"Remnants of things that have passed away,
Fragments of stone reared by creatures of clay."
_Siege of Corinth._
[Sidenote: THE DRUIDS.]
The "remnants of things that have passed away" are many on these
islands. In no other part of the United Kingdom are there confined in
spaces so narrow so many monuments of Pagan times; here are evidences of
two great ages of civilization--that of the Druids and that of the
Christians; but, whether of the Druids or of the Christians, Aran had
been the retreat in early times of the contemplative and the learned.
Sequestered and undisturbed, the natives have even to this day preserved
much of the moral and physical remains of the ancient world.
[Sidenote: DRUIDISM.]
The Aranites in their simplicity consider the remains of the Druids as
inviolable, being as they fondly imagine the enchanted haunts and
property of aerial beings, whose power of doing mischief they greatly
dread and studiously propitiate. The natives believe that the "cairns"
or circular mounds are the sepulchres of the mighty men of old, men of
renown, whose acts and deeds even now are celebrated in songs sung at
the cottage firesides by minstrels to the strings of the wandering
harper: on every lip are the exploits of Churcullen, of Gol, son of
Morna, of Oscar, and of Ossian, and here are pointed out the places
where they lived and died. We have also the immense "cromlechs" or altar
flags, supported on perpendicular pillars, as we may venture to call the
unhammered stones of about three feet in height, whilst under those
"cromlechs" still rest the remains of heroes whose faithful dogs
interred with them bear them company even in death. Here, too, no bad
memory is retained of the sacred fires of Bal (another name for the
sun), which were kept burning; for the sun, and the moon, and the stars
were by them reverenced; but the sun of the Druids was supposed to be
the most noble type of the Godhead--the most glorious object of the
material creation. The mysterious stones, twelve in number, encircling
the altars of sacrifice, sometimes said to be zodiacal rings, after the
twelve signs of the zodiac, are here frequently to be found. The
purifying ordeals the cattle were subject to at Aran until a very late
period are yet there remembered. The sacred fires on the first day of
each of the quarters blazed from cairn to cairn, amid prayers for the
fruits of the earth, and even yet, on St. John's Eve in June, huge
bonfires are lighted near every village through the island, for the
holy flame was considered essential to the cattle as a preservative from
contagious disorders. The Druids kindled after their manner two immense
fires, with great incantations, close to each other, whilst between
those fires the cattle were driven, and if they escaped unharmed it was
considered as auspicious as it would be inauspicious for man and beast
to be therein harmed, and hence the saying, "Placed between the two
fires of Baal." Concerning the mysteries of their religion, the Druids
did not commit them to writing, and therefore it is that so little is
known of their teachings or of what they taught, and what they did teach
is said by some to have been taught in the Greek language, "to the end,"
writes Sir Edward Coke, "that their discipline might not be made so
common amongst the vulgar, nay more, their very names and appellations
may serve as a proof of their use of the Greek tongue, they being called
Druids from [Greek: Drys], an oak, because, saith Pliny, they frequent
the woods where oaks are, and in all their sacrifices they use the
leaves of those trees."[2]
[Sidenote: SIR EDWARD COKE ON DRUIDISM.]
With Druidism departed the forests of the ilex and the quercus from
Aran. May we venture to hope that, in the coming changes, Aran may once
more be re-afforested, and that the islanders, who have now no coal, no
timber, and no turf to burn, may have at least timber to burn in great
abundance in the near future?
[Sidenote: FORTRESSES OF ARAN.]
The immense fortresses on the islands are said to be the finest
specimens of barbaric military structures extant in Europe. Built by the
pagan Firbolgs in the first century of the Christian era, these
mortarless walls, Cyclopean as they are called, having braved the
tempests of nineteen hundred years, still stand. On the large island,
and within four miles of our hotel, is Dun AEngus, which, covering many
acres, is on a precipice hundreds of feet in height. This fortress, in
the form of a horse-shoe, is unapproachable on the sea side, where the
Atlantic surges heavily against the solid rock, whose surfaces are
seamed, and scarred, and torn by the violence of the billows driven
against them by the winter tempests. Unapproachable by an enemy from the
sea, it is equally unapproachable by an enemy from the land, the only
entrance thereto being by a narrow avenue skirting the edge of the
cliff. The fortress consists of three enclosures, the inner, the middle,
and the outer. The inner measures 160 feet, on what may be called the
axis major from north to south of the horse-shoe on the ground plan,
whilst along the cliff it measures 144 feet. The mortarless wall which
surrounds this inmost enclosure is about 1100 feet from end to end, by
18 feet in height, and 12 feet in thickness. Now this one wall is made
up of three walls, each four feet thick, one against the other, like the
coats of an onion, which arrangement occurs in the middle and outside
enclosures, and which has this advantage, that if an enemy should
succeed in breaking down the exterior envelope, he would find behind it
a new face of masonry, instead of the easily disturbed loose interior of
a dry stone wall. The space between this inner and the next outside, or
middle enclosure, is perfectly clear, leaving ample scope for military
manoeuvres. The outside wall, which is almost an ellipse, encloses
about eleven acres, all studded over with an army of white pointed
stones, set slope-wise into the earth, like almonds on a plum-pudding,
save where a narrow avenue is left, so that no assailing force could
possibly approach the second wall, without having its ranks broken by
those intricate piles which answer the _chevaux-de-frise_ of modern
fortifications. The doorway with sloping jambs of Egyptian pattern
through the outer wall admits only one or two assailants together.
