THE VALLEY OF THE BOYNE
I HAD one other trip to make in Ireland. That was to the scene of the
battle of the Boyne, to the tombs of the kings at Dowth and Newgrange,
and to the ruins near-by of two of the most famous and beautiful of the
old abbeys, Mellifont and Monasterboice. Readers of this book will
remember that, early in the narrative, Betty and I had journeyed up from
Dublin to Drogheda for the purpose of visiting these historic places,
but had been prevented by a combination of unforeseen circumstances.
It was, then, for Drogheda that I set out next morning, Betty having
voted for another day in the Belfast shops; and by a singular
coincidence it was the first day of July, the anniversary of that other
day in 1690 when the army of William of Orange defeated the battalions
of Irishmen who had rallied around James--and surely never had braver
men a poorer leader! But it was not really the anniversary, for the
change in the calendar has shifted the date to July 12th, and it is on
that day the Orangemen celebrate.
It is an eighty mile run from Belfast to Drogheda, and one of the most
picturesque and interesting in the east of Ireland; and the weather god
was kind to the last, for a brighter, sweeter day it would be impossible
to imagine. As the train leaves the city, there are glimpses to the
right of the purple hills of Antrim; and then the train pauses at the
busy town of Lisbun, and continues on over the Ulster canal, past the
battlefield of Moira, past the beautiful woods of Lurgan, and then
through a prosperous and fertile country, with broad fields of grain and
flax, and pretty villages, and so into Portadown, once the stronghold of
the McCahans.
I was travelling third that day, as always when alone, and the
compartment had four or five people in it; and I had noticed that one of
them, a man poorly clad and with a kit of tools in a little bag, had
been looking anxiously from the window for some time. Finally he leaned
over and touched me on the knee.
"Can you tell me, sir, if this is the train to Derry?" he asked.
"No; it's going to Dublin," I said; and just then it rumbled to a stop,
and he opened the door and slipped hastily out.
What happened to him I don't know, but he was in no way to blame for the
mistake, which was due to the abominable custom they have in Ireland of
starting trains for different places from the same platform, within a
minute or two of each other. That morning, at Belfast, there had been a
long line of coaches beside one of the platforms; no engines were as yet
attached to them, but the front part of the line was destined for
Dublin, and the rear portion for Derry, but there was no way to tell
where one train ended and the other began, and no examination was made
of the passengers' tickets before the trains started.
I was wary, for I had been caught in exactly the same way once before,
at Claremorris Junction, and had escaped being carried back to Westport
only by stopping the train, amid great excitement, after it had started.
So, that morning at Belfast, I had assured myself by repeated inquiry of
various officials that the carriage I was in was going the way I wanted
to go; but any traveller unwary or unaccustomed to the vagaries of Irish
roads, such as this poor fellow, might easily have been caught napping.
Where it is necessary to start two trains close together from the same
platform, it would seem to be only ordinary precaution to examine the
passengers' tickets before locking the doors.
From Portadown, the road runs along the valley of the Bann, past the
ruins of the old fortress of Redmond O'Hanlon, an outlaw almost as
famous in Irish history as Robin Hood is in English; and then it passes
Scarva, with a mighty cairn marking the grave of Fergus Fogha, who fell
in battle here sixteen centuries ago. Here, too, are the ruins of one of
General Monk's old castles, and on a neighbouring slope the grass-green
walls of a great rath, the stronghold of some more ancient chieftain.
Indeed, there are raths and cashels and ivy-draped ruins all about, the
work of Irish and Dane and Norman and later English, for here was a pass
across the bog from Down into Armagh, and so a chosen spot for defence
and the exacting of tribute.
Then the train is carried by a viaduct half a mile long over the deep
and wild ravine of Craigmore, leaves Newry on the left and climbs
steadily, with beautiful views of the Mourne mountains to the right,
plunges at last through a deep cutting, and comes out under the shadow
of the Forkhill mountains, with the mighty mass of Slieve Gullion
overtopping them. Just beyond is Mowry Pass, the only pass between
north and south, except round by the coast, and so, of course, the scene
of many a desperate conflict.
