Carton House, Maynooth, County Kildare; the Residence of the Duke of Leinster
Carton House, Maynooth, County Kildare; the Residence of the Duke of Leinster
He spent the winter of 1907-8 in America, incognito, under the name of Maurice Fitzgerald. He and his tutor visited Quebec, Montreal, and Ottawa, and all the principal cities in the United States. They inspected Harvard, Yale, the University of Chicago, and Stanford University, for the young duke has recently taken a degree at Oxford, and was naturally curious to see some American institutions. He spent some time in New York, and was in Washington for a couple of days without disclosing his rank. He enjoyed himself immensely during the entire journey and escaped all the matchmakers, the lion hunters, and the society cormorants. He was not in search of a wife, but was seeking health and completing his education. I am told that he is an exceedingly sensible young fellow, modest, intelligent, thoughtful, and studious. He does not need to marry for wealth nor for position. He can pick his own wife, and has plenty of time to consider the choice.
The duke has been very carefully brought up and educated. His mother died when he was nine years old. She was Lady Hermione Duncombe, daughter of the Earl of Faversham. His father died at the age of forty-two, when he was fourteen. The present duke inherits his delicate, frail constitution, and has symptoms of tuberculosis, which has been the death of many Geraldines. To preserve himself from its dreaded grasp he has lived an outdoor life under the care of a physician, and every preventive that medical science can devise has been used for his protection. Since the death of his mother he has been under the care of three aunts,—Lady Cynthia Graham, Lady Ulrica Duncombe, and Lady Helen Vincent,—his tutor, Rev. the Marquis of Normanby, and his trustee, the Earl of Faversham. He has had governesses and tutors, spent two years at Eton and three years at Oxford, although his studies have been frequently interrupted by sea voyages and camping tours in the mountains for his health. He has a brother, Desmond,two years his junior, and another, Edward, who is fourteen years old.
The Duke of Leinster is prepared to take his proper place in public life, and has recently been appointed master of the horse to the Earl of Aberdeen, lord lieutenant of Ireland. His acceptance of this post indicates that he is a liberal in politics and a home ruler; and, indeed, the tendency of his education has been in that direction. His tutors and trustees are all home rulers and liberals. He is in training for the viceregal throne of Ireland, which so many of his ancestors have occupied, and that is his ambition. If Ireland should be granted autonomy under the plan proposed by Mr. Gladstone twenty-five years ago and demanded as their ultimatum by the Irish national party, the Duke of Leinster will be the most available candidate for lord lieutenant, and for many reasons his selection would be agreeable to those most interested on both sides of St. George’s Channel. His advent in politics is an event of great importance, and therefore will be watched with anxiety.
The mansion at Maynooth is an immense building of more than two hundred rooms, sumptuously furnished. There are fourteen drawing-rooms, and the banqueting hall will seat three hundred people. The library contains one of the largest and most valuable collections of books in Ireland, and the pictures are of great value as well as artistic interest.
The Leinster coat of arms is a monkey stantant with plain collar and chained; motto, “Crom-a-boo” (“To Victory”). This is the only coat of arms, I am told, that has ever borne a monkey in the design, and it was adopted by John Fitzthomas Fitzgerald in 1316 for romantic reasons. While an infant he was in the castle of Woodstock, now owned by the Duke of Marlborough, which caught fire. In the confusion the child was forgotten, and when the family and servants remembered him and started a search they found the nursery in ruins. But on one of the towers was a gigantic ape, a pet of the family, carefully holding the young earl in its arms. The animal, with extraordinary intelligence, had crawled through thesmoke, rescued the baby and carried it to the top of the tower. When he grew to manhood the earl discarded the family coat of arms and adopted a monkey for his crest, which has been retained to this day, and wherever you find a tomb of a Fitzgerald you will see the figure of a monkey at the feet of the effigy or under the inscription.
Fitzthomas Fitzgerald, the child thus miraculously saved, was the hero of many romances and adventures, and for his eminent services to the crown King Edward II. created him the first Earl of Kildare, May 14, 1316. He was the ancestor of the famous earls, dukes, and marquesses of Ormonde and the earls, dukes, and marquesses of Desmond, although those branches of the family afterward became the rivals and the foes of the Kildares. The Duke of Leinster, by reason of the marriages of his ancestors and collateral members of the family, is related to almost every noble in the kingdom.
The Fitzgeralds are descended from the Gherardini family of Florence, one of whom passed over into Normandy in the tenth century and thence to England, where he became a favorite of Edward the Confessor, and was appointed castellan of Windsor and warden of the forests of the king. In 1078 he is mentioned in Doomsday Book as the owner of enormous areas of land in England and Wales. In 1168 Maurice Fitzgerald, whose name was anglicized and who was the father of the Irish branch of the family, accompanied Richard de Clare, Earl of Pembroke, better known as Strongbow, in the invasion of Ireland and was granted large estates. He died at Wexford in 1177 and was buried in the Abbey of the Grey Friars outside the walls of that town. One of his sons became Baron of Offlay, another became Baron of Nass, and Thomas, the third, was the ancestor of the earls of Desmond. The next earl was a man of great piety. In 1216 he introduced into Ireland the Order of the Franciscans and built them an abbey at Youghal. In 1229 he induced the Dominicans to send a band of missionaries and built them an abbey at Adair. And his son was equally devoted to the church.
The castle at Maynooth, which for several centuries was oneof the largest and strongest in Ireland, was built by Gerald, the fifth earl, in 1427, whose second son was the founder of the house of Ormonde and was created earl of that name.