[Sidenote: DUN AENGUS.]
Dun Conor, an oval fort on the middle island, is much larger than Dun
AEngus, of which we have just been speaking, the axis major of Dun Conor
measuring 227 feet. It also stands on a high cliff, and its dry and
mortarless walls are built also on the coat of the onion principle.
Inisheer, the eastern island, contains a circular Dun called
Creggan-keel. Furmena Castle, also on this island, was, in later times,
the stronghold of the O'Briens--lords of the islands of Aran--and upon
these islands are many more fortresses. There is, on the north side of
Inishmore, Dun Onaght, a circular Firbolgic fort, measuring 92 feet
across; and on the south-west side, _Dubh Cahn_, "the black fort," a Dun
or fortress of very rude masonry, of enormous thickness, and overlooking
the cliffs.
[Sidenote: ST. ENDA.]
The Christian remains of the islands are many, and many are the names of
the saints still remembered who congregated here in the early days of
Irish Christianity. Amongst those remarkable heroes of the Cross, none
appears to have been greater than St. Enda, who has left his name
everywhere in the islands. To him, indeed, is due much of the success
that followed the footsteps of those missionaries who won, in the course
of centuries, for Aran the appellation of "Aran of the Saints." Enda was
the only son of Conel, King of Oriel, whose territories included the
modern counties of Louth, Armagh, and Fermanagh. This Enda had, however,
several sisters, the elder being the wife of the King of Cashel, whose
death is chronicled in the annals of the Four Masters as of the year
489; the younger was Fancha, the abbess of an abbey, or nunnery, wherein
were educated ladies of the court, amongst whom was one remarkable for
her great mental and personal attractions. Enda loved her, and hoped
that she would one day share with him the glories, such as they were, of
the throne of his fathers. His love for his affianced bride amounted to
an idolatry, but his idolatry must end, and his idol must die an early
death. The abbess brought him weeping into the chamber where the corpse
of his loved one was laid. Fancha then reminded him of how favour is
deceitful and how beauty is vain, and how the day, dim and remote, would
still come when he would be as his affianced bride now was. "Love not
the world, nor the things that are in the world!" exclaimed the abbess
with a vehemence that her earnestness inspired. That world was then
abjured, and straightway he entered a religious order, that of the
Regular Canons of St. Augustine, and after years of study and probation,
was ordained priest in Rome. He thence returned to the kingdom of Oriel
in Ireland, where he built several churches. Having visited his sister
and her husband the King of Cashel, the latter was, after much
hesitation, persuaded to confer upon God and upon Enda the islands of
Aran. Possession of a place so retired and so suited to study and
contemplation being thus obtained, Enda introduced there a multitude of
holy men, monks to live like the Essenes of old, a contemplative life.
He divided the islands into ten parts, and built ten monasteries, each
under the rule of its proper superior; whilst he chose a place for his
own residence on the eastern coast of the western island of Inishmore,
and there erected a monastery, the name and site of which are preserved
even to this day in the little village of Killeany (Kil-Enda), about a
mile from Kilronan. Half the island was assigned to this monastery, and
multitudes from afar flocked to Aran, which became the home of the
learned and the pious.
[Sidenote: ST. BRENDAN.]
Amongst the remarkable men that there clustered, were St. Kieran,
founder of Clonmacnoise, who died in 549, and St. Brendan. The history
of the latter abounds with fable, but it is admitted that a thousand
years before Christopher Columbus, he crossed the Atlantic and landed on
the coast of Florida, where there is a strip of country which, according
to Humboldt, in his Cosmos, bore the name of _Irland it Milka_, "Ireland
of the white man." The visit of St. Brendan to Aran, previous to his
departure to the great western continent, has been described by one of
the most musical of our poets--Denis Florence MacCarthy--as follows:--
"Hearing how blessed Enda lived apart,
Amid the sacred caves of Aran-moer,
And how beneath his eye, spread like a chart,
Lay all the isles of that remotest shore;
And how he had collected in his mind
All that was known to the man of the "old sea,"[3]
I left the hill of miracles behind,
And sailed from out the shallow sandy Leigh.