From this point on, for many miles, the scenery is very wild and
beautiful, and every foot of it has been a battle-ground. Just before
the train reaches Dundalk, it passes close to the hill of Faughart,
topped by a great earthwork, and it was here that Edward Bruce was slain
in battle a year after he had been crowned king of Ireland; and farther
on is another rath, the Dun of Dealgan, where dwelt Cuchulain, chief of
the Red Branch Knights, and one of the great heroes of Irish legend. It
was from Dun Dealgan that Dundalk took its name, and Dundalk was for
centuries the key to the road to Ulster and the northern limit of the
English pale, which had Dublin for its centre. Merely to enumerate the
battles which have been fought here would fill a page; but the train
rumbles on, past a little church which uses the fragment of a round
tower for a belfry, past the modern castle of the Bellinghams, built
from the proceeds of a famous brewery, past a wayside Calvary, and so at
last into Drogheda. And when I arrived there, I had completed the
circuit of Ireland.
The car which was to make the round of the Boyne valley was waiting
outside the station, at the top of that long, ugly street which looked
so familiar now that I saw it again; and after waiting awhile for other
passengers and finding there was none, we drove down into the town,
where another passenger was waiting--a clergyman with grey hair and blue
eyes and white refined face, Church of England by his garb, and, as I
found out afterwards, Oxford by residence.
And here again it looked for a moment as though I was to be balked a
second time of seeing Mellifont and Monasterboice, for it was Tuesday,
and on Tuesday, it seemed, the round was by way of Slane; but the driver
left the choice of routes to his passengers, and the clergyman said he
didn't care where we went so we saw the Boyne battlefield; and with that
we set off westward along the pleasant road, and soon, far ahead, we saw
the top of the great obelisk opposite the place where Schomberg fell.
The road dips steeply into King William's Glen, along which the centre
of the Protestant army advanced to the river, and then we were on the
spot where the cause of Protestant ascendency in Ireland triumphed
finally and irrevocably and where the Cromwellian settlements were
sealed past overthrow.
William, with his English and his Dutch, had marched down from Dundalk,
and James, with his Irish and his French, had marched up from Dublin,
and here on either side of this placid little river, where the hills
slope down to the Oldbridge ford, the armies took their station; and
here, a little after ten o'clock in the morning, brave old Schomberg,
whose tomb, you will remember, we saw in St. Patrick's at Dublin (how
long ago that seems!), led his Dutch guards and his regiment of
Huguenots into the water, across the ford, and up the bank on the other
side. There, for a moment, his troops fell into disorder before the
fierce attack of the Irish, and as he tried to rally them, a band of
Irish horse rushed upon him, circled round him and left him dead upon
the ground. Almost at the same moment, the white-haired Walker, who had
exhorted the defenders of Derry never to surrender, was shot dead while
urging on the men of Ulster. But though the Irish were able to hold
their ground at first, and even to drive their assailants back into the
river, a long flanking movement which William had set on foot earlier in
the day, caught them unprepared, and they gave way, at last, before
superior numbers and superior discipline.
Long before that, King James had fled the field, and, without stopping,
spurred on to Dublin, thirty miles away. He reached that city at ten
o'clock that night, tired, hungry, and complaining bitterly to Lady
Tyrconnell that the Irish had run faster than he had ever seen men do
before. Lady Tyrconnell was an Irishwoman, and her eyes blazed. "In
that, as in all other things," she said, "it is evident that Your
Majesty surpasses them"; and Patrick Sarsfield, who had been placed that
day in command of the king's bodyguard, and so had got nowhere near the
fighting, sent back to the Protestants his famous challenge, "Change
kings, and we will fight it over again!"
Well, all that was more than two centuries ago; there is no more
placidly beautiful spot in Ireland than this green valley, with the
silver stream rippling past; but the staunch Protestants of the north
still baptise their babies with water dipped from the river below the
obelisk. And they are not altogether wrong, for that river is the river
of their deliverance; and perhaps, in some distant day, when new justice
has wiped out the memory of ancient wrong, Irish Catholics will agree
with Irish Protestants that it was better William should have won that
day than James.
