spouts seen so frequently on continental churches, is apparently a matter of doubt.

The subjects pictured on many of these crosses can hardly be assumed to be Scriptural, and are certainly not appropriate to the ideas of Christian art of our own time, nor indeed with those which were put to use in churches and monasteries in the Middle Ages. It has been suggested that they represent lingering pagan notions of the Happy Otherworld of the Celts, since hunting and fighting were among their principal joys; but this again is mere conjecture, and, though pagan influences had perhaps not wholly died out when this cross of Kells was first set up, it is hardly likely that pagan enthusiasm would express itself on a Christian symbol.

The crosses of Monasterboice, Kells, Clonmacnois, and Durrow were all either in, or on the very border of, the ancient kingdom of Meath, and may perhaps be grouped together as belonging to a local school which ranked perhaps above all others in the magnitude and beauty of its sculpture.

Many other crosses, which once existed throughout Ireland, are now known only by a broken fragment of the shaft, or a base, which may or may not preserve the inscription; and it seems quite probable that no ecclesiastical centre existed which did not, at one time, boast of its Celtic cross standing as a dominant monument of art among all other memorials.

The great question which the antiquaries have apparently yet to settle among themselves is as to whether the decoration of these stone crosses, so different from other sculptured stone work to be seen in churches and elsewhere, is really the result of Celtic inspiration, or not.

It certainly is partly Roman and partly Byzantine in its motive, though unquestionably the development of the idea was distinctively Celtic or Irish.

From ancient records one learns that the Irish craftsmen first worked out their ideas, not on stone, but on parchment, and that these were transferred from illuminated MSS. to the crosses, and again in metal work, where so many similar designs are seen.

It is a popular supposition that these motives, spirals, frets, and interlaced bands originated in Ireland or were peculiar to Celtic art. But really the origin of these ornaments and their travels from one country to another show quite the contrary to be the case. Investigation has shown that early civilization, advancing along primitive trade routes, or, more generally, on the lines of communication between different countries or races, was responsible for the diffusion of many arts that have been wrongly ascribed as having been born in one locality or another. Scandinavia, Greece, Egypt, and even farther east, all contributed something, no doubt, to what afterward became known as Celtic art; just how much, or by what process, is the question to decide.

At any rate, the result achieved by the artisans who carved these ancient Irish crosses, whatever may have been their source of inspiration, indicates that they were the work of no “‘prentice hand.” It is evident that no mere underling or stone-cutter chiseled out spiral, fret, and knot, and twisted zoomorph, which one sees on these crosses. It was a master-mind that planned and a master-hand that drew the same patterns on many an Irish vellum. And it was in the depth of the dark ages, too, that Ireland set this bright example to Europe. In the twelfth century one of her books, then perhaps four hundred years old, compelled the admiration of Gerald of Wales, in most things her detractor. “If you examine the drawings closely,” he says, “you will find them so delicate and exquisite, so finely drawn, and the work of interlacing so elaborate, while the colours with which they are illuminated are so blended, and still so fresh, that you will be ready to assert that all this is the work of angelic, and not human skill.” This is certainly high praise; but, within its limits, the early Irish school of decorative art, in its best products, whether on parchment, metal, or stone, has, of its kind, been hitherto unsurpassed by man.

Though the market-cross of Kells is not perfectly preserved – its top is broken off – it may be considered, with that at Monasterboice, to be a remarkable expression of the art of stone-carving. There are a notable richness and elaboration of detail most curious and quite unique.

In the churchyard are three other crosses of lesser importance, though one of them is over eleven feet in height.

The famous “Book of Kells,” a manuscript copy of the Gospels in Latin, dating from the eighth century and described as the “most elaborately executed monument (sic) of early Christian art now extant,” is preserved in the library of Trinity College, Dublin.

Next to the idyllic and vague figure of Erin, and the more definite, but still apocryphal, one of St. Patrick, that of St. Columba, the real founder of the religious community of Kells, stands out the most prominently. To his era belonged a glorious race of scholars, all of whom gained their learning from the many universities, convents, and monasteries which covered the island. Among those most prominent are the names, first of all, of St. Columba, or Columcille (Dove of the Cell); St. Columbanus; St. Gall, who evangelized Helvetia; St. Livinus, who suffered martyrdom in Flanders; St. Argobast, who became Bishop of Strasburg; and St. Killian.

Columba’s history is well set forth in sundry places, and is too extended to recount here. Suffice to say that the events of his life were most dramatic, and his attachment to learning, poetry, and literature, in particular, most profound.

