OLD GRAVESTONES IN IRELAND.
[Illustration: FIG. 88. SWORDS.]
In entering upon a chapter dealing with "Old Gravestones in Ireland,"
one is tempted to follow a leading case and sum up the subject in the
words: "There are no old gravestones in Ireland." But this would be
true only in a sense. Of those primitive and rustic carvings, which
are so distinctive of the eighteenth-century memorials in England, I
have found an almost entire absence in my holiday-journey ings about
Ireland--the churchyards of which I have sampled, wherever opportunity
was afforded me, from Belfast and Portrush in the north, down to
Killarney and Queenstown in the south. But there are unquestionably
old gravestones of quite a different order of simplicity in the Irish
burial-places, the most common type being the rough slab of stone,
several of which are here sketched at random from the graveyard of
the large village or little town of Swords, ten miles or so north of
Dublin (Fig. 88). Very few of these stones bear any inscription, and,
according to the belief of the local residents, never have been carved
or even shaped in any way. In one or two instances, however, the
effort of trimming the edges of the stone is clearly visible, and in
rare cases we see the pious but immature attempts of the amateur mason
to perpetuate, if only by initials, the memory of the deceased.[10]
Some such records still remain, but many have doubtless perished, for
the material is only the soft freestone so easily obtainable in the
district, and the rains and frosts of no great number of years have
sufficed to obliterate all such shallow carvings; the surfaces of the
laminated rock being even now in process of peeling off before our
eyes.
[Footnote 10: In a barren record of facts, such as this chapter is
meant to be, I avoid as far as possible deductions and reflections
apart from my immediate subject; but it is impossible to pursue an
investigation of this character without being deeply interested both
in the past history and present life of the people. I cannot help
saying that in one day's walk from Malahide to Balbriggan I learnt
far more of the Irish peasantry, the Irish character, and the Irish
"problem" than I had been able to acquire in all my reading, supported
by not a little experience in the capital and great towns of Ireland.
The village streets, the cabins, the schools, the agriculture and the
land, the farmer and the landlord, the poverty and the hospitality
of the people, were all to be studied at first hand; and there were
churches by the way at Swords and Rush which the archaeologist will
seek in vain to match in any other country. The Bound Tower (Celtic no
doubt) at the former place, and the battlemented fortalice, which is
more like a castle than a church, at Rush, are both worth a special
visit.]
The cross and "T.L." scratched on one of the stones appears to be
recent work, and the wonderful preservation of the stone to Lawrence
Paine, of 1686, can only be accounted for by the supposition that it
has long lain buried, and been lately restored to the light. The stone
is of the same perishable kind as the others, and it is certain that
it could not have survived exposure to the atmosphere, as its date
would imply, for upwards of 200 years. It may even be found that the
weather has chipped off the edges of the stones which now appear so
jagged, shapeless, and grotesque; but, from recent evidences gathered
elsewhere, it is but too probable that these rude pillars have been,
and still are, set up as they come from the quarry, without dressing
and free from any carving or attention whatever.
Many instances may be found in which slabs of stone, or even slate,
have been erected quite recently, the edges untrimmed, and the name of
the deceased simply _painted_ upon them more or less inartistically,
as in the sketch from Drogheda (Fig. 89). Such crude examples are the
more remarkable in a busy and thriving port like Drogheda, and amid
many handsome monuments, than among the peasantry of the villages; and
it is easy to imagine that if nothing more durable than paint has been
employed to immortalize the dead in past times all traces must have
speedily disappeared. The illustrations from Drogheda give the whole
inscription in each case, neither having date nor age, nor any other
particular beyond the name. The memorial on the left hand is of
slate--the other two of freestone; and the slate in the northern parts
of Ireland is the preferable of the two materials.
[Illustration: FIG. 89. DROGHEDA.]
There are at Bangor, ten miles west of Belfast, many such slate
records, which have endured for more than a century, and are still
in excellent preservation. One which attracted my especial notice at
Bangor was of the professional character here depicted, and in memory
of one of those bold privateers who were permitted to sail the seas on
their own account in the old war times.
