HOLY CROSS AND CASHEL OF THE KINGS
IF one doesn't like bacon and eggs, one must go without breakfast in
Ireland, unless one likes fish, or is content with bread and butter.
Every evening Betty would have a colloquy with the maid, which ran
something like this:
"What will ye be wantin' for breakfast, miss?"
"What can we have?"
"Oh, anything ye like, miss."
"Well, what, for instance?"
"There's bacon and eggs, miss, and there's fish."
We usually took bacon and eggs, for fish seemed out of place on the
breakfast-table. Besides, we were sure to encounter it later at dinner.
"And will ye have coffee or tay, miss?" the maid would continue.
We took coffee once, and after that we took tea. The tea is good, though
strong, and it seems somehow to suit the climate; but one sip of Irish
coffee will be enough for most people.
So next morning we sat down to our breakfast of tea and bacon and eggs
with a good appetite. The cloth was not as clean as it might have been,
but the eggs were fresh and the bacon sweet, and the bread and butter
were delicious--as they are all over Ireland--and the tea tasted better
than I had ever imagined tea could taste, and outside the sun was
shining brightly, but no brighter than the face of the maid who waited
on us, and there was a pleasant stir of movement up and down the street,
for it was Saturday and market-day, so that it was quite impossible to
be otherwise than happy and content. And presently the car I had
arranged for the night before drove up, and we were off on the four-mile
drive to the ruins of Holy Cross Abbey.
We had to go slowly, at first, for the street was crowded with people
come to market, and with the wares exposed for sale. There were little
carts heaped high with brown turf, which might be bought for two or
three shillings a load, though every load represented as many days' hard
work; there were red calves in little pens, and chickens in crates, and
eggs and butter in baskets; and there were a lot of pedlars offering all
sorts of dry-goods and hardware and odds and ends to the country-people
who stood stolidly around, apparently rather sorry they had come. The
faces were typically Irish--the men with short noses and shaved lips and
little fuzzy side-whiskers, and the women with cheeks almost startlingly
ruddy; but there wasn't a trace of those rollicking spirits which the
Irish in books and on the stage seldom fail to display.
Once clear of the crowd, we rolled out of the town, over a bridge above
the railway, and along a pleasant road, past little thatched cottages
overflowing with children; meeting, from time to time, a family driving
to town, all crowded together on a little cart behind a shaggy donkey,
the men with their feet hanging down, the women scrooched up under their
shawls, with their knees as high as their chins. They all stared at us
curiously; but our driver passed them by with disdain, as not worth his
notice, and from a word or two he let fall, it was evident that he
considered them beneath him.
The road was rather higher than the surrounding country, and we could
see across it, north and south, for many miles; then it descended to a
winding stream, the Suir, flowing gently between rushy banks, and
presently we saw ahead a great pile of crumbling buildings--and then we
were at Holy Cross, one of the most exquisite and interesting of the
hundreds of ruins which cover Ireland.
That word "hundreds" is no exaggeration. In a single day's journey, one
will see scores; and as one goes on thus, day after day, one begins to
realise what a populous and wealthy country Ireland was eight hundred
years ago, how crowded with castles and monasteries; and I think the
deepest impression the traveller bears away with him is the memory of
these battered and deserted remnants of former grandeur. And yet it is
not quite just to blame England for them, as most of the Irish do. It
was the English, of course, who broke up the monasteries and destroyed
many of the castles; but the march of the centuries would probably have
wrought much the same ruin in the end; for men no longer live in
castles, finding homes far pleasanter; and it is not now to monks they
go for learning, nor is the right of sanctuary needed as it was in the
time when might made right, and a poor man's only hope of safety lay in
getting to some altar ahead of his pursuers. Yet one cannot tread these
beautiful places without a certain sadness and regret--regret for the
vanished pomp and ceremony, the cowled processions and torch-lit feasts,
the shuffle of feet and the songs of minstrels--in a word, for the old
order, so impressive, so picturesque--and so cruel!
