"Oft in the forest far one hears
A passing sound of distant bells;
Nor legends old, nor human wit,
Can tell us whence the music swells.
From the _Lost Church_ 'tis thought that soft
Faint ringing cometh on the wind:
Once many pilgrims trod the path,
But no one now the way can find."
See also _Das Versunkene Kloster_, by the same sweet poet,
commencing:
"Ein Kloster ist versunken
Tief in den wilden See."
After Port Royal (in the West Indies) was submerged, at the close of the
seventeenth century, sailors in those parts for many years had {414}
stories of anchoring in the chimneys and steeples, and would declare
they heard the church bells ringing beneath the water, agitated by the
waves or spirits of the deep.
The case of the Round Towers seen in Lough Neagh, I need not bring
forward, as no sound of bells has ever been heard from them.
There is one _lost church_ so famous as to occur to the mind of every
reader, I mean that of the Ten Tribes of Israel. After the lapse of
thousands of years, we have here an historical problem, which time,
perhaps, will never solve. We have a less famous, but still most
interesting, instance of a lost church in Greenland. Soon after the
introduction of Christianity, about the year 1000, a number of churches
and a monastery were erected along the east coast of Greenland, and a
bishop was ordained for the spiritual guidance of the colony. For some
four hundred years an intercourse was maintained between this colony and
Norway and Denmark. In the year 1406 the last bishop was sent over to
Greenland. Since then the colony _has not been heard of_. Many have been
the attempts to recover this lost church of East Greenland, but hitherto
in vain.
I could send you a Note on a cognate subject, but I fear it would occupy
too much of your space,--that of _Happy Isles_, or _Islands of the
Blessed_. The tradition respecting these happy isles is very
wide-spread, and obtains amongst nearly every nation of the globe; it
is, perhaps, a relic of a primeval tradition of Eden. Some have caught
glimpses of these isles, and some more favoured mortals have even
landed, and returned again with senses dazzled at the ravishing sights
they have seen. But in every case after these rare favours, these mystic
lands have remained invisible as before, and the way to them has been
sought for in vain. Such are the tales told with reverent earnestness,
and listened to with breathless interest, not only by the Egyptians,
Greeks, and Romans of old, but by the Irishman, the Welshman, the
Hindoo, and the Red Indian of to-day.