[Illustration: THE BIRTHPLACE OF JOHN BOYLE O'REILLY]
[Illustration: ENTRANCE TO DOWTH TUMULUS]
My clerical companion, guide-book in hand, had carefully noted every
detail of the field, and it was evident from his shining eyes how his
soul was stirred by the thought of that old victory. But our driver sat
humped on his box, smoking silently, his face very grim. This job of
driving Protestant clergymen to Boyne battlefield must be a trying one
for the followers of Brigid and Patrick! But at last my companion had
seen enough, and closed his book with a little sigh of happiness and
satisfaction; and our driver whistled to his horse, and we climbed
slowly out of the valley.
We had about a mile of hedge-lined road, after that, and, looking down
from it, we caught glimpses of wooded demesnes across the river, with
the chimneys of handsome houses showing above the trees--and they, too,
are the symbols of William's victory, for they are the homes of the
conquerors, the visible signs of that social order which Boyne battle
established, and which still endures.
And then our driver, who had recovered his good-humour, pointed out to
us a great mound in the midst of a level field--a circular mound, with
steep sides and flat top, and a certain artificial appearance, though it
seemed too big to be artificial. And yet it is, for it was built about
two thousand years ago as a sepulchre for the mighty dead.
For all this left bank of the river was the so-called Brugh-na-Boinne,
the burying-ground of the old Milesian kings of Tara; and two great
tumuli are left to show that the kings of Erin, like the kings of
ancient Egypt and the kings of the still more ancient Moundbuilders,
were given sepulchres worthy of their greatness. Yet there is a
difference. The tombs of the Moundbuilders were mere earthen tumuli
heaped above the dead; the pyramids of the Egyptians were carefully
wrought in stone. The tumuli of the ancient Irish stand midway between
the two. First great slabs were placed on end, and other slabs laid
across the uprights; and in this vaulted chamber the ashes of the dead
were laid; and then loose stones were heaped above it until it was
completely covered. Sometimes a passage would be left, but that would be
a secret known to few, and when the tomb was done it would seem to be
nothing more than a great circular mound of stones. As the years passed,
the stones would be covered gradually with earth, and then with grass
and bushes, and trees would grow upon it, until there would be nothing
left to distinguish it from any other hill. Only within the last half
century have the tumuli been explored, and then it was to find that the
Danes had spared not even these sanctuaries, but had entered them and
despoiled the inner chambers. Nevertheless, they remain among the most
impressive human monuments to be found anywhere.
This first tumulus we came to is the tumulus of Dowth, and a woman met
us at the gate opening into the field where it stands, gave us each a
lighted candle, and led the way to the top of an iron ladder which ran
straight down into the bowels of the earth. We descended some twenty
feet into a cavity as cold as ice; then, following the light of the
woman's candle, we squeezed along a narrow passage made of great stones
tilted together at the top, so low in places that we had to bend double,
so close together in others that we had to advance sideways blessing
our slimness; and finally we came to the great central chamber where the
dead were placed.
It is about ten feet square, and its walls, like those of the passage,
are formed by huge blocks of stone set on end. Then other slabs were
laid a-top them, and then on one another, each slab overlapping by eight
or ten inches the one below, until a last great stone closed the central
aperture and the roof was done. In the centre the chamber is about
twelve feet high. Many of the stones are carved with spirals and
concentric circles and wheel-crosses and Ogham writing--yes, and with
the initials of hundreds of vandals!
In the centre of the floor is a shallow stone basin, about four feet
square, used perhaps for some ceremony in connection with the
burials--sacrifice naturally suggests itself, such as tradition connects
with Druid worship; and opening from the chamber are three recesses,
about six feet deep, also constructed of gigantic stones, and in these,
it is surmised, the ashes of the dead were laid. From one of these
recesses a passage, whose floor is a single cyclopean stone eight feet
long, leads to another recess, smaller than the first ones. When the
tomb was first entered, little heaps of burned bones were found, many of
them human--for it should be remembered that the ancient Irish burned
their dead before enclosing them in cists or burying them in tumuli.
There were also unburned bones of pigs and deer and birds, and glass and
amber beads, and copper pins and rings; and before the Danes despoiled
it, there were doubtless torques of gold, and brooches set with
jewels--but the robbers left nothing of that sort behind them.