[Illustration: HOLY CROSS ABBEY, FROM THE CLOISTERS]
[Illustration: THE MIGHTY RUINS ON THE ROCK OF CASHEL]
Holy Cross was a great place in those days, for, as its name indicates,
it held as its most precious relic a fragment of the True Cross, given
by the Pope, in 1110, to Donough O'Brien, grandson of Brian Boru, and
thousands of pilgrims came to pray before it. The relic had many strange
vicissitudes, in the centuries that followed, but it was not lost, as
was the one which the Cross of Cong enshrined, and it is preserved
to-day in the Ursuline convent at Blackrock. Holy Cross had better luck
than most, for, at the dissolution in 1563, it was granted to the Earl
of Ormonde, a friend who cherished it. But the end came with the passing
of the Stuarts, and now it is deserted save for the old woman who acts
as caretaker, and who lives in a little ivy-covered house built against
the wall of the great church.
She opened the iron gate which bars access to the ruins, and let us
wander about them at will, for which we were grateful. The plan of the
place is that common to almost all monastic establishments: a cruciform
church, with the altar at the east end, as nearest Jerusalem, the arms
of the cross, or transepts, stretching north and south, and the body of
the cross, or nave, extending to the west, where the main entrance was;
a door from the nave opened to the south into a court around which were
the cloisters and the domestic buildings--the refectory, the
chapter-house and the dormitories; and still beyond these were the
granaries and storehouses and guest-houses and various out-buildings.
Also, like most others, it stands on the bank of a river, for the monks
were fond of fishing,--and had no mind to go hungry on Friday!
The roof of the church has fallen in, but it is otherwise
well-preserved, even to the window-tracery; and the square tower above
the crossing is apparently as firm as ever. The whole place abounds in
beautiful detail, proof of the loving workmanship that was lavished on
it; but its bright particular gem is a little sanctum in the north
transept, surrounded by delicate twisted pillars and covered by a roof
beautifully groined. Whether this was the sanctuary of the relic, or the
place where the monks were laid from death to burial, or the tomb of
some saintly Abbot, no one knows; but there it is, a living testimony to
the beauty of Irish artistry.
The cloister is now a grass-grown court, and only a few arches remain of
the colonnade which once surrounded it; but the square of domestic
buildings about it is better preserved than one will find almost
anywhere else, and deserves careful exploration.
As was the custom in most of the abbeys, the friars, when they died,
were laid to rest beneath the flags of the church floor; the church is
still used as a burial place, and is cluttered with graves, marked by
stones leaning at every angle. One's feet sink deep into the mould--a
mould composed, so the caretaker told us in awestruck voice, of human
dust.
We mounted the narrow staircase to the tower roof and sat there for a
long time, gazing down on these lichened and crumbling walls, restoring
them in imagination and repeopling them with the White Brothers and the
pilgrims and the innumerable hangers-on who once crowded them. It
required no great stretch of fancy to conjure the old days back--that
day, for instance, three centuries and more ago, when Red Hugh
O'Donnell, marching southward from Galway with his army to join the
Spaniards at Kinsale, came down yonder white highway, and stopped at the
monastery gate, and invoked a blessing from the Abbot. And the Abbot,
with all the monks in attendance, carried the fragment of the Cross in
its gilded shrine out to the gate, and held it up for all to see, and
Red Hugh and his men knelt down there in the road, while the priest
prayed that through them Ireland might win freedom. And even as they
knelt, a wild-eyed rapparee came pounding up with the news that a great
force of English was at Cashel, a few miles away; so Red Hugh had to
flee with his men over the hills to the westward, to die a year later,
poisoned by a man he thought his friend.
We descended after a time, and crossed the river to have a look at the
Abbey from that vantage-ground; and at last, most regretfully, we
mounted the car again and drove back to Thurles. An hour later, we were
at Cashel--the one place in all Ireland best worth seeing.
I write that in all earnestness. If the traveller has time for only one
excursion out of Dublin, he should hesitate not an instant, but go to
Cashel. I shall try to tell why.
Cashel is a rock some three hundred feet high dropped down among the
pastures along the northern edge of the Golden Vale of Tipperary. I do
not know how the geologists explain it. How the Irish explain it I have
told already. Its sides are of the steepest, and its flat top is about
two acres in extent. In itself it is a natural fortress, and it was of
course seized upon as such by the dim people who fought back and forth
over the length and breadth of Ireland in the far ages before history
begins. At first it was strengthened by a wall around the top. Any such
defensive wall in Ireland is called a cashel, as one of earth is called
a rath, and there are both raths and cashels all up and down the land,
for forts have always been sorely needed there; but this is the Cashel
above all others.