For sixteen generations the earls of Kildare were the most active men in Ireland, and the history of their adventures would fill a book as big as a dictionary. There was always “something doing” wherever they went; they were on all sides of all questions and were sometimes fighting each other as fiercely as the family foes. They led rebellions against their sovereign, have suffered imprisonment, and have been executed at Tyburn and the Tower. They have been the boldest and most powerful defenders of British authority in Ireland and several times have saved the island to the British throne. More lords lieutenants have come from the Kildares than from any other family, and among the long list of earls have been some splendid characters.
The eighth earl subdued all the native chieftains and made them submit to English authority. An early historian describes him as “A mightie man of stature, full of honoure and courage, who has bin Lord Deputie and Lord Justice of Ireland three and thirtie yeares. He was in government milde, to his enemies stearne, he was open and playne; hardley able to rule himself, but could well rule others; in anger he was sharp and short, being easily displeased and easily appeased.”
Thomas Gerald, the twelfth earl, having incurred the enmity of Cardinal Wolsey, was called to England and committed to the Tower for treason. When he left Ireland he intrusted his official authority and responsibilities to his son and heir, familiarly known as “Silken Thomas,” because of the gorgeous trappings of his retinue. The boy was then but twenty-one, bold, brave, patriotic, and generous, and became the victim of a plot devised by agents of Cardinal Wolsey, who spread a report that his father had been beheaded in the Tower. The impetuous young lord left the Castle of Maynooth, rode into Dublin, and, entering the chamber where the council sat, openly renounced his allegiance to the King of England, gave his reasons and laid mace and sword, the symbols of office,upon the table. Archbishop Cromer, the lord chancellor, besought him to reconsider, explaining that the rumor from London might be false, and the young earl was about to yield when the voice of the family bard, who had followed him to Dublin, was heard through the window singing the death song of the Kildares. “Silken Thomas” seized his sword, summoned the Geraldines, the family clan, which was the mightiest and most numerous in Ireland, assaulted the castle, and soon involved the entire country in a desperate revolution. When the old earl heard the news in his cell in the Tower he sent a message to Henry VIII. asking pardon for the rashness of his son and then died of a broken heart.
All Ireland was in flames; three-fourths of Kildare County and the greater part of Meath was burned; thousands of innocent people died of starvation and thousands in battle before the rebellion was suppressed. Finally Kildare, who was then but twenty-four, surrendered upon a promise that he should receive full pardon when he arrived in London and renewed his allegiance personally to the king. This pledge was shamefully violated. Henry VIII. refused to receive him, and sent him to the Tower, where for eighteen months he lay neglected and in great misery. He wrote an old servant asking money for clothes, saying: “I have gone shirtless and barefoot and bare-legged divers times, and so I should have done still but that poor prisoners of their gentleness hath sometimes given me old hosen and shirts and shoes.”
Five of his uncles, although it was well known that three of them had remained stanch adherents of the crown, were hanged, drawn, and quartered at Tyburn, Feb. 8, 1537, and orders went forth from Henry VIII. that the house of Kildare should be exterminated.
Gerald, the baby heir, the only survivor of his race, was wrapped in warm flannels by Thomas Leverus, afterward Bishop of Kildare, carried across bog and mountain, and committed to the protection of the O’Brians, who by sending the infant from place to place were able to save its life. The O’Brians passed the child over to the MacCarthys, and LadyEleanor MacCarthy, a widow, disguised as a peasant, conveyed him to St. Mels, France, upon a fishing boat. Even there he was pursued from one place of refuge to another, by detectives and adventurers in hopes of the great reward, until finally he obtained a safe retreat in Rome, where Cardinal Pole, a distant relative, protected and educated him. When he grew to manhood he entered the service of Cosmo de Medicis, the great Duke of Florence, with whom he remained until Henry VIII., the vindictive enemy of his family, was dead. He could then return in safety to his native country, and Queen Mary soon after pardoned him and restored his hereditary titles and estates. Fourteen generations of Kildares have passed across the stage since then, and the present Duke of Leinster represents a family that has had more exciting experiences than any other in the United Kingdom.
One of the loveliest railway or automobile rides in Ireland is from Dublin northward to the ancient town of Drogheda (pronounced Drawdah). The railroad runs parallel with the highway along the shore of St. George’s Channel. Both touch several popular seaside resorts, fishing settlements, and busy manufacturing towns, which alternate with beautiful pastures filled with sleek cattle and unshorn sheep, and here and there ivy-clad towers and little groups of chimney pots rise above the foliage. The pastures and meadows, when we saw them, blazing with yellow buttercups, looked like the Field of the Cloth of Gold. They are divided into small plots by hedges of hawthorn twelve and fifteen feet high, which in the early summer are as white as banks of snow, and so fragrant that the perfume floated into the car windows.
Between the meadows and the pastures along the coast are plots of cultivated ground, gardens of potatoes, cabbages, and other vegetables and glorious groves. It isn’t a bit like the Ireland one expects to see after reading newspaper accounts of the terrible conditions that the politicians complain of. It is not a country of downtrodden peasants and a wretched tenantry crushed under the heels of oppressive landlords. Right is not upon the scaffold in that section of Ireland, nor is wrong upon the throne. On the contrary, every evidence of prosperity and contentment and happiness abounds. The neatly whitewashed, straw-thatched cottages are surrounded with gay gardens filled with old-fashioned flowers, such as you see in Massachusetts and New Hampshire. Large stables and storehouses are attached to almostevery cottage, which indicates that the farmer has something to put in them. The traveler cannot see the mansions of the rich, because they are hidden in glorious parks and protected by high walls. Occasionally in the distance, however, he can catch glimpses of the towers of ancient castles, each having a romance or a tragedy, and sometimes several of both, contained in their history.