"Again I sailed and crossed the stormy sound,
That lies beneath Binn-Aite's rocky height,
And there upon the shore, the saint I found
Waiting my coming through the tardy night.
He led me to his home beside the wave,
Where with his monks the pious father dwelled,
And to my listening ear he freely gave
The sacred knowledge that his bosom held.
"When I proclaimed the project that I nursed,
How it was for this that I his blessing sought,
An irrepressible cry of joy outburst
From his pure lips, that blessed me for the thought.
He said that he, too, had in visions strayed,
O'er the untrack'd ocean's billowing foam;
Bid me have hope, that God would give me aid,
And bring me safe back to my native home.
"Thus having sought for knowledge and for strength,
For the unheard-of voyage that I planned,
I left those myriad isles, and turned at length
Southward my barque, and sought my native land.
There I made all things ready day by day;
The wicker boat with ox-skins covered o'er,
Chose the good monks, companions of my way,
And waited for the wind to leave the shore."
[Sidenote: ST. FINNIAN.]
Another of St. Enda's disciples was St. Finnian of Moville--and it was
from Aran he set out on his pilgrimage to Rome. Soon after he returned
to Ireland, bringing with him a copy of the Gospels, the Papal
benediction, and the Canons of St. Finnian. Again departing for Italy,
he was made Bishop of Lucca, in Italy, where he died in 588.
[Sidenote: ST. COLUMBA.]
St. Columba spent years in Aran, and deeply was he grieved at leaving it
for Iona. His bitter lament in Irish verse has been translated into
English metre by the late Sir Aubrey De Vere, Bart., in part as
follows:--
1.
"Farewell to Aran isle, farewell!
I steer for Hy; my heart is sore,
The breakers burst, the billows swell,
'Twixt Aran's isle and Alba's shore.
2.
"Thus spake the son of God, 'Depart!'
Oh Aran isle, God's will be done!
By angels thronged this hour thou art:
I sit within my barque alone.
3.
"Oh Modan, well for thee the while!
Fair falls thy lot and well art thou,
Thy seat is set in Aran isle,
Eastward to Alba turns my prow.
4.
"Oh Aran, sun of all the west!
My heart is thine! as sweet to close
Our dying eyes in thee as rest
Where Peter and where Paul repose.
5.
"Oh Aran, sun of all the west,
My heart its grave hath found;
He walks in regions of the blest,
The man that hears thy church bells sound.
6.
"Oh Aran blest--oh Aran blest!
Accursed the man that loves not thee;
The dead man cradled in thy breast
No demon scares him--well is he."[4]
[Sidenote: ST. FURSA.]
Amongst the other ecclesiastical notabilities that frequented Aran in
the sixth century was St. Fursa, whose life has been written by scores
of writers, as well by the Venerable Bede as by Archbishop Usher, the
greatest ornament of the Protestant Church in Ireland. The visions of
Fursa were, we are informed by the Rev. J. Carey, in his admirable
translation of Dante, the groundwork of the _Inferno_. The beautiful
imagery of Fursa's fancy, which threw a charm over every subject that he
handled, may be well illustrated by his rhapsodies on seeing for the
first time the city of Rome, as staff in hand he wended his way to the
Eternal City. Falling on his knees, with outstretched arms, he
exclaimed, "Rome! oh, Rome! I hail thee, admirable by apostolic
triumphs. Rome, decorated by the roses of the martyrs, whitened by the
lilies of the confessors, crowned by the palms of the virgins, thou that
containest the bones and relics of the saints, may thy authority never
fade!"[5] Strange, is it not, that the first sight of the city of Rome
should produce in the minds of men feelings which words almost fail to
convey!
[Sidenote: GIBBON.]
It was eleven hundred years after Fursa's first salutation to the city
of Rome that Edward Gibbon, when musing amid the ruins of the Capitol
whilst the barefooted friars were singing vespers in the temple of
Jupiter, formed the idea of writing "The Decline and Fall of the Roman
Empire," and what his feelings were on seeing for the first time the
holy city he thus in that immortal work informs us: "My temper is not
very susceptible of enthusiasm, and the enthusiasm which I do not feel I
have ever scorned to affect, but at the distance of twenty-five years, I
can neither forget nor express the strong emotions which agitated my
mind as I first approached and entered the Eternal City. After a
sleepless night I trod with a lofty step the ruins of the Forum." St.
