Of all the ancient remains in the County Louth connected with Christian
antiquities, the ruins of Mellifont and Monasterboice are by far the most
interesting and important. They are only two miles apart, and only about
four from Drogheda. Starting from there both places can easily be seen in
one day. There is not, even in the beautiful and picturesque county of
Louth, a more beautiful location for a church or monastery than the glen
in which all the remains of Mellifont is to be seen. It is not a mountain
glen; there is no wildness or savageness about it; it is simply a
depression in a rich lowland country, with luxuriant crops of grain and
grass all round it, and a clear rushing river flowing through
it,--supremely beautiful in summer-time and charming even in winter. In
summer and autumn days when the hills around it are radiant with flowers
of almost every hue, Mellifont even in its desolation is worth journeying
a hundred miles to see.
But in spite of the beauty of the glen in which the ruins are situated,
and in spite of the beauty of what remains of the ruins themselves, no
right-minded person, no matter what his creed or nationality may be, can
look on Mellifont without being not only pained but shocked at the
desolation that has been wrought upon it, and the traces of barbarism,
hate, and vandalism that stare him in the face. Why such uprooting was
done in Mellifont one can easily understand, but _how_ it was done is a
puzzle. Here stood probably the largest and most beautiful of all Irish
monasteries, but hardly a square foot of it remains overground, save the
baptistry and chapter house. The walls have been levelled down to their
very foundations. A building of such enormous size must have had high
walls, but hardly a vestige of them remains. If they were blown up by
gunpowder, the material of which they were made would remain, if it had
not been carried away. Few traces of the walls are to be seen,
consequently one must conclude that the greater part of the very stones of
which they were built has been removed to some place of which no one now
alive knows anything. A mill was built close by the river about eighty
years ago, but it contains in its walls few, if any, of the stones of
Mellifont. They had disappeared long before the erection of the mill. The
spoilers of Mellifont were not satisfied by uprooting it, for they seem to
have removed the greater part of the stones of which it was built. If
Mellifont had not been so razed to the ground it would, even in its
nakedness and desolation, be one of the most beautiful ecclesiastical
ruins in Europe, and would attract a hundred visitors for the one it
attracts now.
Mellifont is one of the few Irish ruined abbeys that has a Latin instead
of an Irish name. No one seems to have yet found out what its Irish name
is, or if it ever had one. Our annalists almost invariably call it the
"Drogheda Monastery." The Four Masters call it "Mellifont" only once. In
the "Annals of Loch Ce" it is called the "Great Monastery," for there
seems no doubt that it was the largest house of the kind in Ireland. The
extent of the church itself can now be distinctly traced, thanks to the
excavations that were made by the Board of Works some years ago. It was
180 feet in length, with proportional breadth; the entire area covered
with buildings was fully an English acre, and there were evidently many
outlying buildings connected with, or forming part of the monastery,
hardly a trace of which now remains. The small chapel on a hill outside of
the monastery is thought to have been founded by St Bernard at the time
the monastery was built. There is also about the fourth of what was once
a strong castle remaining. It was evidently built after the Anglo-French
invasion, but by whom seems not to be definitely known.
