That history repeats itself in many and sometimes mysterious ways, is
rather interestingly illustrated in a talk with Mr. Denis McGillicuddy,
of Medford. This gentleman emigrated from Ireland to America about forty
years ago, and in the meantime has been a prominent builder and
contractor. His works include the construction of nineteen Catholic
Churches, among them in 1870-1, St. Augustine's Church of South Boston,
and also the mansion of Archbishop Williams and his priests near the
Cathedral in this city. His story links two countries together in its
detail, though centuries and three thousand miles of ocean divide them,
and the incidents he related yesterday to the writer, as follows:
"When I read the account of the truly Christian celebration of Christmas
in St. Augustine's Church, South Boston, it brought to my mind an
incident in connection with the building of that beautiful and
elaborately finished edifice and its worthy pastor, Rev. Father
O'Callaghan, which I should think might very well interest the general
reader; but it certainly ought to be interesting to those who
familiarize themselves with comparisons in history. Among the artisans
employed on St. Augustine's, when in process of erection, were four men
bearing the historic names of O'Keefe, O'Sullivan, O'Falvey and
O'Connell. Now, sir, in the Annals of Ireland, by the Four Masters, we
find that Ceallachan (Callaghan), a celebrated warrior of the Erigenian
race, was King of Cashel in the tenth century, and having defeated the
Danes in several battles, Sitric, who was then chief of the Danes, in
Dublin, made proposals of peace to the King of Munster. Ceallachan went
to Dublin on that mission accompanied only by his body-guard, and one or
two friends. On his arrival there, his party was treacherously attacked,
and Ceallachan was taken prisoner,--the entire proceedings, on the part
of the barbarians being a conspiracy to get Ceallachan, their formidable
opponent, into their power. The Munster (South of Ireland) chiefs, in
order to release their king from captivity, collected a powerful force,
numbering over twelve thousand troops commanded by Denis O'Keefe, Prince
of Fermoy, and O'Sullivan, Prince of Beara. They also organized a large
naval force, consisting of one hundred and twenty ships commanded by an
O'Falvey and an O'Connell.
"The army marched northwest through Connaught, and thence through Ulster
to Armagh, which city was then in possession of the Danes, and whither
the latter had brought Ceallachan to transport him captive to Denmark.
The Irish attacked Armagh, applied scaling ladders to the walls, and the
Danes under Sitric and his brothers, Tor and Magnus, were defeated with
great slaughter. The Danes fled in the night to the protection of their
ships at Dundalk, and carrying Ceallachan, they embarked on board their
vessels in that bay. Warrior O'Keefe followed, and from its shores sent
a flag of truce demanding of Sitric that he deliver to him the person
of King Ceallachan. But Sitric refused the demand unless an eric, a sum
of money, was first paid for every Dane who fell in the fifteen
different battles with King Ceallachan and his forces. Sitric then
ordered Ceallachan to be tied to one of the masts of his ship, and he
was thus exposed in full view of the whole Munster army. The Irish were
terribly enraged at this outrage on their chief, but had not then any
means of attacking the enemy. Shortly after, however, O'Falvey, the
Irish admiral, hove in sight and drew up his ships in line for attack on
the Danish fleet. A desperate engagement ensued; the Irish commanders
gave orders to grapple with the enemy's vessels. O'Falvey succeeded in
releasing Ceallachan, and, giving him a sword, asked him to assume
command. The Irish, at seeing their king at liberty, fought with renewed
valor; but the valiant O'Falvey fell pierced with many wounds.
O'Connell, who was second in command, seized Sitric, the Danish
chieftain, in sudden grasp and plunged overboard with him. Both were
drowned. It is also related that Fingal, and many other Irish chiefs,
grasped other Danish chiefs in similar fashion in their arms, and leaped
with them in like manner into the sea. At length, the Danish forces were
defeated, and their fleet totally destroyed. Almost all the Irish chiefs
and a great many of the men engaged in that hard contest were slain. The
consternation of General O'Keefe and his army, being unable to render
any assistance to their countrymen on the water, may be imagined. After
the naval combat Ceallachan landed in Dundalk, where he was most
joyfully received by the people, and soon after resumed in peaceful
sway, the government of the Munster province."
"This great sea fight took place," said the narrator, "in the Bay of
Dundalk, in the year 944. The account is given in an ancient Irish MS.
with the title of '_Toruigheachd Cheallachain chaisil_,'--signifying the
pursuit for the rescue of Ceallachan Cashel."
"Well what are your deductions, Mr. Mc.," queried the writer.
"The coincidence to my mind is this," said Mr. McGillicuddy, as his face
brightened; "and it is a singular one I think, that here in this
glorious and enlightened Republic, one thousand years later, the kinsman
of this Munster prince, Rev. Denis O'Callaghan, when erecting his
church, now all paid for, had in his employ the kinsmen of the four
chiefs highest in command on that memorable occasion--viz: O'Keefe,
O'Sullivan, O'Falvey and O'Connell, all professing the identical
Christian creed their forefathers professed and practised. There are no
barbarians here now, thank God, to hinder Christians from kneeling at
their own shrine, and all as they chose, no matter how else they may
differ on material and worldly questions. Here the kinsmen of these
brave soldiers of the tenth century build temples to the Lord of Hosts,
and are not called upon to defend them with their life's blood from the
fire and sword of barbaric legions. Thus let us pray that with pure
Christian foundations, the beloved union of States,--the Republic--may
be in the quotation of Henry Grattan, '_esto perpetua_.'"