Fursa, returning on foot through France, died at Peronne, and his body
was conveyed to the island of Aran, where amongst his _quondam_ brethren
he now, awaiting the resurrection of the just, reposes.
Of the monuments, as well pre-Christian as Christian, in these islands,
there are twenty-one, vested in the secretary of the Commissioners of
Public Works in Ireland, to be preserved as national monuments. (See
next page.)
[Sidenote: RUINS.]
Ruins everywhere meet the eye of the tourist in Aran--ruined abbeys,
ruined monasteries, ruined nunneries, ruined cells, ruined churches,
ruined schools, ruined forts, ruined forests, and ruined towers. With
one exception the churches of Aran face the east. I heard somewhere,
when on the islands, that that is not exactly true, but that they faced
the point of the compass at which the sun rose on the day that the
foundation stone was laid. Be that as it may, there is the Oratory of
St. Banon, which directly faces the north. It is fifteen feet long, by
seventeen feet high to the summit of the gables, by eleven feet in breadth.
COUNTY OF GALWAY.
BARONY OF ARAN.
--------------+----------------+--------------------------------------
Parish. | Townland. | Monuments.
--------------+----------------+--------------------------------------
Inisheer, | Inisheer | Great Fort, with stone-roofed Cells,
or | | and O'Brien's Castle.
Lesser Island | | Fort with Mound and Monument.
| | Ruins of Church--Kill-Gobnet, etc.
| | Ruins of Church--Burial-place of
| | Seven Daughters, whose names are
| | unknown.
| | Ruins of Church--Tempul Coemhan.
| |
Inishmaan, | Carrowntemple | Fort Mothar Dun.
or | Carrownlisheen | Fort of Conor.
Middle Island | | Ruins of Church--Kill Canonagh.
| | Ruins of Church--Tempul Caireach
| | Derquin.
| |
Inishmore, | Onaght | Fort Dun AEngus.
or | Killeaney | Fort Dun Eochla.
Great Island | | Dubh Chathair or the Black Fort.
| | Ruins of Church--Tempul Benin, with
| | rectangular enclosure and group
| | of Cells.
| | Ruins of Church--Tempul Brecan and
| | Cross.
| | Ruins of Church--Tempul beg mac Dara.
| | Ruins of Church--Tempul more mac
| | Dara.
| | Ruins of Church--Tempul Assurniadhe.
| | Ruins of Church--Tempul Ciara
| | Monastir.
| | Ruins of Church--Tempul a Phoill (the
| | seven churches).
| | Ruins of Church--Tempul an Cheathrair
| | Aluin.
| | Ruins of Church--Teglach Enda (St.
| | Enda's Church).
--------------+----------------+--------------------------------------
[Sidenote: CLOGHAUNS.]
Close by are the remains of the hermitage, partly sunk in the rock, and
of some cloghauns, or stone-roofed dwellings. How those solitaries, who
for centuries held up the lamp of learning which shone across Europe
during the long night which followed the breaking up of the Roman
empire, could live in such comfortless cells, it is impossible to
apprehend: circular chambers about twenty feet in exterior diameter,
with a hole in the stone beehive roof for a chimney, and with an
Egyptian-like doorway that a tall man could with difficulty enter.
_Teampul-Chiarain_ has a beautiful eastern window, with some crosses.
Four miles from Kilronan are Kilmurvey and _Teampul McDuach_, a
sixth-century church, consisting of nave and choir in beautiful
preservation. There are windows there of remote antiquity, with lintels
formed of two leaning stones; and there is a semicircular window of
great beauty of a more recent date. There is a stone leaning against the
eastern gable with a rudely cut opening which seems to have been the
head of the more ancient window. The narrow doorway is like the entrance
to an Egyptian tomb. Another small church, _Teampul-beg_, together with
a holy well and monastic enclosure, is worthy of inspection. At the
north-western side of the Inishmore island, and six miles from
Kilronan, are the remains of the seven churches, one of which is called
_Teampul Brecain_--the church of St. Braccan, who was the founder of the
monastery of Ardbraccan, now the cathedral church of the diocese of
Meath. The ruined church of _Teampul-saght-Machree_ is an object of
interest on the middle island. The eastern island in ancient times was
called _Aran-Coemhan_ in honour of _St. Coemhan_ (St. Kevin), brother of
St. Kevin of Glendalough. He was one of the most renowned of the saints
of Aran, and is believed to have not unfrequently abated storms after
being piously invoked.