Buildings were put up inside the wall, rude at first, but gradually
growing more elaborate, and when the real history of the place begins,
say about fifteen centuries ago, it was already the seat of the Kings of
Munster, that is of the southern half of Ireland. Hither about 450 came
St. Patrick to convert the King and his household; it was while
preaching here that he is said first to have plucked the trefoil or
shamrock to illustrate the principle of the Three-in-One; Brian Boru
strengthened its fortifications; and in 1134 was consecrated here that
wonderful chapel of Cormac McCarthy, King of Munster, which still
endures as a most convincing demonstration of the beauty of old Irish
architecture. Then a round tower was put up, and then a castle, and then
a great cathedral, for King Murtough had granted the Rock to "the
religious of Ireland," and the Archbishop of Cashel came, before long,
to be nearly as powerful as the great Archbishop of Armagh; and then a
monastery was built, and schools, under the sway first of the
Benedictines and later of the Cistercians. All this made a stupendous
group of buildings, a splendid and impressive symbol of Cashel's
greatness.
[Illustration: (C) Underwood & Underwood, N.Y.
CASHEL OF THE KINGS]
But under Elizabeth, the scale turned. Dermot O'Hurley, Archbishop of
Cashel, was taken prisoner and carried to Dublin and hanged. His
successor, Milar Magrath, abjured his religion, under Elizabethan
pressure, and to prove the sincerity of his Protestantism, married not
once, but twice. From that time on, the place was used as a Protestant
cathedral, until, in 1744, Archbishop Price succeeded to the see.
Now the Archbishop was a man who loved his ease, and though his palace
was situated conveniently enough at the foot of the Rock, his church was
perched most inconveniently upon it, and the only way even an archbishop
could get to it was to walk. Price spent a lot of money trying to build
a carriage road up the Rock, but finally he gave it up and procured from
Parliament an act decreeing that, whereas, "in several dioceses,
cathedral churches are so incommodiously situated that they cannot be
resorted to for divine service," power should be given the chief
governor, with assent of the privy council, to "remove the site of a
cathedral church to some convenient parish church." Two years later, in
1749, an act was passed directing that the cathedral be removed from the
Rock into the town. This was, of course, impossible in any but a
metaphorical sense; but, incredible as it may seem, since he couldn't
remove it, Price determined to destroy it, secured from the government
the loan of a regiment of soldiers, and set them to work tearing it
down. They stripped off the leaden roof, knocked in the vaulting, and
left the place the ruin that it is to-day. It might be remarked, in
passing, that here is one ruin "Crummell" didn't make. George II was
King of England in 1749, and Cromwell had been dead nearly a hundred
years.
I shall never forget my first glimpse of this stupendous pile of
buildings, looming high in air, all turrets and towers, like those fairy
palaces which Maxfield Parrish loves to paint. A short branch runs from
Goold's Cross to Cashel, and it was from the windows of the rickety
little train we peered, first on this side and then on that--and then,
quite suddenly, away to the left, we saw the Rock, golden-grey, high
against the sky, so fairy-like and ethereal that it seemed impossible it
could be anything more than a wonderful vision or mirage. And then the
train stopped, and we jumped out, and hurried from the station, and
presently we were following the path around the Rock. But that was too
slow, and with a simultaneous impulse we left the path and climbed the
wall, and hastened upward over rock and heather, straight toward this
new marvel. We skirted another wall, and climbed a stile--and then we
were stopped by a high iron gate, secured with a chain and formidable
padlock.
But we had scarcely time to feel the shock of disappointment, when we
saw hastening upward toward us a sturdy old man, with weather-beaten
face framed by a shock of reddish-grey hair and beard, and a moment
later we had the pleasure of meeting John Minogue, the caretaker--the
most accomplished caretaker, I venture to say, in all the length and
breadth of Ireland. For, as we soon found, he has the history and
legends and architectural peculiarities of Cashel at his tongue's
end--he knows them intimately, accurately, in every detail, for he has
lived with them all his life and loves them.