Nobody knows when this mound was built; but the men who cut the spirals
and circles--and in one place a leaf, not incised, but standing out in
bold relief--must have had tools of iron or bronze to work with; so the
date of the mound's erection can be fixed approximately at about the
beginning of the Christian era. For the rest, all is legend. But as one
stands there in that cyclopean chamber, the wonder of the thing, its
uncanniness, its mystery, grow more and more overwhelming, until one
peers around nervously, in the dim and wavering candle-light, expecting
to see I know not what. With me, that sensation passed; for I happened
suddenly to remember how George Moore and A. E. made a pilgrimage to
this spot, one day, and sat in this dark chamber, cross-legged like
Yogin, trying to evoke the spirits of the Druids, and just when they
were about to succeed, or so it seemed, the vision was shattered by the
arrival of two portly Presbyterian preachers.
There is another entrance to the tumulus, about half way up, which opens
into smaller and probably more recent chambers; and after a glance at
them, we clambered to the top. Far off to the west, we could see the
hill of Tara, where the old kings who are buried here held their court
and gave great banquets in a hall seven hundred feet long, of which
scarce a trace remains; and a little nearer, to the north, is the hill
of Slane, where, on that Easter eve sixteen centuries ago, St. Patrick
lighted his first Paschal fire in Ireland, in defiance of a Druidic law
which decreed that in this season of the Festival of Spring, no man
should kindle a fire in Meath until the sacred beacon blazed from Tara.
You may guess the consternation of the priests when, through the
gathering twilight, they first glimpsed that little flame which Patrick
had kindled on the summit of Slane, just across the valley. That, I
think, is easily the most breathless and dramatic moment in Irish
history. The king sent his warriors to see what this defiance meant, and
Patrick was brought to Tara, and he came into the assembly chanting a
verse of Scripture: "Some in chariots and some on horses, but we in the
name of the Lord our God." And so his mission began.
On the other side of the mound, across a field and beyond a wall, I
could see what seemed to be an ivy-draped ruin, and I asked our guide
what it might be, and she said it was the birthplace of John Boyle
O'Reilly. It was but a short walk, and my companion said he would wait
for me; so I hastened down the mound and across the field and over the
wall, and found that what I had seen was indeed a tall old house, draped
with ivy and falling into ruin. Just back of it is a church, also in
ruins, and again its wall is a granite monument to O'Reilly, more
remarkable for its size than for any other quality. There is a bust of
the poet at the top, and on either side a weeping female figure, and a
long inscription in Gaelic, which of course I couldn't read; and which
may have been very eloquent. But if it had been for me to write his
epitaph, I would have chosen a single verse of his as all-sufficient:
Kindness is the Word.
Then, as I was wading out through the meadow to get a picture of the
house, I met with a misadventure, for, disturbed by my passage, a bee
started up out of the grass, struck me on the end of the nose, clung
wildly there an instant, and then stung viciously. It was with tears of
anguish streaming down my cheeks that I snapped the picture opposite the
preceding page.
Dowth Castle is not the ancestral home of the O'Reillys; that stood on
Tullymongan, above the town of Cavan, of which they were lords for
perhaps a thousand years. Dowth Castle, on the other hand, was built by
Hugh de Lacy, as an outpost of the English pale; but it came at last
into the hands of an eccentric Irishman who, about a century ago,
bequeathed it and some of the land about it as a school for orphans and
a refuge for widows. The Netterville Institution, as it was called, came
to comprise also a National school, and of this school John Boyle
O'Reilly's father, William David O'Reilly, was master for thirty-five
years. He and his wife lived in the castle, here in 1844 the poet was
born, and here he spent the first eleven years of his life. What fate
finally overtook the castle I don't know, but only the ivy-draped outer
walls remain. The trim modern buildings of the Institution cluster in
its shadow.
I made my way back to the car, where my companion, who was not
interested in O'Reilly, was awaiting me somewhat impatiently, and I
think he regarded the bee which had stung me as an agent of Providence.
But we set off again, and the car climbed up and up to the summit of the
ridge which overlooks the river; and presently we were rolling along a
narrow road bordered with lofty elms, and then, in a broad pasture to
our right, we saw another mound, far larger than the first, and knew
that it was Newgrange.