Montalembert, the historian, says:

“He was a poet and writer of a high order of genius, and to an advanced period of his life remained an ardent devotee of the muse, ever powerfully moved by whatever affected the weal of the minstrel fraternity. His passion for books (all manuscript, of course, in those days, and of great rarity and value) was destined to lead him into that great offence of his life, which he was afterward to expiate by a penance so grievous. He went everywhere in search of volumes which he could borrow or copy; often experiencing refusals which he resented bitterly.”

In the following manner occurred what Montalembert calls “the decisive event which changed the destiny of Columba, and transformed him from a wandering poet and ardent bookworm into a missionary and apostle.”

“While visiting one of his former tutors, Finian, he found means to copy clandestinely the abbot’s Psalter by shutting himself up at nights in the church where the book was deposited. Indignant at what he considered as almost a theft, Finian claimed the copy when it was finished by Columba, on the ground that a copy made without permission ought to belong to the master of the original, seeing that the transcription is the son of the original book. Columba refused to give up his work, and the question was referred to the king in his palace of Tara.”

What immediately followed, and its sequel, should be read in the words of Montalembert. The accusation of theft, or something akin to burglary, was followed by Columba’s withdrawal to his native province of Tyrconnell, where he set to work to excite the natives to proceed against King Diarmid, who had decided against him.

“Diarmid marched to meet them in battle at Cul-Dreimhne, upon the borders of Ultonia and Connacia. He was completely beaten, and was obliged to take refuge at Tara. The victory was due, according to the annalist Tighernach, to the prayers and songs of Columba, who had fasted and prayed with all his might to obtain from Heaven the punishment of the royal insolence, and who, besides, was present at the battle, and took upon himself before all men the responsibility of the bloodshed.”

As for the manuscript which had been the object of this strange conflict of copyright, elevated into a civil war, it was afterward venerated as a kind of natural military and religious palladium. Under the name of Cathach or Fightu, the Latin Psalter transcribed by Columba, enshrined in a sort of portable altar, became the national relic of the O’Donnell clan. For more than a thousand years it was carried with them to battle as a pledge of victory, on the condition of being supported on the breast of a clerk free from all mortal sin.

Still struggling with a stubborn self-will, Columba found his life miserable, unhappy, and full of unrest; yet remorse had even now “planted in his soul the germs at once of a startling conversion and of his future apostolic mission.” Various legends reveal him to us at this crisis of his life, wandering long from solitude to solitude, and from monastery to monastery, seeking out holy monks, masters of penitence and Christian virtue, and asking them anxiously what he should do to obtain the pardon of God for the murder of so many victims as was caused by the battle of Cul-Dreimhne.

At length, after many wanderings in contrition and mortification, “he found the light which he sought from a holy monk, St. Molaise, famed for his studies of Holy Scripture, and who had already been his confessor.

“This severe hermit confirmed the decision of the synod; but, to the obligation of converting to the Christian faith an equal number of pagans as there were of Christians killed in the civil war, he added a new condition, which bore cruelly upon a soul so passionately attached to country and kindred. The confessor condemned his penitent to perpetual exile from Ireland!”

This was more hard than to bare his breast to the piercing sword; less welcome than to walk in constant punishment and suffering, so long as his feet pressed the soil of his worshipped Erin!

But it was even so. Thus ran the sentence of Molaise: “Perpetual exile from Ireland!”

Staggered, stunned, struck to the heart, Columba could not speak for a moment. But God gave him in that great crisis of his life the supreme grace to bear the blow and embrace the cross presented to him. At last he spoke, and in a voice choked by emotion he answered: “Be it so; what you have commanded shall be done.” From that instant his life was one long penitential sacrifice. For thirty years he lived and laboured in the distant Iona, and the fame of his sanctity and devotion filled the world.

As a farewell gift to some Irish visitors at Iona, Columba presented the following verses, deservedly classed among the world’s beautiful poetic compositions. The literal translation into English doubtless loses much of the original beauty, but enough, at least, is left to indicate the charm of the original Gaelic thought and sentiment.

 
“What joy to fly upon the white-crested sea; and watch the waves break upon the Irish shore!
 

…

 
“My foot is in my little boat; but my sad heart ever bleeds!
 
 
“There is a gray eye which ever turns to Erin; but never in this life shall it see Erin, nor her sons, nor her daughters!
 
 
“From the high prow I look over the sea; and great tears are in my eyes when I turn to Erin —
 
 
“To Erin, where the songs of the birds are so sweet, and where the clerks sing like the birds;
 
 
“Where the young are so gentle, and the old are so wise; where the great men are so noble to look at, and the women so fair to wed!
 
 
“Young traveller! carry my sorrows with you; carry them to Comgall of eternal life!
 
 
“Noble youth, take my prayer with thee, and my blessing; one part for Ireland – seven times may she be blest – and the other for Albyn.
 
 
“Carry my blessings across the sea; carry it to the West. My heart is broken in my breast!
 