He unlocked the iron gate and ushered us in, and chased away the rabble
of ragged children who had followed him up from the village; and then
began one of the most delightful experiences that I have ever had. I
almost despair of attempting to describe it.
At our feet lay the Vale of Tipperary--an expanse of greenest green
stretching unbroken to the foot of a great mountain-chain, the Galtees,
thirty miles away. Farther to the north, we could just discern the gap
of the Devil's Bit, beyond which lay Limerick and the Shannon. And then
we walked to the other side of the Rock, and there, away in the
distance, towered the great bulk of "queenly Slievenamon," the Mountain
of Fair Women, and as we stood there gazing at it, John Minogue told us
how it got its name.
It was in the days when Cormac son of Art was King of Erin, and Finn son
of Cumhal, Finn the Fair, he of the High Deeds,--whose name I shall
spell hereafter as it is pronounced, Finn MacCool--had been declared by
birthright and by swordright Captain of that invincible brotherhood of
fighting-men, the Fianna. Finn was past his youth, and had a comely son,
Ossian the sweet singer; but at times his spirit hung heavy on him, for
his wife was dead, and no man has peaceful slumber who is without a
fitting mate. So he looked about for one to share his bed, but found it
hard to choose, for there were many fine women in Erin; and at last in
his perplexity he sat himself down on the summit of Slievenamon, and
said that all who wished might run a race from the bottom to the top,
and she who won should be his wife. So it was done, and the race was won
by Grainne, daughter of the great Cormac himself. The feast was set for
a fortnight later, in the king's hall at Tara--and what happened there
we shall hear later on.
We might have been standing yet upon the Rock, gazing out across that
marvellous valley, if John Minogue had not dragged us away to see the
wonders of the place. Not the least of them is the weather-beaten stone
cross, with the crucifixion on one side and an effigy of St. Patrick on
the other, which stands just outside the castle entrance, on the rude
pedestal where the Kings of Munster were crowned in the old, old days.
Here it was, perhaps, that St. Patrick himself stood when he stooped to
pluck the trefoil, and that King Aengus was baptised. Legend has it that,
as he was performing that ceremony, the Saint, without knowing it, drove
the spiked end of his crozier through the King's foot. Aengus said never
a word, nor made complaint, thinking it part of the rite; but when the
Saint went to take up his crozier and saw what he had done, he blessed
the King and promised that none of that royal stock should die of wounds
forever. Perhaps the promise was not "forever," for, five centuries
later, Brian Boru, the greatest of them all, was killed in battle at
Clontarf, as I have told.
But the greatest wonder of all at Cashel is the jewel of a chapel built
by Cormac and standing as firm to-day as when its stones were laid,
eight centuries ago. It nestles in between the choir and south transept
of the later cathedral, and its entrance is the most magnificent doorway
of its kind existing anywhere on this earth.
It is round-headed, as in all Irish Romanesque, with five deep mouldings
rich in dog-tooth and lozenge ornamentation, and though it is battered
and weather-worn, it is still most beautiful and impressive.
Inside, the chapel is divided into nave and chancel, both very small,
but decorated with a richness and massiveness almost oppressive--twisted
columns, arcaded walls, dog-tooth mouldings, rounded arches, traceried
surfaces, sculptured capitals, and I know not what beside. Facing the
choir is a stone sarcophagus, beautifully ornamented with characteristic
Celtic serpent work, as may be seen in the photograph. It is called
"King Cormac's Coffin." It was in the small apartment over the nave and
under the steep stone roof that Cormac was struck down by an assassin,
as he knelt in prayer.
It was something of a relief to get out into the high, roofless
cathedral, where one feels at liberty to draw a deep breath. The
cathedral is rich with sculptures, too; but I shall not attempt to
describe them. I can only hope that it may be your fortune to visit the
place, some day, and have John Minogue to take you round. But, let me
warn you, he does not waste himself on the unsympathetic. While we stood
admiring the sculptures of St. Patrick and St. Brigid and eleven of the
apostles, in the north transept (the sculptor omitted St. Matthew for
some unknown reason; or perhaps our guide told me why and I have
forgotten); as we stood there gazing in delight at these inimitable
figures, a party of four or five entered the church, and stood staring
vacantly about.