The Ursuline Convent of Tenos.
Twenty-three years ago there started from France four Ursuline nuns with
the intention of founding a convent of their order in the island of
Tenos, in the Greek Archipelago. The first idea had been to found this
establishment in Syra, the chief commercial town of the Cyclades; but
insuperable difficulties turned their hopes to Tenos, known to the
ancient Greeks as the island of Serpents. Nothing could be more
picturesque and lovely than the island, nothing less civilized. These
four ladies, of high courage and energy, left the shores of the most
civilized country in the world with the small sum of six hundred francs,
upon which they resolved to start a school of Catholic education and
charity in an island which had ceased to be universally Catholic from
the time of Venetian rule. Having gone over the ground and realized
(only dimly) their enormous difficulties, the complete sacrifice they
were compelled to make of all bodily comforts, and the unendurable
conditions of existence they bravely faced, I can only compare their
courage with that which formed the annals of the earliest stages of
Christianity. Becalmed upon a whimsical sea, they arrived at Tenos a
little before eight in the evening. Tenos was the spot selected, or
rather its village, Lutra, because the bishop had consented to the
erection of a convent in his diocese. To readers accustomed to the
resources of civilized travelling the hour of arrival is an inconsequent
detail. Not so even to-day in Tenos. Judge, then, what it must have been
twenty-three years ago! Four delicately nurtured women had to face a
dark, rocky road, more of the nature of a sheer precipice than a road,
late at night upon mules. I made the same journey at mid-day and felt
more dead than alive after it. There is positively not a vestige of
roadway up the whole steep mountain pass, nothing but large rocks and
broken marbles, though the traveller in search of the picturesque is
amply repaid the discomfort of the ride. But compared with the village
of Lutra, which was the destination of the nuns, this wild and
dangerous-looking path is a kind of preliminary paradise. No
word-painting of the most realistic school could do justice to the
horror of Lutra to-day--and what must it have been there before the
refining influence of those nuns touched it? This dirty stone-built and
tumble-down village the four nuns entered at eight o'clock, when
darkness covered its ugliness, but greatly increased its dangers. The
first entrance winds under an intricate line of narrow stone arches, the
pavement uneven, the mingling of odors unimaginable. Through this
unearthly awfulness they bravely struggled and reached their destination
at last. A Father from the neighboring community had heard of their
expected arrival, and was already superintending the rough and hurried
details of their reception. I saw the house which stands just as it was
when the Ursuline nuns first made it their residence. A mud cabin
containing two rooms: kitchen and dining-room, bedroom and chapel. The
roof is made of stones thrown loosely over wooden beams placed far
apart, the two rooms separated by a whitewashed arch instead of a door.
There are no windows; but spaces are cut in the walls which served to
let in the light and air, and at night were covered by shutters. Hail,
rain, or snow, it was necessary to keep these spaces open by day in
order to see, and it is not surprising that one of the nuns was soon
prostrated by a dangerous fever. The beds were mattresses stuffed with
something remarkably like potatoes, and laid on the mud floor at night,
upon which the nuns slept a short, ascetic sleep.
Here they remained for some time, going among the villagers and
soliciting that the poor would send their children to be taught. This
the poor did, and gradually the children began to fill the kitchen of
the mud cabin. If it rained during class umbrellas had to be put up as a
protection under a nominal roof, just as the nuns had to sleep under
umbrellas in wet weather. Indeed, sometimes it rained so hard that they
were obliged to take up their mattresses at night, and seek a more
sheltered spot elsewhere. At last the number of their charity pupils
increased; and the bishop, as poor as they were almost, offered them the
only asylum in his power, his own paternal home, also a mud cabin; but
instead of two miserable rooms it contained four. This was an immense
improvement, and the nuns felt like exchanging a cottage for a palace.
But here the protection of umbrellas was still necessary, as the roof
was also made of loosely set stones and beams. In time other nuns joined
them from France, until they formed a community of eleven, with eighty
village school children and one boarder. It grew daily more and more
necessary that something should be done to raise money to build a
convent. Their couches had been slowly raised from a mud floor to
tables, upon which they slept the sleep of Trappists; but a proper
establishment was now indispensable to the work they had laid themselves
out to do. With this object, two nuns set out on a supplicating mission
round the Levant. They were less successful than they had perhaps
anticipated, for they returned after their arduous task only enriched by
eight thousand francs. With this sum they were enabled to build a small
portion of the present establishment; but building in a Greek island is
slow and costly work. Each stone has to be carried up the long mountain
pass from the quarries; the way is difficult, the men unaccustomed to
prompt work.
However, in due time the nuns were enabled to leave the bishop's homely
roof, where their chapel was a tiny closet separated from the class and
dining-room by a curtain, and the beds the tables used during the day
with umbrellas for a roof.