Mellifont was founded in 1142, and richly endowed by O'Carrol, Prince of
Oriel. He was famed for his generosity and piety. The establishment was
built for the Order of Cistercians. From the middle of the eleventh
century to the middle of the twelfth was the time when most of the large
abbeys and monasteries of Ireland were founded; and many of them, like
that of Cong, were built in places that had long been occupied by smaller
and plainer ecclesiastical structures like those remaining in Clonmacnois
and Monasterboice. The _renaissance_ of Irish ecclesiastical architecture
in the eleventh and twelfth centuries is, probably, attributable to two
things--the cessation of Danish plundering and the conquest of England by
the Norman-French. The Danish military power in Ireland got a blow at
Clontarf from which it never recovered; after that battle there were
comparatively few monasteries raided, and the Irish began to erect large
and costly structures in place of the small and often severely plain
churches of an earlier period. The Norman-French introduced into England
what is called a Romanesque ecclesiastical architecture that was much
superior to that of the Saxons; and it seems certain that the Irish
copied, to a certain extent, the style of building adopted by the
conquerors of the Saxons; but the invasion of Ireland by those same
conquerors in the latter half of the twelfth century seems to have
arrested the development, not only of architecture, but of almost
everything that tended to benefit the country. Most of the great churches
and abbeys of Ireland were erected before Strongbow set foot in it. It is
strange and hard to be understood how it came to pass that, terrible as
were the ravages of the Danes, they put no stop to the development of Art
in Ireland. Monasteries would be raided and churches burned by them many
times within a few years, but this seems not to have put a stop either to
the establishment of monasteries or the building of churches. Lord
Dunraven says, in his book on ancient Irish architecture, that "it is
remarkable that the fearful struggle with the Norsemen, which lasted for
over two hundred years, and ended in their final defeat in 1014 [at
Clontarf] does not seem to have materially paralysed the energies of the
Irish nation as regards their native arts." It is, however, certain that
it was not until the military power of the Norseman was broken that
ecclesiastical architecture became a real glory in Ireland. But the
Anglo-French invasion seems to have put a stop, not only to the
development of architecture, but of art of all kinds. It is a strange fact
that the heathen Dane should have been less of a curse to Irish art than
the Christian Englishman.
The first mention of Mellifont by the Four Masters occurs under the year
1152, when a great synod of three thousand ecclesiastics was held there.
It was in Mellifont that the woman whose crime is supposed to have been
the cause of the English invasion of Ireland died in the year 1193. This
was Dearvorgil, the faithless wife of O'Ruarc, whom Moore has called
"falsest of women." It is, however, now thought by most of those who have
studied Irish history closely that Dermott MacMorrough's relations with
this lady had nothing whatever to do with his banishment. They point out
the fact that it was about ten years after Dearvorgil had been restored to
her people that MacMorrough was banished, and maintain that the true cause
of his banishment was in order to re-impose the tribute on the province of
Leinster, the Danes being no longer able to assist the Leinstermen as they
were wont to do. The other provincial rulers wanted to have the King of
Leinster put out of the way, for, as he was a warlike man, they knew he
would fight to the bitter end for the protection of his province. If this
version of the matter is true, it goes far to free Dermott MacMorrough
from the odium that rests on his memory.
Monasterboice is one of the oldest places connected with Christianity in
Ireland. Its foundation may have been as old as the time of St Patrick,
for Buite, from whom it takes its name, and by whom it probably was
founded, died in the year 524. There seems good reason to believe that
"Buite" is the original form of the now very plentiful name "Boyd," but
how Monaster Buite got twisted into Monasterboice is a mystery. The
situation of this ancient place is not nearly so picturesque as that of
Mellifont. There is no rushing river and no deep glen. Still the situation
is good, and the country around very fine, and, like most parts of Louth,
well cultivated. The peculiar glories of Monasterboice are its crosses and
its round tower. There are three crosses, two in good preservation, but
one was so broken that it had to be patched or fastened into solid stone
work. It is most likely that it was purposely destroyed, for barbarians
have done their best to cut down the great cross that stands in the same
enclosure--the finest of all ancient Irish crosses. It must have taken
days for a strong man with a heavy sledge-hammer to make such a deep
indentation in the hard stone of which the cross is made. It was its
extreme hardness that saved it from destruction and defacement. But hard
as the stone of those crosses may be, it cannot resist the action of the
elements, for the sculptures with which they are covered are now so
effaced by time and weather, that they seem little more than masses of
unintelligible tracings; but when those noble crosses were fresh from
their makers' hands they must have been magnificent specimens of early
Irish art.