[Sidenote: CHILDLESS MARRIAGES.]
There is a legend in the islands worthy of remembrance by those whose
marriages are as yet unblest with children. We speak of that of St.
Braccan's bed, where many a fair devotee has prayed and has had her
prayers granted, as Anna of old had in the temple of Silo,[6] when the
Lord bestowed on her childless marriage a child who was afterwards the
prophet Samuel.
[Sidenote: ARAN CHURCHES.]
The churches are all of small dimensions--never more than sixty feet in
length--at the eastern end of which is not unfrequently a chancel in
which the altar was placed. Between the nave of the church and the
chancel was the chancel arch of a semicircular form, a very beautiful
specimen of which exists in the Protestant cathedral of Tuam. These
temples, very imperfectly lighted by small windows splaying inwards, do
not appear to have ever been glazed. The chancel had usually two or
three windows--one of which is always in the centre of the east end,
with another in the south wall, another in the south wall of the nave,
sometimes, though rarely, two in number. The windows are frequently
triangular-headed, but more usually arched semicircularly, whilst the
doorway is almost universally covered by a horizontal lintel consisting
of a single stone. In all cases the sides of the doorways incline like
the doorways in the old Cyclopean buildings, to which they bear a
striking resemblance. The smaller churches were usually roofed with
stone, whilst the larger ones were roofed with wood covered with thatch.
The wells are carefully preserved, the scarcity of water rendering the
possession of a well almost as precious to them as to the Eastern
shepherds in the days of Rebecca.
The Aran churches, it must be admitted, have little in them to interest
the mind or captivate the senses; nevertheless, in their symmetrical
simplicity, their dimly lighted naves, in the total absence of
everything that could distract attention, there is an expression of
fitness for their purpose too often wanting in modern temples of the
highest pretensions.
[Sidenote: LIVES OF THE MONKS.]
The monastic establishments close by contained little that would savour
of luxury. The cells of the friars were low, narrow huts, built of the
roughest materials, which formed, by the regular distribution of the
streets, a large and populous village, enclosing within a common wall a
church and hospital, perhaps a library. The austere inmates slept on the
ground, on a hard mat or a rough blanket, and the same bundle of palm
leaves, served them as a seat by day and a pillow by night. The brethren
were supported by their manual labour, and the duty of labour was
strenuously recommended as a penance, as an exercise, and as the most
laudable means of securing their daily subsistence. "_Laborare est
orare_" was a monastic maxim. The garden and the fields which the
industry of the monks had rescued from the forest or the morass were
cultivated by their ceaseless toil. In the evening they assembled for
vocal or mental prayer, and they were awakened by a rustic horn, or by
the convent bell in the night, for the public worship of the monastery.
Even sleep, the last refuge of the unhappy, was rigorously measured; and
it was to lives of self-denial like this that great multitudes in the
first century of the Christian era betook themselves. Pliny, who lived
when Christ was crucified, surveyed with astonishment the monks of the
first century, "a solitary people," he says, "who dwelt amongst the palm
trees near the Dead Sea, who increased, and who subsisted without money,
who fled from the pleasures of life, and who derived from the disgust
and repentance of mankind a perpetual supply of voluntary
associates."[7]
[Sidenote: ORDNANCE SURVEY.]
On Inisheer island is a signal tower, and near it is an old castle on an
eminence. Here is shown the "bed of St. Coemhan," much famed for its
miraculous cures. On the south-west point is a lighthouse showing a
light one hundred and ten feet in height. It is stated in the
_Leabhar-braec_ that one of the Popes was interred in the great island
of Aran. The same is repeated in one of the volumes of the Ordnance
Survey, a work which, never printed, is stowed away on the shelves of
the Royal Irish Academy, liable at any moment to be destroyed by a
conflagration. In the three or four volumes on the county of Galway are
contained, and in the English language, the inquisitions of Elizabeth,
the subsequent patents of James I., and much learning touching tithes,
fisheries, abbeys, abbey lands, priories, and monasteries, as well as
letters on these subjects between Petrie and O'Donovan and other
antiquarians employed on that survey.
FOOTNOTES:
[2] II. Coke's Reports, part iii. Preface, p. viii.
[3] The "Old Sea," the ancient name of the Atlantic in Irish.
[4] Sir Aubrey De Vere, "Irish Odes," p. 274.
[5] Colgani, Acta SS. Hiberniae.
[6] 1 Sam. i. 9-17.
[7] Pliny, Hist. Nat., v. 15.