[Illustration: ENTRANCE TO NEWGRANGE]
[Illustration: THE RUINS OF MELLIFONT]
Four mighty stones stand like sentinels before it. The largest of them
is eight or nine feet high above the ground and at least twenty in
girth; and they are all that are left of a ring of thirty-five similar
monsters which once guarded the great cairn with a circle a quarter of a
mile around. Like the tumulus of Dowth, this of Newgrange is girdled by
a ring of great stone blocks, averaging eight or ten feet in length, and
laid closely end to end; and on top of them is a wall of uncemented
stones three or four feet high. Behind the wall rises the cairn,
overgrown with grass and bushes and even trees; but below the skin of
earth is the pile of stones, heaped above the chambers of the dead.
The entrance here is a few feet above the level of the ground, and is
the true original entrance, which the one at Dowth is not, for the level
of the ground there has risen. This little door consists of two upright
slabs and a transverse one. Below it is placed a great stone, covered
with a rich design of that spiral ornamentation peculiar to the ancient
Irish--emblematic, it is said, of eternity, without beginning and
without end. The stone above the door is also carved, and my photograph,
opposite this page, gives a very fair idea of how the entrance looks.
We found a woman waiting for us--she had heard the rattle of our wheels
far down the road, and had hastened from her house near by to earn
sixpence by providing us with candles; and she led the way through the
entrance into the passage beyond. As at Dowth, it is formed of huge
slabs inclined against each other, but here they have given way under
the great weight heaped upon them, and the passage grew lower and lower,
until the woman in front of us was crawling on her hands and knees. The
clergyman, who was behind her, examined the low passage by the light of
his candle, and then said he didn't think he'd try it.
"Oh, come along, sir," urged the woman's voice. "'Tis only a few yards,
and then you can stand again. If you was a heavy man, now, I wouldn't be
advisin' it; I've seen more than one who had to be pulled out by his
feet; but for a slim man the likes of you sure it is nothing."
He still held back, so I squeezed past him, and went down on hands and
knees, and crawled slowly forward in three-legged fashion holding my
candle in one hand, over the strip of carpet which had been laid on the
stones to protect the clothing of visitors. As our guide had said, the
passage soon opened up so that it was possible to stand upright again. I
called back encouragement to my companion, and he finally crawled
through too; and then, as I held my candle aloft, I saw that we had come
out into a great vaulted chamber at least twenty feet high. Here, as at
Dowth, the sides are formed of mammoth slabs, and the vault of other
slabs laid one upon the other, each row projecting beyond the row below
until the centre is reached. Here too there are three recesses; but
everything is on a grander scale than at Dowth, and the ornamentation is
much more elaborate. It consists of intricate and beautifully formed
spirals, coils, lozenges and chevrons; and here, also, the vandal had
been at work, scratching his initials, sometimes even his detested name,
upon these sacred stones. There was one especially glaring set of
initials right opposite the entrance, deeply and evidently freshly cut,
and I asked the woman how such a thing could happen.
"Ah, sir," she said, "that was done by a young man who you would never
think would be doing such a thing. He come here one day, not long since,
and with him was a young woman, and they were very quiet and
nice-appearing, so after I had brought them in, I left them to
theirselves, for I had me work to do; but when I came in later, with
another party, that was what I saw. And I made the vow then that never
again would I be leaving any one alone here, no matter how respectable
they might look."
We commended her wisdom, and turned back to an inspection of the
carvings. It was noticeable that there was no attempt at any general
scheme of decoration, for the spirals and coils were scattered here and
there without any reference to each other, some of them in inaccessible
corners which proved they had been made before the stones were placed in
position. Evidently they had been carved wherever the whim of the
sculptor suggested; and so, in spite of their delicacy and beauty, they
are in a way supremely childish.
But there is nothing childish about the tomb itself. Nobody knows from
what forgotten quarry these great slabs were cut. Wherever it was, they
had to be lifted out and dragged to the top of this hill and set in
position--and many of them weigh more than a hundred tons. The passage
from the central chamber to the edge of the mound is sixty-two feet
long; the mound itself is eight hundred feet around and fifty high, and
some one has estimated that the stones which compose it weigh more than
a hundred thousand tons.