At Malehide forty or fifty golf players alighted from the train, with kits of clubs over their shoulders, for there are two links near that village—one for an exclusive club of rich Dubliners, and the other for any one who is able to pay half a crown for the privilege of chasing a little gutta-percha ball over the grass. Malehide is a lovely place, situated on the seashore at the mouth of a little stream called Meadow Water, with hotels of all grades and prices, fashionable and unfashionable, and some of them are open for health seekers the year around.
The chief attraction to tourists is the ancient castle of the Talbot family, who have owned and occupied it continuously for seven hundred years, an unusual record for Ireland or for anywhere else. The original castle, built about 1180, in the reign of Henry II., is still standing, although modern restorations and additions have changed it much. The exterior has suffered more than the interior. The dining-hall, a very large apartment, is considered one of the finest rooms in Ireland. The wainscoting and the ceiling are of oak, richly carved, and mellowed by exposure for more than six centuries. The chimney-piece, an exquisite example of fourteenth century carving, represents the Conception. From 1653 to 1660 the castle was inhabited by Miles Corbet, the regicide, and the very day he took possession of the place, according to tradition, the figure of the Blessed Virgin was mysteriously detached from the rest of the carving and disappeared until the night after the unholy tenant fled from the place, when it was miraculously restored.
There is a fine collection of paintings in the castle, including portraits by Van Dyck and other famous artists, three panelsof scripture subjects by Albert Dürer, which formerly belonged to Mary, Queen of Scots, and were purchased by Charles II. for $2,000. The library is a treasure-house of old tomes and manuscripts, and upon the wall, in a heavy oaken frame, hangs the original patent by which the estate was granted to the Talbot family by King Edward IV.
Within the roofless walls of an ancient abbey near by is the altar-tomb of Maud Plunkett, whose husband, Sir Richard Talbot, according to the epitaph, “fell in a fray immediately after the wedding breakfast, thus making her maid, wife, and widow in a single day.”
The village of Swords, three miles distant, has another ancient castle, where the bodies of Brian Boru and his son Morrough rested the first night after the battle of Clontarf while they were being carried to their final tomb at Armagh.
All the little towns along the coast of the Irish Channel are associated with St. Patrick and St. Columba, who spent more or less time there, founding monasteries and building churches. One of the monasteries, called “the Golden Prebend” because it was so rich, was held by William of Wykeham in 1366 and was the seat of a cardinal for a century or two.
A mile and a half from the main line, beyond Swords, is the village of Portraine, where Dean Swift’s “Stella” lived for several years, and where a branch of the insane asylum he founded in Dublin has since been erected. It stands upon lands given by Sigtryg of the Silken Beard, the Danish king of Dublin, for the endowment of a Christian church. The house was occupied for many years by the nuns of St. Augustine, where “the womankind of the most part of the whole Englisher of this land are brought up in virtue, learning and in the English tongue and behaviour.”
The little town of Rush, famous for its early potatoes and its tulip bulbs, is called “Holland in Ireland.” It has an old church, with beautiful pointed arches, which dates back to the sixteenth century, and contains a richly decorated monument to Sir Christopher Barnwell and his beloved wife, who died in 1607.
Skerries is a fishing-town, where St. Patrick lived for several years, and a quaint little chapel, like many others in Ireland, is attributed to him, although it could not possibly have been built for several centuries after his time. But in the history of these ancient sanctuaries a few hundred years do not count.
While ruins are picturesque and ivy-clad castles that date back beyond the Middle Ages have a fascination for tourists from a new world like ours, it was a relief when the chauffeur brought us up to the entrance of an old-fashioned factory in the compact little town of Balbriggan, which has given its name to a certain kind of knitted goods that are worn the world over. It is a quaint mass of high houses, built of stone and brick on both sides of narrow but neatly kept streets, which seems unnecessary when miles of green fields and glowing gardens encircle them and give them every chance to spread out. But you will find the same tendency to snuggle up as closely as possible in all the manufacturing communities of Europe.
The men folks at Balbriggan fish and farm the soil, and the women work in the mills, but the law, which is strictly enforced there, prohibits child labor and compels the children to attend school for at least one hundred and twenty-eight days in the year until they pass their fourteenth birthday. The superintendents of the mills tell the same story that I heard in the cotton factories of South Carolina and Georgia, that they prefer adult operatives; that the children are careless and inefficient and seldom earn their wages, but they are compelled to employ them or lose the services of the parents. There are two factories in Balbriggan for the manufacture of knitted hosiery and underclothing by machinery invented here more than one hundred and fifty years ago and since imitated everywhere. Both factories still remain under the control of the families which founded them, but the shares are distributed among a larger number of people by inheritance from generation to generation.
Scattered along the coast at intervals of two or three miles,and generally at the summits of hills overlooking the sea, are “martello towers,” fifty, sixty, and sometimes ninety feet high, and from forty to a hundred feet in diameter. They were erected early in the nineteenth century as defensive watch-towers, when the country was in dread of an invasion by Napoleon. The name was taken from similar towers in Corsica and Sardinia, where they were erected for protection against pirates in the time of Charles V. These towers are said to have originally had bells which were struck by hammers to alarm the people in case of danger; hence they were called “martello” towers, that being the Italian word for “hammer.”
It makes a Protestant ashamed when he reads the history of Drogheda and sees the ruins that Cromwell left there. Thousands of men and women and children were butchered in the name of the Lord by Cromwell’s soldiers when he took that quaint old town by storm in September, 1649. It was a ferocious massacre, and Cromwell admitted the facts while proclaiming himself the agent of the Almighty to punish a rebellious people. This is what he wrote with his own hand:
“The governor, Sir Arthur Aston, and divers considerable officers being there, our men, getting up to them, were ordered by me to put them all to the sword, and, indeed, being in the heat of action, I forbade them to spare any that were in arms in the town; and I think that night they put to death about two thousand persons. Divers officers and soldiers being fled over the bridge into the other part of the town, where about a hundred of them possessed St. Peter’s Church steeple, some the West Gate, and others a strong round tower next to the gate called St. Sundays. These being summoned to yield for mercy refused. Whereupon I ordered the steeple of St. Peter’s Church to be fired. The next day the other two towers were summoned. When they submitted their officers were knocked on the head and every tenth man of the soldiers was killed. The rest shipped for the Barbadoes. The soldiers in the other tower were all spared as to their lives only and shipped likewise for the Barbadoes.