 
“If death comes suddenly to me, it will be because of greatest love I bear to the Gael!”
 

It was to the rugged and desolate Hebrides that Columba turned his face when he accepted the terrible penance of perpetual exile.

Columba did return to Ireland, as history tells. But, though this may be traditional, he returned blindfolded. “The Dove of the Cell” made a comparatively long stay in Ireland, visiting with scarf-bound brow the numerous monastic establishments subject to his rule. At length he returned to Iona, where, far into the evening of life, he waited for his summons to the beatific vision. The miracles he wrought, attested by evidence of sufficient weight to move the most callous skeptic, the myriad wondrous signs of God’s favour that marked his daily acts, filled all the nations with awe. The hour and the manner of his death had long been revealed to him. The precise time he concealed from those about him until close upon the last day of his life; but the manner of his death he long foretold to his attendants. “I shall die,” he said, “without sickness or hurt; suddenly, but happily, and without accident.” At length one day, while in his usual health, he disclosed to Diarmid, his “minister,” or regular attendant monk, that the hour of his summons was nigh. A week before he had gone around the island, taking leave of the monks and labourers; and when all wept, he strove anxiously to console them. Then he blessed the island and the inhabitants. “And now,” said he to Diarmid, “here is a secret; but you must keep it till I am gone. This is Saturday, the day called Sabbath, or day of rest: and that it will be to me, for it shall be the last of my laborious life.” In the evening he retired to his cell, and began to work for the last time, being then occupied in transcribing the Psalter. When he had come to the thirty-third Psalm, and the verse, “Inquirentes autem Dominum non deficient omni bono,” he stopped short. “I cease here,” said he; “Baithin must do the rest.”

The above is an abridgment of Montalembert’s chronicle which must be accepted as truthful. It certainly is as profound and interesting an account of Christian martyrdom and devotion as any extant.

CHAPTER XII
BELFAST AND ARMAGH

THE stranger to Ireland will never imagine, as the result of his visit to Belfast, that the land is the home of the effete civilization that some English writers would have him believe.

Belfast, more than all other centres of population in Ireland, more even than Dublin, the capital, is the equal of any city of its size in the known world for transportation facilities of a thoroughly up-to-date order.

This, perhaps, does not aid in any way in the serious contemplation of its other charms; but it is a significant “sign of the times,” nevertheless.

Savants will tell one that here, at the head of Belfast Lough, was fought, in the year 665, a great battle between the Ulidians and the Cruthni. This event is sufficiently remote to have lost some interest, and appears somewhat lacking in appeal in view of what happened afterward, though the region in the immediate vicinity of Belfast does not abound in the wealth of interesting shrines which exist in most other parts of Ireland.

John de Courcy built a fortified castle here in 1177, after Ulster had been granted to him by Henry II., but no trace of it remains to-day.

The city really owes its rise, however, to the Scottish settlers who came here in large numbers in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Before which time, says one writer, “the town consisted of but one hundred and twenty odd huts, and a castle roofed with shingles.”

It is on record that the town made a vigorous protest against the execution of Charles I., as might have been expected from its religious and political tendencies. In connection with this protest the usually gentle Milton wrote contemptuously concerning “the blockish presbyters of Clandeboye… The unhallowed priestlings of an unchristian synagogue.”

The town was incorporated in 1613, but was only given civic dignity in 1888, when its population had grown to 250,000 from its previous minute proportions. The name of the city is evolved from Bel, a ford or river-mouth, and fearsal, a sand-bank.

The chief features of interest in the city proper are unquestionably its attributes of modernity. With such aspects this book has little to do. This is not so, however, with its famous flax and linen industries, made familiar to children of all nations in their very earliest years, when they are given for playthings the spools or bobbins of Barbour’s linen thread, with the gaudy end label picturing the “bloody hand of Ulster.”

The linen industry in Ireland can be traced as far back as 1216, and, in the reign of Henry III., the spinning of linen thread was established as a definite branch of the trade. In 1665 the head of the house of Ormonde, the unfortunate duke, obtained an Act of Parliament for the encouragement of the industry.

Up to 1805 linen yarns appear to have been universally spun by hand. Then abortive attempts were made to introduce machinery, but it was only after 1828, when the industry was freed from the restrictive legislation which had been in force since Queen Anne’s time, that healthy competition among enterprising private firms finally did away with hand spinning.

From that time onward the Irish linen industry developed with great rapidity, especially in Belfast, which is the principal seat of the trade in the United Kingdoms.

The chief archæological treasures of Belfast are Cave Hill, three miles north of the city, which is a curious geological formation possessing three caves, which may or may not have more than a geological interest; and “the Giant’s Ring,” lying to the southward near Ballylesson. This latter is an object of antiquarian regard, consisting of a great circular earthwork, a third of a mile or more in circumference, which encloses a mound of earth about perhaps eighty feet in diameter.