For whom was it built? Perhaps for Conn, the Hundred Fighter, for
tradition records that he was buried here, and he was worthy of such a
tomb. If it was for Conn--and of course that is only a guess--it dates
from about 200 A. D., for tradition has it that it was in 212 that Conn
was treacherously slain at Tara, while preparing for the great festival
of the Druids. Conn's son, Art, was the last of the Pagan kings to be
buried in the Druid fashion, for Art's great son, Cormac, who came to
the throne in 254, chose another sepulchre. He seems to have got some
inkling of Christianity, perhaps from traders from other lands who
visited his court. At any rate, he turned away from the Druids, and they
put a curse upon him and caused a devil to attack him while at table, so
that the bone of a salmon stuck in his throat and he died. But with his
last breath he forbade his followers to bury him at Brugh-na-Boinne, in
the tumulus with Conn and the rest, because that was a grave of
idolaters; he worshipped another God who had come out of the East; and
he commanded them to bury him on the hill called Rosnaree, with his face
to the sunrise. They disregarded his command, and tried to carry his
body across the Boyne to the tumulus; but the water rose and snatched
the body from them, and carried it to Rosnaree; and so there it was
buried. From Newgrange, one can see the slope of Rosnaree, just across
the river; but there is nothing to mark the grave of the greatest of the
early kings of Erin.
Round Cormac spring renews her buds;
In march perpetual by his side,
Down come the earth-fresh April floods,
And up the sea-fresh salmon glide.
And life and time rejoicing run
From age to age their wonted way;
But still he waits the risen Sun,
For still 'tis only dawning Day.
The road to the ruins of the abbey of Mellifont runs back from the
river, up over the hills, past picturesque villages, through a portion
of the Balfour estate, and then dips down into the valley of the
Mattock, on whose banks a company of Cistercians, who had come from
Clairvaux at the invitation of the Archbishop of Armagh, chose to build
their monastery. They called it Mellifont--"Honey Fountain"--and the
buildings which they put up were a revelation to the Irish builders, who
had been contented with small and unambitious churches, divided only
into nave and chancel. Here at Mellifont was erected a great cruciform
church, with a semi-circular chapel in each transept, as at Clairvaux;
and to this were added cloister and chapter-house and refectory, and a
most beautiful octagonal building which was used as a lavatory. It
marked, in a word, the introduction of continental elaborations and
refinements and luxuries into a land where, theretofore, austerity had
been the ruling influence.
That was in 1142, and there is not much left now of that mighty
edifice--a portion of the old gate-tower, some fragments of the church,
and a little more than half of the octagonal lavatory. Five of its eight
sides remain, and they show how beautiful it must once have been--as
you may see from the photograph opposite page 546. Another thing may be
seen in that photograph--the corner of a huge, empty, decaying mill,
such as dot all Ireland, symbols of her ruined industry!
A clean, pleasant-faced old woman, who opened the gate for us, intimated
that we could get lunch at her cottage, which overlooked the ruins; but
my companion had brought his lunch in his pocket and presently sat down
to eat it, while I made my way alone up to the cottage. There was a long
table spread in one room, and while the tea was drawing, I told my
hostess and her daughter about my encounter with the bee, and asked if I
might have some hot water with which to bathe the sting. They hastened
to get me a basin of steaming water and a clean towel, and then they
talked together a moment in low tones, and then the old woman came
hesitatingly forward.
"If you please, sir," she said, "I have often been told that with a
sting or bite or anything of the sort a little blueing in the water
works wonders, and indeed I have tried it myself, and have found it very
good. Would your honour be trying it, now, if I would get my blueing
bag?"
"Why of course I would!" I cried; "and thank you a thousand times for
thinking of it!"
Whereupon, her face beaming, she snatched the blueing bag from her
daughter, who had it ready, and gave it to me, and I sloshed it around
in the basin until the water was quite blue, and bathed my face in it;
and whether it was the heat of the water or the blueing I don't know,
but the sting bothered me very little after that, except for the
swelling, and that was not so bad as I had feared it would be.
I sat down finally to a delightful lunch of tea and bread and butter and
cold meat and jam; and then I got out my pipe and joined my hostess on
the bench in front of the house, and her daughter stood in the door and
listened, and we had a long talk. As usual, it was first about herself,
and then about myself. Her husband was dead and she suffered a great
deal from rheumatism, which seems to be the bane of the Irish; but she
had her little place, glory be to God, and she picked up a good many
shillings in the summer time from visitors to the ruins, though many
that came to see them cared nothing for them nor understood them.