FIG. 90.--AT BANGOR, IRELAND.
The following is the epitaph, as clearly to be read now as on the day
when it was carved on this slab of Irish slate, more than a century
since:
"Born to a course of Manly action free,
I dauntless trod ye fluctuating sea
In Pompous War or happier Peace to bring
Joy to my Sire and honour to my King.
And much by favour of the God was done
Ere half the term of human life was run.
One fatal night, returning from the bay
Where British fleets ye Gallic land survey,
Whilst with warm hope my trembling heart beat high,
My friends, my kindred, and my country nigh,
Lasht by the winds the waves arose and bore
Our Ship in shattered fragments to the shore.
There ye flak'd surge opprest my darkening sight,
And there my eyes for ever lost the light.
"Captain George Colvill of the Private Ship
of War 'Amazon,' and only son of
Robert Colvill of Bangor, was wrecked
near this ground 25th February 1780, in
ye 22nd year of his age."
A possible explanation of the long endurance of this slate slab may
be found in the practice which prevails in this and some other
churchyards of giving all such memorials a periodical coat of paint;
of which, however, in the case here quoted there is no remaining
trace.
Altogether, primitive as they may be, the gravestones of the last
century in Ireland, so far as I have seen them, compare favourably
with the works of the hedge-mason in England which we have seen
in earlier chapters. Even the poor pillar of rough stone, unhewn,
ungarnished, and bare as it is, represents an affectionate remembrance
of the dead which is full of pathos, and has a refinement in its
simplicity which commands our sympathy far above the semi-barbarous
engravings of heads and skulls which we have previously pictured. The
immaturity of provincial art in Ireland is at least redeemed by an
absence of such monstrous figures and designs as we at the present
day usually associate with the carvings of savages in the African
interior.
But the eighteenth-century gravestones in Ireland are not all of the
primitive kind--many of them being as artistic and well-finished as
any to be found in other parts of the British Isles. The predominant
type is the "I.H.S.," surmounted by the cross, which appears on
probably four-fifths of the inscribed stones of the eighteenth and
early nineteenth centuries in Ireland. The only instances which came
under my notice bearing any resemblance to the incipient notions of
human heads so frequently met with in certain parts of England
were the three here copied (Fig. 91). Nos. 2 and 3 are taken from
gravestones in the old churchyard near Queenstown, and the other
appears in duplicate on one stone at Muckross Abbey by the Lakes of
Killarney.[11] The stately wreck of Muckross Abbey has in its decay
enclosed within its walls the tombs of knights and heroes whose
monuments stand in gorgeous contrast to the desolation which is
mouldering around them; while on the south side of the ancient edifice
is the graveyard in which the peasant-fathers of the hamlet sleep,
the green mounds which cover them in some instances marked by carved
stones taken from the adjacent ruins. Both Abbey and grounds are still
used for interments, together with the enclosure about the little
church of Killaghie on the neighbouring eminence--a church which
(like a few others) enjoys the reputation of being the smallest in the
kingdom.
[Footnote 11: The Muckross stone (No. 1) was overgrown with ivy which
quite covered up the inscription, but its date was probably about
1750. Of the two from Queenstown, No. 2 is to Mary Gammell, 1793, aged
53; and No. 3 to Roger Brettridge, 1776, aged 63.]
[Illustration: FIG. 90. BANGOR, IRELAND.]
[Illustration: FIG. 91. MUCKROSS AND QUEENSTOWN.]
I leave to the ethnologists the task of accounting for these abnormal
carvings in the South of Ireland, and associating them with the like
productions of the same period in the South of England. Or perhaps
I ought rather to excuse my insufficient researches, which, though
spread over a broad area, are yet confined to but a few of the many
spots available, and may very probably have passed by unexplored the
fruitful fields. But, in the words of Professor Stephens, the
apostle of Runic monuments, I claim for this work that it is "only
a beginning, a breaking of the ice, a ground upon which others may
build." My pages are but "feelers groping out things and thoughts for
further examination."