“I am persuaded that this is a righteous judgment of God upon these barbarous wretches who have imbued their hands in so much innocent blood; and that it will tend to prevent the effusion of blood for the future.”
Two of the towers have remained these two hundred and fifty years just as grim old Oliver left them, and there is much else of interest to the antiquarian in the town, although today it is given up to linen factories, flour mills, tanneries, and soap works, and has a large provision trade with England. It is the center of a prosperous agricultural community, and everybody seems to be doing well.
The greatest attraction is the ruins of Monasterboice, an extensive monastery, founded by St. Patrick, like every other ecclesiastical institution in this country, and three magnificent crosses which arise among them, about six miles from town. We tried to get a carriage instead of a jaunting car for the drive, because the latter allows you to see only one side of the roadway, but Mrs. Murphy, who has a livery stable and a tongue that is hung in the middle, could furnish us nothing else. It is a delightful drive. On the outward journey we saw what there is to see on one hand, and coming back we saw everything on the other.
The ruins of Monasterboice cover a large area, for five hundred monks and several thousand students were there eight or nine hundred years ago. It was one of the largest educational institutions in the world, as well as a religious retreat. It dates back to the fifth century, and was probably founded by St. Patrick,—certainly by one of his disciples,—although there is no tangible evidence to prove that fact. A “round tower” still in good condition, dates from the ninth century. It is one hundred and ten feet high and fifty-one feet in diameter at the base. It was intended for observation, for signaling to the country around, for the storage of valuables and military supplies, and for defensive purposes. Strangely enough, it sits in a hollow, in the lowest part of an amphitheater, surrounded by hills, but the Irish monks as well as the Irish warriors of ancient times always built beside streams of running water and not upon the heights, like the Goths, the Huns, the Teutons, and the Romans.
There are similar “round towers” at Cashel, Glendalough, Kildare, Antrim, and other places in the interior of Ireland which have long been subject of an irreconcilable dispute among archæologists. While no one knows definitely who built them, or what they were for, the most credited theory is that I have given above.
Dr. Petrie, who is a high authority, believes that they were built between the years 890 and 1238, when the Danes were in the habit of invading Ireland and plundering the ecclesiastical establishments. One of the most perfect of these towers, at Antrim, is ninety-two feet in height and forty-nine feet in circumference at the bottom; the summit terminates in a cone twelve feet high, which, with the tower itself, is of undressed stone, the walls being two feet nine inches in thickness. The door is on the north side at a height of seven feet nine inches from the ground. The tower was apparently divided into four stories by timber floors, which, of course, vanished long ago. Each of the three lower stories is lighted by a square window, and the upper story by four square perforations opening to the cardinal points. It stands in the grounds of a mansion. The turf between the two shows the dim outline of buildings, supposed to be those of a monastery founded by Aodh, a disciple of St. Patrick, the earliest notice of which occurs in the year 495. It was destroyed during the Danish incursions.
The walls of the chapel at Monasterboice are standing firm and strong, but without a roof, and the grounds surrounding them and the ruins of the monastery are still used for the burial of the families of the parish. It is a free cemetery and belongs to the government and not to the Catholic Church. Anybody—Protestant, Quaker, or Jew—can lay his tired bones down under the hospitable trees by application to the secretary of the board of public works. The oldest grave is that of Bishop O’Rourke, who was buried there in 982; the latest, marked by a clumsy wooden cross, was made in 1907.
What people go there to see are three splendid Celtic crosses, the finest specimens of the kind in Ireland, and that means the universe. They are believed to have been erected in the fifth century in honor of St. Patrick, St. Columba, and St. Bridget. This, however, is questionable. One of them bears the inscription, “A prayer for Murriduch, by whom was made this cross.” From the Irish Annals it may be learned that two men of that name have lived in this neighborhood, both of wealth and distinction, and they died, one in the year 844 and the other in 924. It is entirely probable that either of them may have erected the splendid monoliths. The largest is twenty-seven feet high, and all of them are covered with carvings of religious subjects. The crosses of Monasterboice have been photographed and reproduced many times, and models have been shipped to all parts of the world. Perfect replicas may be found in the museum at Dublin.
Four miles further on are the ruins of Mellifont Abbey, which was founded in the twelfth century, and has had an important part in the political as well as the ecclesiastical history of Ireland.
There are several drawbacks to motoring in Ireland, the chief of which is that the country is so short on good hotels and so long on showers. The next is the inability to see through or over walls of stone and hedges that rise twice as high as one’s head. Nevertheless, wherever there is much to see and little time to see it in, one has to put up with some annoyances, and an automobile is no longer a luxury or a mere convenience, but an actual necessity.
The Irish climate is like the Irish character. A witty native once said of his fellow countrymen, “They smile aisy and they cry aisy,” and that describes the habits of the heavens also. Clouds assemble and do business in quicker time than in any other place I have ever been, but, although it will “rain cats and dogs” for fifteen or twenty minutes, the sun will be shining almost instantly afterward, as if nothing had happened.