Indeed, many just came and looked at them over the gate, and then went
away again.
And just then I witnessed a remarkable confirmation of this; for a
motor-car, with two men and two or three women in it, whirled up the
road below and stopped at the gate outside the ruins. My hostess caught
up her keys and started hastily down to open it, but before she had
taken a dozen steps, the man on the front seat spoke to the chauffeur,
and he spun the car around and in another moment it had disappeared down
the road in a cloud of dust. I confess that I was hot with anger when my
hostess, with a sad little smile, came back and sat down again beside
me, for I felt somehow as though she had been affronted.
I went back to the ruins presently, and my new friend came along,
finding I was interested, and we spent half an hour wandering about
them, while she pointed out various details which I might otherwise
have missed. Next to the lavatory, the most interesting feature of the
place is a beautiful pavement of decorated tiles which is preserved in
St. Bernard's chapel. The whole church was at one time floored with
these tiles, and a few detached ones may still be seen at the base of
the pillars. There also remain many details of sculpture which show the
loving labour lavished on the place when it was built--the individual
work of the artisan, embodying something of his own soul, which gives
these old churches a life and beauty sadly wanting in most new ones.
The cemetery is near the bank of the river; but potatoes are raised
there now, in a soil made fertile by royal as well as sacred dust; for
here Dervorgilla, the false wife of Tiernan O'Rourke, chose to be laid
to rest, in the hope, perhaps, that in the crowd of holy abbots and
monks which would rise from this place, she might slip into heaven
unobserved.
Three miles away from Mellifont stand the ruins of another abbey,
centuries older and incomparably greater in its day--an abbey absolutely
Irish, with rude, small buildings, but with a giant round-tower and two
of the loveliest sculptured crosses in existence on this earth.
Monasterboice it is called--Mainister Buithe, the abbey of Boetius--and
the way thither lies along a pleasant road, through a wooded
valley--which, fertile as it is, is not without its traces of
desolation, for we passed more than one vast empty mill, falling to
decay. Then, on the slope of a hillside away ahead, we saw the round
tower, or what is left of it, for the top of it is broken off, struck by
lightning, perhaps. But the fragment that remains is 110 feet high! And
seeing it thus, across the valley, with the low little church nestling
at its base, one is inclined to think that Father Dempsey was not
altogether wrong when he said he cared nothing about the theories of
antiquarians concerning the round towers, for he knew what they
were--the forefingers of the early church pointing us all to God.
[Illustration: THE ROUND TOWER, MONASTERBOICE]
[Illustration: THE HIGH CROSS, MONASTERBOICE]
My companion and I were discussing these theories, when our jarvey saw
the opportunity to spring a joke, which I have since discovered to be a
time-honoured one.
"Your honours are all wrong," he said, "if you will excuse my sayin' so.
It has been proved that the round towers was built by the government."
"Built by the government?" repeated my companion. "How can you prove
that?"
"Easy enough, your honour. Seein' they're no manner of use and cost a
lot of money, who else could have built them?"
And this, I take it, was his revenge for the Boyne battlefield.
We stopped presently beside a stile leading over the stone wall at the
side of the road, and here there was waiting another old woman, to
unlock the entrance to the tower. We clambered over the stile and made
our way up through the grass-grown, unkempt graveyard, first to the
tower--one of the mightiest of these monuments of ancient Erin, for it
is seventeen yards around at the base, and tapers gradually toward the
top, and the only entrance is a small doorway six feet above the ground;
and it takes no great effort of imagination to fancy the monks
clambering wildly up to it, clutching the treasures of the monastery to
their bosoms, whenever word came that the raiding Danes were in the
neighbourhood. Ladders have been fixed so that one can climb to the top,
but we did not essay them.
No trace remains of the monastic buildings which clustered at the tower
foot; for, unlike those at Mellifont and in England and on the
continent, these were not wrought of stone, but were mere shacks, as in
every truly Irish abbey, scarcely strong enough to screen from wind and
weather the groups of scholars who gathered to study here. They lived a
strait and austere life, and the only permanent structures they built
were the churches. Here, as usual, they were small, the largest one
being only forty feet in length; and the walls that remain prove how
bare and mean they must have looked beside the carved and columned
splendours of Mellifont.