Two nuns later made the tour of France in search of funds, and were
rewarded for their unpleasant undertaking by the sum of twenty-five
thousand francs, which added something more to the building already
commenced, and smaller sums, together with pupils, came afterwards. Now
they have between fifty and sixty pupils who are paid for, and almost as
large a number of charity children and orphans who are supported at the
expense of the convent. These children are all Greeks or Levantines; but
as the language of the Order is French, they speak French fluently.
So much for a general idea of the immense difficulties in the way of
foundation, and for an outline of the personal sacrifices and admirable
courage which has carried it through. I will now try to give an outline
of what has been done. To begin with the island of Tenos, although
extremely picturesque, with its marble rocks, its clear, bare hills
shadowed lightly by purple thyme and gray olives and torrent beds in dry
weather forming zigzag lines of pink-blossomed oleanders, fig-trees,
mulberries, tall, feathery-headed reeds and orange and lemon trees, is
as devoid of all the necessary adjuncts of modern existence as it is
possible to imagine any place. As you approach it, it lies upon the
deep, blue Mediterranean, a stretch of dimpled brown hills, curve laid
inextricably upon curve, its apparent barrenness softened in the beauty
of shape, as the morning sea mist, which has rested upon its base like a
fine white veil, gradually lifts itself into the clouds. From an
aesthetic point of view, the picture is admirable; but the least
fastidious of travellers must at once recognize the almost impossibility
of raising upon it anything like a comfortable European home. Yet,
nevertheless, this gigantic feat is what the nuns, by a peculiar genius,
patient perseverance, and severe economy, have accomplished. The
two-roomed mud cabin of twenty-three years ago is now a tradition, and
they have made themselves a lovely centre above the dirty village of
Lutra. They have cultivated the stony, impoverished soil till their
gardens are thickly foliaged by lemons, oranges, figs, pomegranates,
cactuses, oleanders, oaks, olives, apples, pears, and apricots. These
fruits are consumed in the convent partly, and the surplus is sold in
Syra for a mere song, which, if they could export to England would yield
them a profitable interest. Their gardens are arranged with great taste,
French and English flowers blooming side by side with the luxuriant
growths of the country. Nothing more lovely than the site upon which
their mountain home is built can be imagined. The hills roll one above
the other in different colors, and the valleys, with their stains of
verdure and dusky foliages upon the red soil and marble rocks, are
unfolded like a perpetual panorama. If you mount the terrace or the
castra higher up--once a Venetian fortress--you will see the dreamy
Mediterranean, responsive to the slightest emotions of the Eastern sky,
and you will be surrounded by soft, blue touches of land breaking above
its waves of intenser color--the Grecian Isles, Syra, with its white
town half hidden by the cloud-shadowed hills, Syphona, a misty margin of
gray upon the clear horizon, ancient Delos, so dim as to appear neither
wholly sky nor land; desert Delos, with darker, fuller curves of land
upon a silver edge of water, and nearest Mycono, a blending of the
purest blues, with the famous Naxos behind washing which, whatever its
mood in general, the Mediterranean is sure to take its own distinctive
color--sapphire.
The convent is built in the shape of the letter S, with the new building
recently added for the pupils--a long line of class-rooms and music
closets below and the dormitories above admirably arranged so that each
girl is enclosed in a kind of cell, or cabin, numbered on the door
outside, with a general ceiling. It is original and much better than the
old system, by which twenty or thirty girls felt themselves in a general
bedroom. This building has proved the most expensive of all, and the
undertaking leaves the community considerably in debt and if any of my
readers feel sufficiently impressed by the endurance, courage, and
self-sacrifice I have indicated in this short sketch to desire to be of
any help in a most deserving cause, donations to enable the convent to
pay off its debt will be very gratefully received by the superior. Their
charities and hospitalities are necessarily great, and their isolated
position precludes them from the enjoyment of those resources and
assistances which the communities in Catholic countries may justly rely
upon.
The features of the island of Tenos gather beauty with familiarity, and
the inhabitants are as simple and pure and primitive as the old ideal of
Arcadia without, however, the picturesque shepherd costume and crook.
They have the greatest respect for the French nuns, teach their little
brown-faced babies to salute them by kissing their hand, and with the
untutored courtesy of their peasant race are willing and anxious to
render the sisters whatever service lies within their power. They wonder
greatly at the taste and artistic beauty of the convent grounds; at the
perfect neatness and cleanliness of all the domestic details, and those
who have come under the personal influence of the nuns are already
endeavoring to beautify their own homes. A servant man who had worked in
the convent has gradually turned his pig-sty home into a charming little
cottage, with a neat terrace covered with trellised vines, the poles
which support it wreathed in fragrant basilica. He is quite proud when
you stop in the dirty village to admire the incongruous effect of his
pretty house, and tells you frankly that he owes his taste to "_la Mere
Assistante_."
The influence of these ladies throughout the primitive island is
remarkable, and by the simple-minded peasants who have benefited so
greatly by their charity and labors, are gratefully recognized as the
one oasis of civilization in their midst. Unfortunately they are not
rich enough to give any more practical evidence of gratitude than
sincere love and devotion.