A Celtic Cross at Monasterboice, County Louth
A Celtic Cross at Monasterboice, County Louth
Unfortunately the hotel proposition is not so easily disposed of. Most of the inns of the country districts and in the smallcities are absolutely intolerable. It isn’t so much because of a lack of luxuries and modern conveniences that the traveler finds in England, Scotland, and on the Continent at similar places, as it is the excess of dirt and bad smells. In the average country hotel in Ireland everything is in disorder and out of repair. The bells don’t work; the furniture is crippled and decrepit; the mattresses are lumpy and half the springs are broken or out of joint; the bedrooms are seldom swept, the table cloths are seldom washed; sheets and pillow-cases, are seldom changed, and if a guest should call for a clean towel the landlord would be likely to ask what is the matter with the one he gave him a few days ago. The only alternative to stopping at a dirty hotel is to ride on until you come to a clean one, and that may be as far as the ends of the earth. The more practical, and indeed the only, way is to accept the situation good naturedly and get the best you can out of it. Any person who takes an interest in this subject can find further and accurate information in that charming book, “Penelope’s Irish Experiences,” by Kate Douglas Wiggin. It is asserted by those who know that there are only five good hotels in Ireland. We found nine, but did not keep count of the other kind. They are too numerous to mention.
The road from Drogheda to Tara, the ancient capital of Ireland, follows the valley of the famous Boyne River, and passes through the famous battlefield where William of Orange, with thirty thousand men, in 1690, overcame James II. with twenty-three thousand, and deprived the latter of his dominion and his crown and gave the Protestants control of Ireland for the next two hundred and fifty years. A stately monument has been erected upon the field, and various small markers have been placed about to show where important incidents took place.
The Valley of the Boyne is extremely beautiful. The banks are densely wooded for miles, and the river flows through many fine estates owned and occupied by rich people from London, Dublin, and other cities. The climate is agreeable and healthful for nine or ten months in the year. Only February, March, and April are unpleasant, because of the winds. The scenery is peaceful and attractive, the foliage of the groves and forests is rich beyond comparison, and it is difficult to conceive of more desirable surroundings for a summer home for men of wealth and leisure. To the antiquarian and the archæologist there is an unlimited field for exploration that has only been touched thus far.
Only a few miles from Drogheda, and on the direct road to Tara, is a collection of tumuli which are unsurpassed in Europe or any other part of the world. They mark the location of Brugh-Na-Boinne, the royal cemetery of ancient Ireland, the burying-ground of the kings of Tara for centuries before the history of the country began. Although they do not show the same architectural skill or artistic taste or mechanical mysteries, and do not compare in magnitude with the pyramids and other tombs of the kings of Egypt, they nevertheless have an entrancing interest to those who love archæology and prehistoric lore. The tumuli are scattered over a large area, and, according to the theories of scientists who have explored them, contained the bodies of successive royal families of Ireland until the invasion of the Danes, when they were desecrated, looted, and nearly destroyed, just as the tombs of the kings of Egypt were stripped of their treasures by the Assyrians and other invaders.
Ruins of Mellifont Abbey, near Drogheda, County Louth
Ruins of Mellifont Abbey, near Drogheda, County Louth
The most remarkable tumulus, at New Grange, has been described at length by several eminent antiquarians. It stands on elevated ground, and covers about three acres, the main part being two hundred and eighty feet in diameter and about one hundred and twenty feet high. It is now covered with dense vegetation. It is a vast cairn of loose stones, estimated at one hundred thousand tons, those at the base being very large—from six to eight feet long and four or five feet thick. They are arranged in a circle without masonry; simply laid in order and smaller stones placed inside and on top of them until an artificial cavern was created, which was reached by a passage sixty-two feet long, formed of enormous upright stones from five to eight feet high and roofed with flagstonesof great size. This passage leads to a low dome-roofed chamber, nearly circular, whose ceiling is supported by eleven upright pillars. The ceiling is nineteen and a half feet from the ground. There are three other chambers, measuring eighteen by twenty-one feet in size, which at one time were doubtless filled with the bodies of the royal families. The archæologists compare them to the beehive tombs of Mycenæ, known as “The Treasury of Atreus,” and find many resemblances. The surfaces of some of the stones are rudely carved with cryptographs and ornamental designs.
There are several other tumuli in the neighborhood of different dates and dimensions and of absorbing interest to science; and all of them we know, from that accurate and comprehensive chronicle, “The Annals of the Four Masters,” were plundered by the Danes in the year 801. Those vandals left nothing but bones and cinerary urns; they took away or destroyed everything else. The tumuli are now in the custody of the board of works, which is taking care of them, and is having careful scientific excavations and other examinations made by competent authorities.
There are several other cemeteries in the neighborhood that are not so old, and they also are supposed to contain the dust of kings; but few of the graves have been identified. One of them, marked with two tombstones set with their tops together like the gable of a house, has been declared to be of greater antiquity than any other Christian tomb in Ireland, and is supposed to contain the remains of St. Eric, the first bishop consecrated by St. Patrick. He died toward the end of the fifth century. It is said that his custom was to stand immersed in the Boyne River up to his two armpits from morn till evening, having his psalter lying before him on the strand where he could read its pages, and continually engaging in prayer.
In another grave lie the bones of Cormac, the greatest of the kings of Tara, who was a Christian, having been converted by St. Patrick. His death was brought about by the Druid priests, who cast a spell over him and caused a bone of salmonto stick in his throat. He commanded his people not to bury him at Brugh-Na-Boinne among his royal ancestors, because it was a cemetery of idolators, but to place his body humbly in consecrated ground, with his face to the east. These injunctions were clear and positive, but the king’s servants required a miracle to induce them to obey. Three separate times they started from the palace at Tara for the royal burying-ground at Brugh-Na-Boinne, when the river miraculously rose to such a height that they could not cross. After so many warnings their stupid brains finally saw the light and they laid his majesty’s ashes in consecrated ground, as he had commanded.