But Monasterboice has one glory, or rather two, beside which those that
remain at Mellifont are as nothing; and these are the huge Celtic
crosses, the most perfect and beautiful in the land. One of them is tall
and slender and the other is short and sturdy, and both are absolute
masterpieces.
The high cross, as the tall one is called, stands near the tower-foot
and close beside the crumbling wall of one of the old churches. It is
twenty-seven feet high, and is composed of three stones, the shaft, the
cross with its binding circle, and the cap. The shaft, which is about
two feet square and eighteen feet high, is divided into seven compartments
on either face, and in each of them is an elaborately-sculptured
representation of some Bible scene, usually with three figures.
Although much worn, it is still possible easily to decipher some of
them, for there is Eve accepting the apple from the serpent while Adam
looks mildly on, and here they are fleeing from Paradise before the
angel with the flaming sword, and next Cain is hitting Abel on the head
with a club while a third unidentified person watches the scene without
offering to interfere. At the crossing there is a splendid crucifixion,
with the usual crowded heaven and hell to left and right; the binding
circle is beautifully ornamented with an interlacing design; and the
cap-stone represents one of those high-pitched cells or churches, such
as we saw at Killaloe and Glendalough.
[Illustration: MUIREDACH'S CROSS, MONASTERBOICE]
Beautiful as this cross is, it is surpassed by the other one,
Muiredach's Cross, from the inscription about its base: "A prayer for
Muiredach for whom this cross was made." That inscription gives us its
date, at least within a century, for two Muiredachs were abbots here.
One of them died in 844 and the other in 924, and as the latter was the
richer and more distinguished, it is presumed that the cross is his.
That would make its age almost exactly ten centuries.
And yet, in spite of those ten centuries, the sculptures which enrich it
from top to bottom are as beautiful to-day as they ever were. Look at
the picture opposite this page--it is not my picture, though I took one,
but there is an iron fence about the cross now which spoils every recent
photograph--and you will see what a wonderful thing it is. It is a
monolith--one single stone, fifteen feet high and six feet across the
arms--and every inch of it is covered with ornamentation. It is the
western face the picture shows, with the crucifixion occupying its usual
position. Below it are three panels of extraordinary interest, for they
show Irish warriors and clerics in the costumes of the period, all of
them wearing fierce mustachios. In the upper panel are three clerics in
flowing robes, the central one giving a book to one of his companions
and a staff to the other; in the central panel are three ecclesiastics
each holding a book; and in the lower panel a cleric in a long cloak,
caught together at the throat with a brooch, stands staff in hand
between two soldiers armed with Danish swords. At the foot of the shaft
two dogs lie head to head.
On the other side, the central panel shows Christ sitting in judgment,
with a joyous devil kicking a damned soul into an already-crowded hell.
The method of separating the blessed from the damned is shown just
below, where a figure is carefully weighing souls in a pair of scales--a
subject familiar to every one who has visited the Gothic cathedrals of
France, where almost invariably a devil is trying to cheat by crouching
below the scales and pulling down one side. The lower panels in the
cross represent the usual Scriptural subjects--the fall of man, the
expulsion from Eden, the adoration of the magi, and so on; and again at
the base there are two dogs, only this time they are playing, and one is
holding the other by the ear. All of this sculpture is done with spirit,
with taste and with fine artistry; and another glory of the cross is the
elaborate tracery of the side panels, and of the front, back, inside and
outside of the circle. Of this, the photograph gives a better notion
than any description could.
Who was he? Was he sad or glad
Who knew to carve in such a fashion?
Those questions we may never answer. All we can say certainly is that he
was a great artist; and his is the artist's reward:
But he is dust; we may not know
His happy or unhappy story:
Nameless, and dead these centuries,
His work outlives him,--there's his glory!
We tore ourselves away at last from the contemplation of this consummate
masterpiece, and drove slowly back to Drogheda, through a beautiful and
fertile country, which, save for the thatched cottages, and
gorse-crowned walls and hedges, did not differ greatly in appearance
from my own. And I was very happy, for it had been a perfect day.
Nowhere else in Ireland is it possible to crowd so much of loveliness
and interest into so short a space. All unwittingly, I had saved the
best for the last.