The round tower of Monasterboice is one of the finest in Ireland. Its top
has been broken off by lightning, but what remains of it is 110 feet in
height. It must have been at least 130 feet high when perfect, which would
make it one of the highest of the round towers of Ireland. The mason work
is of the very best kind, although the stones are uncut, and were
evidently found in the immediate neighbourhood of the tower. There is a
peculiarity about this tower which is not to be seen in any other
structure of the same kind--it is not quite perpendicular. The author of
the great book on ancient Irish architecture, already referred to, says
that "it leans to one side on the north-west, and has a very peculiar
curve. Where the curve commences a distinct change of masonry is visible.
When the tower was built to this height the foundation began to settle
down, and when this was perceived the builders very skilfully carried up
the building in a nearly vertical line, so as to counteract the tendency
to lean and to preserve the centre of gravity." It seems a pity that the
Board of Works does not repair this splendid structure, and put a new top
of antique model on it; it would be, if perfect, the grandest of Irish
round towers.
Monasterboice became a ruin many centuries before Mellifont; the latter
continued to be a Catholic religious establishment down to the time of
Elizabeth, but Monasterboice seems to have been abandoned in the twelfth
or thirteenth century. The last notice of it, or any one connected with
it, by the Four Masters, is under the year 1122, when they record the
death of Fergna, "a wise priest." What caused this famous establishment to
be abandoned, or at least to cease to be mentioned in Irish annals at such
an early period, seems enveloped in a good deal of mystery. It was
plundered more than once by the Danes, and it may be that any wooden
buildings it contained were burnt by them and never re-erected, for, like
Clonmacnois, what remains of its two churches shows them to have been so
small that they could not accommodate any large number of persons. Being
so near Mellifont may also have led to its abandonment when the latter
place became one of the greatest religious houses in Ireland. If
Monasterboice was not so large as Mellifont, its abbots and professors
seem to have been greater scholars and harder workers than those of the
great monastery. Flann of Monasterboice was one of the most noted literary
men of ancient, or rather of mediaeval, Ireland, for he flourished in the
eleventh century. He is considered one of the most truthful and correct of
Irish annalists, and has left behind him important works that have been
preserved to the present day.
The country in the vicinity of Mellifont and Monasterboice is not only
very fair to look on, but highly interesting in an archaeological point of
view. The town of Drogheda, the nearest place to the interesting ruins
treated of in this article, is the only place in their vicinity where
hotel accommodation can be found. It is full of historic interest and
curious remains of the past. But to the antiquarian, to one who wants to
see monuments as old as the Pyramids of Egypt, the _Brogha na Boinne_, or
burghs of the Boyne, should be a great attraction. They are the most
colossal things of the kind known to exist in any part of Europe. One is
known by the name of New Grange, and the other is called Dowth. Both
places are on the Boyne, and only a few miles west of Drogheda. They are
enormous, partially underground caverns, lined and roofed with great
flag-stones. They are entirely pre-historic, and are supposed to have been
used as places in which to deposit the ashes of the dead; but their real
use can hardly be more than guessed at. It is generally thought by
archaeologists that they were erected by the Tuatha de Danaans, who
occupied Ireland before the Milesians; but authentic history is silent
about these gigantic structures. More than a dozen of such structures were
discovered some years ago in the Sleeve na Caillighe Hills, near
Oldcastle, in the County Meath. They are just like those in New Grange and
Dowth, but not nearly so large. The flat stones that form the linings of
those curious caverns or tumuli are covered with incised and generally
semi-circular markings. They bear all the appearance of being writing of
some kind, but no clue to its interpretation has yet been discovered.
These markings were certainly not made for fun; neither could they have
been made for ornament, for they are _not_ ornamental. There are
thousands of them, counting what are in the tumuli on the banks of the
Boyne and in the same kind of places in the hills near Oldcastle. It is a
pity that no one competent for it has ever tried to decipher this curious
writing, for writing of some kind it certainly is. When the cuniform
inscriptions on the bricks of Assyria have been interpreted, it is strange
that no one has tried to find out the meaning of the writing on the stones
of these Irish tumuli.