The little antiquated village of Kells, with pleasant surroundings and glorious foliage, sleeps unconscious of its fame. It is of the greatest interest to Christian archæologists, because it was the home of St. Columba (or Columbkill), second only to St. Patrick in influence and in the work of evangelizing Ireland. He was born in Donegal in 521, of royal blood, being the great-great-grandson of King Niall of the Nine Hostages, founder of the O’Neill family. Having heard the truth of the gospel, he gave up his princely heritage for the service of his Master and became a monk. He traveled for sixteen years, preaching from place to place, founding churches and monasteries all over the country, which are still venerated by the people, and are among the most interesting ruins in Ireland. At Kells he built a famous monastery in the year 550, and the cost was paid by Dermot, son of Fearghus, king of Tara, at that time.
St. Columba made his headquarters there for many years and then crossed the channel to the little Island of Iona, on the west coast of Scotland, which had been granted him by his relative, the king of that country. He founded a monastery there, from which he and his disciples traversed all Scotland and the Hebrides, preaching the gospel, baptizing the people, building churches and monasteries, until half the Scotch were converted to Christianity. The rest of Great Britain was converted from paganism by the missionaries he educated and sent out. After a life of extraordinary activityand usefulness he died at Iona in the year 597 at the age of seventy-six years and was mourned by every one on the shores of the four seas. His funeral lasted three days and three nights, and he was buried within the walls of the monastery of Iona, whence his remains were afterward removed to Downpatrick and buried in the same grave as those of St. Patrick and St. Bridget.
A portion of the house of St. Columba still remains at Kells, half concealed by a cloak of wonderful ivy. There is a tower one hundred feet tall, and in the neighboring churchyard are several crosses of the Celtic fashion, similar to, but not so large or so fine as those at Monasterboice. They are, however, sacred in the eyes of all Irishmen and date back to the tenth century.
The “Annals of the Four Masters” record many exciting incidents and important events that have occurred in the history of the town of Kells. It has been invaded and looted by Irish clansmen, Norwegian hordes, and Danish Vikings. It has been devastated many times by fire, sword, and pestilence. Sigtryg of the Silken Beard burned it to the ground in 1019, and Edward Bruce in 1315, but it has arisen serene and smiling as often as it has been destroyed, and prosperity has been restored again. It was in the great monastery founded by St. Columba that the famous illuminated “Book of the Gospels,” preserved in the library of Trinity College, Dublin, was made by the monks in the eighth century. Mr. Westwood, a very high authority, pronounces it “the most elaborately executed monument of early Christian art in existence.” Kells was also noted for its metal work in the Middle Ages. At present it is merely an agricultural market and the seat of the Marquess of Headfort, who has a large estate and a beautiful chateau surrounded by a wooded demesne and a hunting preserve. There are several other delightful residences in the neighborhood, and if there were a decent hotel within walking or driving distance, Kells might have many visitors, but those who go there are compelled to hurry away to find some place to stay overnight.
Navan, a neat little manufacturing town with a woolen mill and other industries, has a reasonably good hotel, but you have to come back about ten miles from Kells. There is another neat little town called Trim, where it is possible to stay overnight and even to pass a day or two. The country around Trim is lovely. The landscapes in every direction would fascinate an artist, and the ruins of “King John’s Castle,” built on the banks of the Boyne by Hugh de Lacy, are among the most extensive and beautiful in the world. The walls, four hundred and eighty-six yards long, with ten circular towers at nearly equal distances, are still well preserved and there is a lofty keep, seventy feet high, with beautiful turrets and flanked on either side with rectangular towers. There is nothing to surpass it in Ireland for picturesqueness, and its associations give it additional interest, for King John, Edward II., Richard, Earl of Ulster, and Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, and other famous characters, have lived there. Henry of Lancaster, afterward Henry IV. of England, was imprisoned there; the parliament of Ireland met within its walls, year after year, and it was once the mint of the kingdom. In later days it was occupied by the Duke of Wellington, who received his early education in the diocesan school within the grounds.
His name, you know, was Arthur Wellesley. He was a son of Lord Mornington, of an old Irish family. His mother was a daughter of the Earl of Dungannon of Tyrone, and she lived to see four of her sons elevated to the peerage of Great Britain, not because of wealth or political influence, but because of their ability and usefulness. Richard, the eldest, was that celebrated statesman, the Marquis of Wellesley; the second, William, was also eminent in politics and civil affairs as Lord Mayborough; the third, Henry, Lord Crowley, spent his life in the diplomatic service and made an enviable name, while Arthur, hero of Waterloo and of the Spanish campaign, the man who broke the back of Napoleon the Great, was the fourth and most famous of them all.
Arthur Wellesley was born May 1, 1769, in Merrion Street,Dublin, in a house now occupied by the commissioners that are carrying out the land act, and he died Sept. 18, 1852. It may be said that no other Irish subject of a British king ever received greater honors or better deserved them.
Dungan Castle, the home of the Wellesleys, is near Trim, about twenty miles from Dublin, and the nearest railway station is Summer Hill. Laracor, a secluded little village where Dean Swift was once curate and where Stella lived with Mrs. Dingley, is only a mile or two distant.
