Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry Part 10

And has Ireland no monuments of her history to guard; has she no tables of stone, no pictures, no temples, no weapons? Are there no Brehon's chairs on her hills to tell more clearly than Vallancey or Davies how justice was administered here? Do not you meet the Druid's altar and the Gueber's tower in every barony almost, and the Ogham stones in many a sequestered spot, and shall we spend time and money to see, to guard, or to decipher Indian topes, and Tuscan graves, and Egyptian hieroglyphics, and shall every nation in Europe shelter and study the remains of what it once was, even as one guards the tomb of a parent, and shall Ireland let all go to ruin?

We have seen pigs housed in the piled friezes of a broken church, cows stabled in the palaces of the Desmonds, and corn threshed on the floor of abbeys, and the sheep and the tearing wind tenant the corridors of Aileach.

Daily are more and more of our crosses broken, of our tombs effaced, of our abbeys shattered, of our castles torn down, of our cairns sacrilegiously pierced, of our urns broken up, and of our coins melted down. All cla.s.ses, creeds and politics are to blame in this. The peasant lugs down a pillar for his sty, the farmer for his gate, the priest for his chapel, the minister for his glebe. A mill-stream runs through Lord Moore's Castle,[32] and the Commissioners of Galway have shaken and threatened to remove the Warden's house--that fine stone chronicle of Galway heroism.

How our children will despise us all for this! Why shall we seek for histories, why make museums, why study the manners of the dead, when we foully neglect or barbarously spoil their homes, their castles, their temples, their colleges, their courts, their graves? He who tramples on the past does not create for the future. The same ignorant and vagabond spirit which made him a destructive prohibits him from creating for posterity.

Does not a man, by examining a few castles and arms, know more of the peaceful and warrior life of the dead n.o.bles and gentry of our island than from a library of books; and yet a man is stamped as unlettered and rude if he does not know and value such knowledge. Ware's _Antiquities_, and Archdall, speak not half so clearly the taste, the habits, the everyday customs of the monks, as Adare Monastery,[33] for the fine preservation of which we owe so much to Lord Dunraven.

The state of civilisation among our Scotic or Milesian, or Norman, or Danish sires, is better seen from the Museum of the Irish Academy, and from a few raths, keeps, and old coast towns, than from all the prints and historical novels we have. An old castle in Kilkenny, a house in Galway give us a peep at the arts, the intercourse, the creed, the indoor and some of the outdoor ways of the gentry of the one, and of the merchants of the other, clearer than Scott could, were he to write, or Cattermole were he to paint, for forty years.

We cannot expect Government to do anything so honourable and liberal as to imitate the example of France, and pay men to describe and save these remains of dead ages. But we do ask it of the clergy, Protestant, Catholic, and Dissenting, if they would secure the character of men of education and taste--we call upon the gentry, if they have any pride of blood, and on the people, if they reverence Old Ireland, to spare and guard every remnant of antiquity. We ask them to find other quarries than churches, abbeys, castles and cairns--to bring rusted arms to a collector and coins to a museum, and not to iron or goldsmiths, and to take care that others do the like. We talk much of Old Ireland, and plunder and ruin all that remains of it--we neglect its language, fiddle with its ruins, and spoil its monuments.[34]

--------------------------------------------------------------- [32] Mellifont, founded in 1142 by O'Carroll, King of Oriel.--C.P.M.

[33] See _Irish Franciscan Monasteries_, by C.P.M., C.C.

[34] Again we note that, though late in the day, Davis's appeal has been answered, and most of the important ancient monuments of the country placed under official protection. The real need now is for scientific exploration of the ancient sites.--[Ed.]

IRISH ANTIQUITIES.

There is on the north (the left) bank of the Boyne, between Drogheda and Slane, a pile compared to which, in age, the Oldbridge obelisk is a thing of yesterday, and compared to which, in lasting interest, the Cathedrals of Dublin would be trivial. It is the Temple of Grange.

History is too young to have noted its origin--Archaeology knows not its time. It is a legacy from a forgotten ancestor, to prove that he, too, had art and religion. It may have marked the tomb of a hero who freed, or an invader who subdued--a Brian or a Strongbow. But whether or not a hero's or a saint's bones consecrated it at first, this is plain--it is a temple of nigh two thousand years, perfect as when the last Pagan sacrificed within it.[35]

It is a thing to be proud of, as a proof of Ireland's antiquity, to be guarded as an ill.u.s.tration of her early creed and arts. It is one of a thousand muniments of our old nationality which a national government would keep safe.

What, then, will be the reader's surprise and anger to hear that some people having legal power or corrupt influence in Meath are getting, or have got, _a presentment for a road to run right through the Temple of Grange_!