"See here, Mr. Minogue," I said, after a time, "we can amuse ourselves
for a while, if you'd like to look after those other people."
Minogue shot one glance at them.
"No," he said; "they're not worth it. Now come--I must show you the
round tower."
A beauty the tower is, with walls four feet thick, built of great blocks
of stone, and a little round-headed doorway, twelve feet above the
ground. It stands eighty-five feet high, and is wonderfully preserved;
but when we looked up it from the inside, we saw that the old masons did
not succeed in getting it quite true.
* * * * *
It was an hour later--or perhaps two hours later--that we emerged again
from the iron gate, and found the rabble of children still waiting. They
closed in on us at once, murmuring something in a queer half-mumble,
half-whisper, of which we could not understand a word.
"What is it they're saying?" we asked.
"They're saying," explained Minogue, "that if your honour will toss a
penny amongst them, they will fight for it; or, if you'd rather, they
will put up a prayer for you, so that you will get safe home again. They
don't consider that begging, you see, since they offer some return for
the money."
And then, as they hustled us more closely, he turned and shouted
something at them--some magic incantation, I fancy, for they scurried
away as though the devil was after them. I regretted, afterwards, that I
had not asked him for the formula--but in the end, we found one of our
own, as you shall hear.
Our guide insisted that we go down with him to his house and see his
books, and write our names in his album, and have a cup of tea. He lived
in an ivy-covered cottage, just under the Rock, and his old wife came
out to welcome us; and we sat and talked and wrote our names and looked
at his books--one had been given him by Stephen Gwynne, and others by
other writers whose names I have forgotten; but the treasure of his
library was a huge volume, carefully wrapped against possible soiling,
which, when unwrapped, proved to be a copy of Arthur Champneys' "Irish
Ecclesiastical Architecture," and with gleaming face our host turned to
the preface and showed us where Champneys acknowledged his indebtedness
for much valuable assistance to John Minogue, of the Rock of Cashel.
We bade him good-bye, at last, and made our way down through the quaint
little town, which snuggles against one side of the Rock--a town of
narrow, crooked streets, and thatched houses, and friendly women leaning
over their half-doors, and multitudinous children; but the most vivid
memory I have of it, is of the pleasant tang of turf smoke in the air.
And presently we came out again upon the road leading to the station.
From the top of the Rock we had seen, in the middle of a field not far
away, a ruin which seemed very extensive, and Minogue told us that it
was Hore Abbey, a Cistercian monastery built about 1272, but had added
that it was scarcely worth visiting after Cashel. That was perhaps
true--few ruins can compare with Cashel--but when we saw the grey bulk
of the old abbey looming above the wall at our left, we decided to get
to it, if we could.
It required some resolution, for the way thither lay across a very wet
and muddy pasture, with grass knee-high in places, and Betty would
probably have declined to venture but for the assurance that there are
no snakes in Ireland. The nearer we got to the ruin, the worse the going
grew, but we finally scrambled inside over a broken wall, and sat down
on a block of fallen masonry to look about us.
The mist, which had been thickening for the last half hour, had, almost
imperceptibly, turned to rain, and this was mizzling softly down,
shrouding everything as with a pearly veil, and adding a beauty and
sense of mystery to the place which it may have lacked at other times.
But it seemed to us singularly impressive, with its narrow lancet
windows, and plain, square pillars. Such vaulting as remains, at the
crossing and in the chapels, is very simple, and the whole church was
evidently built with a dignity and severity of detail which modern
builders might well imitate. It seems a shame that it is not kept in
better order and a decent approach built to it; but I suppose the Board
of Works, whose duty it is to care for Irish ruins, finds itself
overburdened with the multiplicity of them.
We sat there absorbing the centuries-old atmosphere, until a glance at
my watch told me that we must hurry if we would catch our train. We
_did_ hurry, though with many a backward glance, for one is reluctant
to leave a beautiful place which one may never see again; but we caught
the train, and the last glimpse we had of Cashel was as of some gigantic
magic palace, suspended in air and shrouded in mist.