In prehistoric times, before the conversion of Ireland to Christianity by St. Patrick, the clan system prevailed there, as it did in other countries of Europe. A “clan,” or “sept,” consisted of a number of families and was ruled by a patriarch, the greatest warrior, or the oldest man. A “tribe” was a larger group, consisting of several clans or septs more or less related to each other and occupying a distinct and separate territory under the command of a chieftain. Several tribes composed a nation, as the word is used among the North American Indians, ruled by a “ri,” or king, while the “ard-ri,” or over-king, a supreme monarch with jurisdiction extending to the remotest shores of Ireland, reigned and resided at Tara until the sixth century, with the province of Meath as his own exclusive demesne for the use and support of his family and his court. He received tribute from the local kings or “ri” and was elected by their votes. Occasionally at his call, or at stated intervals, the kings and chiefs would assemble at Tara to consider matters of importance to all, to adopt laws and regulations for preserving peace and promoting the welfare of their subjects and protecting their common interests. Several feasts, held there annually, were attended by the minor kings, chieftains, and nobles who were followed by large retinues. Their warriors engaged in games, sports, and tournaments to encourage the physical development of the race and teach the arts of war. From the throne of the ard-ri decrees were announced, laws proclaimed, justice dispensed, and prizes awarded. According to the annals of those early days, one hundred and forty-two kings reigned at Tara during a period of two thousand five hundredand thirty years, when the place was abandoned in consequence of a curse pronounced by St. Ruadhan of Lorrha for the failure to punish Hugh Garry for the murder of a monk. Until the time of Cormac Mac Art, greatest and most luxurious of all the ancient kings of Ireland, the rulers who sat at Tara were pagans, but he was converted to Christianity, and the annalists in glowing lines describe his piety and his devotions.
According to the ancient laws, the king of Ireland could not have a blemish upon his person, and Cormac was obliged to abdicate power and authority and retire to the top of the Hill of Skreen, across the valley from the Hill of Tara, because his left eye was put out by an arrow shot by Ængus, a rebellious chieftain, who is believed to have been under the influence of Druid priests, to punish Cormac for accepting Christianity.
Cormac’s administration was the golden age at Tara, and although there was no pretense of architectural display in the wicker palaces that were thatched with straw, nevertheless he and other kings of that period possessed great wealth and made gorgeous displays at the ceremonies of their courts. An early writer describes a banquet given by Cormac Mac Art to one hundred kings, chieftains, astrologers, bards, and other distinguished men, who were seated at twelve tables, sixteen attendants at each table, and two oxen, two sheep, and two hogs were consumed, besides other and many varieties of food.
“Beautiful was the appearance of Cormac,” says the ancient manuscript, “flowing slightly, curling golden hair upon him;“A red buckler with stars and animals of gold and fastenings of silver upon him;“A crimson cloak in wide descending folds upon him;“Fastened at his breast by a golden brooch set with precious stones;“A torque of gold of curious design and richly graven around his neck;“A white shirt with a full collar intertwined with red gold thread upon him;“A girdle of gold inlaid with precious stones around him;“Two wonderful shoes of gold with runnings of gold upon him;“Two spears with golden sockets in his hand.”
“Beautiful was the appearance of Cormac,” says the ancient manuscript, “flowing slightly, curling golden hair upon him;
“A red buckler with stars and animals of gold and fastenings of silver upon him;
“A crimson cloak in wide descending folds upon him;
“Fastened at his breast by a golden brooch set with precious stones;
“A torque of gold of curious design and richly graven around his neck;
“A white shirt with a full collar intertwined with red gold thread upon him;
“A girdle of gold inlaid with precious stones around him;
“Two wonderful shoes of gold with runnings of gold upon him;
“Two spears with golden sockets in his hand.”
In such attire did the king appear at the banquet given in honor of his chieftains:
“The feis of Temur each third year,To preserve the laws and rulesWas then convened firmlyBy the illustrious King of Erin.”
“The feis of Temur each third year,To preserve the laws and rulesWas then convened firmlyBy the illustrious King of Erin.”
“The feis of Temur each third year,
To preserve the laws and rules
Was then convened firmly
By the illustrious King of Erin.”
The lastard-ri, or king of all Ireland, was Roderick O’Conor, who died in 1198.
The archæologists, judging by the ruins and the traces of the walls, find that the great banqueting hall was 759 feet long by 90 feet wide; the other buildings were circular or oval; and it is apparent that they were surrounded by walls of stone intended both for privacy and protection.
No doubt the royal residences and other buildings at Tara were of wicker construction. Furthest to the south, on the ridge or hill of Tara, is the Rath Laoghaire (Leary), built by an old king whom St. Patrick tried to convert, but without success; and somewhere in the rampart on the southern side of this are the bones of Laoghaire. He was buried as he ordered—in the bank of his rath, standing erect, with his shield and weapons, with his face turned southward toward his foes, the Lagenians (Leinstermen). Next northward is Rath na Riogh (Rath of the Kings), probably the oldest structure at Tara, and the royal residence. It is oval, and 853 feet long from north to south. Within its inclosure are: Teach Cormaic (Cormac’s House), a rath with an outer ring, probably built by Cormac Mac Art. Its diameter is about one hundred and forty feet. Next to the northwest, and joined to Teach Cormaic by a common parapet, is the Forradh (“place of meeting”). Its greatest diameter being 296 feet and the diameter of the inner circle 88 feet. To the north of these, but still within the Rath na Riogh, is a mound called Dumha na n-Giall (Mound of the Hostages), on the flat summit of which was probably a house wherein dwelt the hostages often required by the ard-ri of minor kings, of whose fealty he might have doubts. No doubt the hostages of Niall of the Nine Hostages were kept here. To the west of this mound are the remains of another, the Dumha na Bo, or Mound of the Cow. Outside the inclosure of the Rath na Riogh, on the north, is Rath na Seanaidh, or Rath of the Synods, so called because of the synods held there by St. Patrick and his successors, though it is of much older date.