We do not know their names, nor, if the design be at once given up, as in deference to public opinion it must finally be, shall we take the trouble to find them out. But if they persist in this brutal outrage against so precious a landmark of Irish history and civilisation, then we frankly say if the law will not reach them public opinion shall, and they shall bitterly repent the desecration. These men who design, and those who consent to the act, may be Liberals or Tories, Protestants or Catholics, but beyond a doubt they are tasteless blockheads--poor devils without reverence or education--men, who, as Wordsworth says--

"Would peep and botanise Upon their mothers' graves."

All over Europe the governments, the aristocracies, and the people have been combining to discover, gain, and guard every monument of what their dead countrymen had done or been. France has a permanent commission charged to watch over her antiquities. She annually spends more in publishing books, maps, and models, in filling her museums and shielding her monuments from the iron clutch of time, than all the roads in Leinster cost. It is only on time she needs to keep watch. A French peasant would blush to meet his neighbour had he levelled a Gaulish tomb, crammed the fair moulding of an abbey into his wall, or sold to a crucible the coins which tell that a Julius, a Charlemagne, or a Philip Augustus swayed his native land. And so it is everywhere.

Republican Switzerland, despotic Austria, Prussia and Norway, Bavaria and Greece are all equally precious of everything that exhibits the architecture, sculpture, rites, dress, or manners of their ancestors--nay, each little commune would guard with arms these local proofs that they were not men of yesterday. And why should not Ireland be as precious of its ruins, its ma.n.u.scripts, its antique vases, coins, and ornaments, as these French and German men--nay, as the English, for they, too, do not grudge princely grants to their museums and restoration funds.

This island has been for centuries either in part or altogether a province. Now and then above the mist we see the whirl of Sarsfield's sword, the red battle-hand of O'Neill, and the points of O'Connor's spears; but 'tis a view through eight hundred years to recognise the Sunburst on a field of liberating victory. Reckoning back from Clontarf, our history grows enn.o.bled (like that of a decayed house), and we see Lismore and Armagh centres of European learning; we see our missionaries seizing and taming the conquerors of Europe, and, farther still, rises the wizard pomp of Eman and Tara--the palace of the Irish Pentarchy. And are we the people to whom the English (whose fathers were painted savages when Tyre and Sidon traded with this land) can address reproaches for our rudeness and irreverence? So it seems. The _Athenaeum_ says:--

"It is much to be regretted that the society lately established in England, having for its object the preservation of British antiquities, did not extend its design over those of the sister island, which are daily becoming fewer and fewer in number. That the gold ornaments which are so frequently found in various parts of Ireland should be melted down for the sake of the very pure gold of which they are composed, is scarcely surprising; but that carved stones and even immense druidical remains should be destroyed is, indeed, greatly to be lamented. At one of the late meetings of the Royal Irish Academy a communication was made of the intention of the proprietor of the estate at New Grange to destroy that most gigantic relic of druidical times, which has justly been termed the Irish pyramid, merely because its vast size 'c.u.mbereth the ground.'

At Mellifont a modern cornmill of large size has been built out of the stones of the beautiful monastic buildings, some of which still adorn that charming spot. At Monasterboice, the churchyard of which contains one of the finest of the round towers, are the ruins of two of the little ancient stone Irish churches, and three most elaborately carved stone crosses, eighteen or twenty feet high. The churchyard itself is overrun with weeds, the sanct.i.ty of the place being its only safeguard. At Clonmacnoise, where, some forty years ago, several hundred inscriptions in the ancient Irish character were to be seen upon the gravestones, scarcely a dozen (and they the least interesting) are now to be found--the large flat stones on which they were carved forming excellent slabs for doorways, the copings of walls, etc.! It was the discovery of some of these carved stones in such a situation which had the effect of directing the attention of Mr. Petrie (then an artist in search of the picturesque, but now one of the most enlightened and conscientious of the Irish antiquaries) to the study of antiquities; and it is upon the careful series of drawings made by him that future antiquarians must rely for very much of ancient architectural detail now destroyed. As to Glendalough, it is so much a holiday place for the Dubliners that it is no wonder everything portable has disappeared. Two or three of the seven churches are levelled to the ground--all the characteristic carvings described by Ledwich, and which were '_quite unique in Ireland_,' are gone. Some were removed and used as keystones for the arches of Derrybawn bridge.