There is also a stone altar, or cromlech, assigned by some to druidical inception, and again denied. At any rate, it is one of those curious artificial erections in which the British Isles and Brittany abound, and its actual significance may be great or little. It is impossible, apparently, for the doctors to agree among themselves.

There is also a castle at Belfast, – it’s an exceedingly impoverished town in Ireland that hasn’t a castle, – though in this case it is merely an imposing residence dignified, or glorified, by the more ancient name. It has, however, a wonderful outlook over the lough, showing, under certain conditions of the atmosphere, the Scottish coast and the Isle of Man.

It is, however, the note of modernity alone which sounds in Belfast, as one might naturally expect of a city which has now reached a population of around four hundred thousand souls and has doubled its numbers in thirty years.

One industry of general interest in these days of universal travel is the great shipbuilding works at Queen’s Island. Twelve thousand hands are employed, and the construction of such leviathans as the great White Star liners, the Oceanic, the Celtic, and the Baltic, of a tonnage exceeding twenty thousand, is an art of which their builders are apparently the sole possessors.

As might further be expected, the shipping trade of Belfast is considerable, and the city more than holds its own in progress in this line with any in the three kingdoms.

Within the immediate vicinity of Belfast – at least within the area of the great city’s influence – is the sleepy old town of Carrickfergus, once the site of one of the most powerful fortresses in Ireland. Now it is but a memory, so far as its impregnability goes, though its remains are suggestive enough of the position it once occupied; one of great strategic value when the means of ancient warfare are considered.

If the “bloody hand of Ulster” should ever grasp firearms and enter into warfare again, the result might be different to this old castle of Carrickfergus, one of the few in Ireland which are not claimed as having belonged to King John.

Southward toward Armagh one first comes to Lisburn, noted principally for its great damask industry. It is truly enough a busy manufacturing town, and has thrived amazingly since the linen manufacture was introduced by the Huguenots who fled to this refuge after the Edict of Nantes.

The cathedral here contains a monument to Jeremy Taylor, who was bishop of County Down. Referring to Taylor’s tenure in Ireland, it has been the custom to recount it thus:

“Under the restoration of Charles II. he was given a bishopric in the wilds of Ireland, in a sour, gloomy country, with sour, gloomy looks all around him … which broke him at the age of fifty-five.”

Part of this is true, the latter part, but it was not the gloomy, sour wilds around Lisburn that did it, for the whole neighbourhood around about is a charming place, and must have been then. It seems, indeed, always to smile, and, though possessed of no great grandeur, such as rugged peaks and roaring waters, it in every way fulfils one’s idea of a busy town, charmingly environed.

Armagh is to-day a “cathedral town” which possesses two cathedrals. One is the ancient and venerable cathedral which belongs to the Established Church, and dates from the thirteenth century; and the other is the modern Roman Catholic Cathedral, which dates only from 1873.

Armagh is now, as it always has been, a most important centre of religious and churchly activity.

St. Patrick came here to preach the gospel in 432, and a quarter of a century later founded the Church of Armagh. The first edifice endured for nearly four hundred years when it was sacked by the Danes. Reërected again in 1268, it was burned by Shane O’Neill in the sixteenth century, and rebuilt and again burned inside the next half-century. The final rebuilding, or rather the building up from the old fire-swept remains of the ancient structure, took place at the instigation and expense of the Primate Margetson. Armagh is one of the metropolitan sees of Ireland, Dublin being the other; but the Archbishop of Armagh is Primate of Ireland.

The chief centre of interest in Armagh lies with the church and its foundation, though, of itself, Armagh is what many other towns of as great promise are not, – a charmingly unspoiled old-world spot which, in spite of the advent of the steam railway, the telegraph, and the telephone, apparently conducts its daily life much as it did three-quarters of a century ago.

It is a well-kept little city or town, with no great evidences of modern improvements, though nowhere are there any indications of squalor or decay.

In the year 685 Aldfred, son of Ossory, became King of Northumberland. He was educated at Armagh, then a world-famed school of learning, and had written some verses in the Irish tongue descriptive of his impressions of Ireland.

Translated into English his descriptions might apply to-day.

 
“I travelled its fruitful provinces round,
And in every one of the five I found,
Alike in church and in palace hall,
Abundant apparel, and food for all.”
 

This sounds to-day somewhat like triviality. Perhaps, however, it has lost some of its virtues by translation. Another stanza reads somewhat more melodiously:

 
“I found in Meath’s fair principality
Virtue, vigour, and hospitality;
Candour, joyfulness, bravery, purity,
Ireland’s bulwark and security.”
 

THE END