Upon the summit of the hill is a rude statue of St. Patrick carved in granite by Mr. Curry, a stone cutter in one of the neighboring towns, and erected at the expense of local contributors many years ago. It bears no likeness to any human being, but the motive which erected it was pure and patriotic, and in a measure it is appropriate because on Easter morning in the year 433 St. Patrick proclaimed the gospel of Jesus Christ to the pagan priests and the King of Tara and his court, standing upon the very spot now occupied by his statue. Father Mathew once delivered a temperance speech from that holy spot, and in 1843 Daniel O’Connell addressed a monster meeting, attended by a quarter of a million people, many of whom came fifty miles or more to hear him advocate the political emancipation of the Roman Catholic population of Ireland. The meeting lasted two days and O’Connell spoke twice. It was one of his last meetings before his arrest and imprisonment at Dublin. On or near the Mound of the Hostages, according to the best authorities, stood the “Lia Fail,” or “Stone of Destiny,” upon which for ages the monarchs of Ireland were crowned. This stone, according to tradition, was the pillow of Jacob when he dreamed his dream and when the angels descended and ascended a golden ladder at his head. It was preserved by fugitive Israelites at the destruction of Jerusalem and the dispersion of the tribes, was brought to Ireland with the Ark of the Covenant, and passed into the possession of the early kings. This stone was carried to Scotland and preserved at Scone until Edward I. took it to London for his coronation, and ever since his day it has been the seat of the coronation chair. All of the kings of England have sat upon it while the crown of sovereignty was placed upontheir heads, from Edward I. to Edward VII., and any one may see it in the coronation chair at Westminster Abbey.
Petrie, one of the highest authorities on Irish history, denies that the coronation stone of Scone, now in the coronation chair at Westminster Abbey, is the Lia Fail. He asserts that it never left Tara. And he believes it is now there—a stone pillar, standing erect on the Forradh, marking the place of the interment of a number of Irish who were killed in the rebellion of 1798. It is about eleven feet long, and about half of its length is in the ground, so that it appears but a rough, unhewn pillar, five feet three inches high.
A similar stone was used by the Ulstermen to inaugurate The O’Neill. It was in a rath at Tullyhogue, near Cookstown, County Tyrone, and was broken up by an English expedition in the time of Queen Elizabeth. The Clannaboy O’Neills used an inauguration chair, a fragment of gray sandstone in the shape of a chair with a high back, without the mark of chisel upon it—evidently found somewhere just as it was. It was kept at Castlereagh, on the hills overlooking Belfast on the southeast. It was found among the ruins of the castle about seventy-five years ago, and is now in the Museum at Belfast.
Joyce’s “History of Ireland” gives an interesting story of the taking of the Lia Fail to Scotland: The Irish, or Gaels, or Scots, of Ulster, from the earliest ages were in the habit of crossing over in their currachs to the coast of Alban, as Scotland was then called; and some carried on a regular trade therewith, and many settled there and made it their home. The Picts often attempted to expel the intruders, but the latter held their ground, and as time went on occupied more and more of the western coast and islands. AboutA.D.200, a leader named Riada (meaning the long armed), a grandson of Conn of the Hundred Battles, and first cousin of Cormac Mac Art, settled among the Picts of Alban with a large following of Munster fighting men and their families. From him all this western portion of Scotland was called Dalriada (Riada’s portion). There was also an Irish Dalriada namedfor him, comprising what is now the northern portion of County Antrim. The Venerable Bede, in his “Ecclesiastical History,” also gives an account of Riada and his colony.
AboutA.D.503, three brothers, Fergus, Angus, and Loarn, sons of a chief named Erc, and all Christians (Erc was a direct descendant of Riada), led a large body of colonists over to Alban. They united with the previous settlers from Ireland, and took possession of a large territory, which they formed into a kingdom, of which Fergus, the son of Erc (hence called Fergus Mac Erc), was made the first king. The Lia Fail was taken over from Tara in order that Fergus might be inaugurated king upon it, and was never brought back. So, if this is true, the Stone of Destiny had been taken from Tara a generation before the curse of St. Ruadhan caused Tara to be abandoned as a royal residence.
This Fergus is the reputed ancestor of the Scottish royal family, and from him, through the Stuarts, descended, in one of his lines of pedigree, King Edward VII. of England. Gradually the name of Scots, which was originally that of the people of Ireland, was transferred to the people of Alban, and the country of the latter finally assumed the name of Scotland.
Carrickfergus (the Rock of Fergus) takes its name from this Fergus, the first Scottish king. He was troubled with some ailment, and went over to Ireland to use the waters of a well (presumably considered holy). He was wrecked off the coast, and his body drifted ashore on the strand by the rock on which the castle is now built; so the rock was named for him.
Across the valley on the Hill of Skreen, where Cormac took refuge after his abdication, Father Mathew lived for several years, and the ruins of an abbey may be found there still.
So firmly convinced were some antiquarians who have investigated this place of the truth of the traditions of the coronation stone that they have dug up the ground in various places and searched for the Jewish Ark of the Covenant, which they believe was buried here by the Irish priests to escapecapture at the time the palaces of Tara were looted and destroyed. But they have never been able to find any traces of it.
In 1798, during the rebellion, a battle was fought on Tara Hill between a body of about four thousand insurgents, composed chiefly of young farmers and peasant lads from the neighborhood, against nearly three thousand well-armed troops, who easily overcame them and put them to flight.
The Tara of to-day is a cluster of cottages, a post office, a police station, a blacksmith shop, a general store, and the inevitable “public house”—the curse of Ireland. The usual group of loafers were sitting inside chatting with a slattern behind the bar. It was a filthy place, and smelled of spilt liquor and bad tobacco, but, as usual, everybody was very polite to us, and, when we climbed out of the automobile a lame, round-shouldered, toothless old man came hobbling up to us crying in a wheezy voice:
“I’m the guide! I’m the guide! I’m the lawful guide, yer honors, and I’ll show yez around.”