Part of the churchyard has been cleared of its gravestones, and forms a famous place, where the villagers play at ball against the old walls of the church. The little church, called 'St. Kevin's Kitchen,' is given up to the sheep, and the font lies in one corner, and is used for the vilest purposes. The abbey church is choked up with trees and brambles, and being a little out of the way a very few of the carved stones still remain there, two of the most interesting of which I found used as coping-stones to the wall which surrounds it. The connection between the ancient churches of Ireland and the North of England renders the preservation of the Irish antiquities especially interesting to the English antiquarian; and it is with the hope of drawing attention to the destruction of those ancient Irish monuments that I have written these few lines. The Irish themselves are, unfortunately, so engrossed with political and religious controversies, that it can scarcely be hoped that single-handed they will be roused to the rescue even of these evidences of their former national greatness.

Besides, a great obstacle exists against any interference with the religious antiquities of the country, from the strong feelings entertained by the people on the subject, although _practically_, as we have seen, of so little weight. Let us hope that the public attention directed to these objects will have a beneficial result and ensure a greater share of 'justice to Ireland'; for will it be believed that the only establishment in Ireland for the propagation and diffusion of scientific and antiquarian knowledge--the Royal Irish Academy--receives annually the munificent sum of 300 from the Government! And yet, notwithstanding this pittance, the members of that society have made a step in the right direction by the purchase of the late Dean of St. Patrick's Irish Archaeological Collection, of which a fine series of drawings is now being made at the expense of the Academy, and of which they would, doubtless, allow copies to be made, so as to obtain a return of a portion of the expense to which they are now subjected. Small, moreover, as the collection is, it forms a striking contrast with our own _National_ Museum, which, rich in foreign antiquities, is almost without a single object of native archaeological interest, if we except the series of English and Anglo-Saxon coins and MSS."

The Catholic clergy were long and naturally the guardians of our antiquities, and many of their archaeological works testify their prodigious learning. Of late, too, the honourable and wise reverence brought back to England has reached the Irish Protestant clergy, and they no longer make antiquity a reproach, or make the maxims of the iconoclast part of their creed.

Is it extravagant to speculate on the possibility of the Episcopalian, Catholic, and Presbyterian clergy joining in an Antiquarian Society to preserve our ecclesiastical remains--our churches, our abbeys, our crosses, and our fathers' tombs, from fellows like the Meath road-makers? It would be a politic and a n.o.ble emulation of the sects, restoring the temples wherein their sires worshipped for their children to pray in. There's hardly a barony wherein we could not find an old parish or abbey church, capable of being restored to its former beauty and convenience at a less expense than some beastly barn is run up, as if to prove and confirm the fact that we have little art, learning, or imagination.

Nor do we see why some of these hundreds of half-spoiled buildings might not be used for civil purposes--as almshouses, schools, lecture-rooms, town-halls. It would always add another grace to an inst.i.tution to have its home venerable with age and restored to beauty.

We have seen men of all creeds join the Archaeological Society to preserve and revive our ancient literature. Why may we not see, even without waiting for the aid of an Irish Parliament, an Antiquarian Society, equally embracing the chief civilians and divines, and charging itself with the duties performed in France by the Commission of Antiquities and Monuments?

The Irish antiquarians of the last century did much good. They called attention to the history and manners of our predecessors which we had forgotten. They gave a pedigree to nationhood, and created a faith that Ireland could and should be great again by magnifying what she had been. They excited the n.o.blest pa.s.sions--veneration, love of glory, beauty, and virtue. They awoke men's fancy by their gorgeous pictures of the past, and imagination strove to surpa.s.s them by its creations.

They believed what they wrote, and thus their wildest stories sank into men's minds. To the exertions of Walker, O'Halloran, Vallancey, and a few other Irish academicians in the last century, we owe almost all the Irish knowledge possessed by our upper cla.s.ses till very lately. It was small, but it was enough to give a dreamy renown to ancient Ireland; and if it did nothing else, it smoothed the reception of Bunting's music, and identified Moore's poetry with his native country.

While, therefore, we at once concede that Vallancey was a bad scholar, O'Halloran a credulous historian, and Walker a shallow antiquarian, we claim for them grat.i.tude and attachment, and protest, once for all, against the indiscriminate abuse of them now going in our educated circles.

But no one should lie down under the belief that these were the deep and exact men their contemporaries thought them. They were not patient nor laborious. They were very graceful, very fanciful, and often very wrong in their statements and their guesses. How often they avoided painful research by gay guessing we are only now learning. O'Halloran and Keatinge have told us bardic romances with the same tone as true chronicles. Vallancey twisted language, towers, and traditions into his wicker-work theory of Pagan Ireland; and Walker built great facts and great blunders, granite blocks and rotten wood, into his antiquarian edifices. One of the commonest errors, attributing immense antiquity, oriental origin, and everything n.o.ble in Ireland to the Milesians, originated with these men; or, rather, was transferred from the adulatory songs of clan-bards to grave stories. Now, it is quite certain that several races flourished here before the Milesians, and that everything oriental, and much that was famous in Ireland, belonged to some of these elder races, and not to the Scoti or Milesians.

Premising this much of warning and defence as to the men who first made anything of ancient Ireland known to the mixed nation of modern Ireland, we turn with pure pleasure to their successors, the antiquarians and historians of our own time.

We liked for awhile bounding from tussuck to tussuck, or resting on a green esker in the domain of the old academicians of Grattan's time; but 'tis pleasanter, after all, to tread the firm ground of our own archaeologists.

--------------------------------------------------------------- [35] The reader who wishes to know what modern archaeology has to say of this great tumulus may be referred to Mr. George Coffey's "Newgrange," published by Hodges, Figgis & Co., 1912. It dates from about 1,000 years earlier than Davis supposed.

THE ROUND TOWERS OF IRELAND.[36]

Accustomed from boyhood to regard these towers as revelations of a gorgeous but otherwise undefined antiquity--dazzled by oriental a.n.a.logies--finding a refuge in their primeval greatness from the meanness or the misfortunes of our middle ages, we clung to the belief of their Pagan origin.

In fancy we had seen the white-robed Druid tend the holy fire in their lower chambers--had measured with the Tyrian-taught astronomer the length of their shadows--and had almost knelt to the elemental worship with n.o.bles whose robes had the dye of the Levant, and sailors whose cheeks were brown with an Egyptian sun, and soldiers whose bronze arms clashed as the trumpets from the tower-top said that the sun had risen.

What wonder that we had resented the attempt to cure us of so sweet a frenzy?

We plead guilty to having opened Mr. Petrie's work strongly bigoted against his conclusion.

On the other hand, we could not forget the authority of the book. Its author we knew was familiar beyond almost any other with the country--had not left one glen unsearched, not one island untrod; had brought with him the information of a life of antiquarian study, a graceful and exact pencil, and feelings equally national and lofty. We knew also that he had the aid of the best Celtic scholars alive in the progress of his work. The long time taken in its preparation ensured maturity; and the honest men who had criticised it, and the adventurers who had stolen from it enough to make false reputations, equally testified to its merits.

Yet, we repeat, we jealously watched for flaws in Mr. Petrie's reasoning; exulted as he set down the extracts from his opponents, in the hope that he would fail in answering them, and at last surrendered with a sullen despair.

Looking now more calmly at the discussion, we are grateful to Mr.

Petrie for having driven away an idle fancy. In its stead he has given us new and unlooked-for trophies, and more solid information on Irish antiquities than any of his predecessors. We may be well content to hand over the Round Towers to Christians of the sixth or the tenth century, when we find that these Christians were really eminent in knowledge as well as piety, had arched churches by the side of these _campanilia_, gave an alphabet to the Saxons, and hospitality and learning to the students of all western Europe--and the more readily, as we got in exchange _proofs_ of a Pagan race having a Pelasgic architecture, and the arms and ornaments of a powerful and cultivated people.

The volume before us contains two parts of Mr. Petrie's essay. The first part is an examination of the false theories of the origin of these towers. The second is an account not only of what he thinks their real origin, but of every kind of early ecclesiastical structure in Ireland. The third part will contain a historical and descriptive account of every ecclesiastical building in Ireland of a date prior to the Anglo-Norman invasion of which remains now exist. The work is crowded with ill.u.s.trations drawn with wonderful accuracy, and engraved in a style which proves that Mr. O'Hanlon, the engraver, has become so proficient as hardly to have a superior in wood-cutting.

We shall for the present limit ourselves to the first part of the work on the

"ERRONEOUS THEORIES WITH RESPECT TO THE ORIGIN AND USES OF THE ROUND TOWERS."

The first refutation is of the

"THEORY OF THE DANISH ORIGIN OF THE TOWERS."

John Lynch, in his _Cambrensis Eversus_, says that the Danes are reported (_dic.u.n.tur_) to have first erected the Round Towers as _watch_-towers, but that the Christian Irish changed them into _clock_ or bell-towers. Peter Walsh[37] repeated and exaggerated the statement; and Ledwich, the West British antiquary of last century, combined it with lies enough to settle his character, though not that of the towers. The only person, at once explicit and honest, who supported this Danish theory was Dr. Molyneux. His arguments are that all stone buildings, and, indeed, all evidences of mechanical civilisation, in Ireland were Danish; that some traditions attributed the Round Towers to them; that they had fit models in the monuments of their own country; and that the word by which he says the native Irish call them, viz., "Clogachd," comes from the Teutonic root, clugga, a bell. These arguments are easily answered.