Part 11

But it is Cormac's Chapel that is the real architectural glory of the Rock of Cashel. It is by some wrongly attributed to the time of Cormac Mac Cullenann in the ninth century. It was built by Cormac Mac Carthy, a king of Minister, in the early part of the twelfth century. The principal proof that it was built at that time is found in the _Chronicon Scottorum_, in which it is stated that Cormac's Chapel at Cashel was consecrated in 1130. It is more than probable that the chapel was consecrated very soon after it was finished. It does not come within the scope of a work like this to enter into technical details on matters connected with architecture; but for chaste beauty, for elaborate carving, and solidity of structure, it may be said that Cormac's Chapel is one of the most wonderful ecclesiastical buildings of its age in Christendom. The practised eye of the trained architectural critic might notice some signs of decay about it, some effacement in the gorgeous carvings or designs with which almost every stone of the interior is more or less covered; but to the ordinary observer, the whole building, within and without, seems almost as perfect as it was the day its architect pronounced it finished. If Cormac's Chapel were only larger, it would be the noblest and most remarkable ecclesiastical building of its age in the British Isles, or probably in Europe. But, unfortunately, it is very small, the nave being only about thirty feet in length, and the choir only about eighteen. But what it lacks in size is made up in elaborate carving, chaste design, and solidity of structure. It looks as if it would last until the day of doom, and as if nothing but an earthquake could destroy it. Its very roof seems as strong and as perfect as its walls. It is of cut stone laid on with geometrical exactness, as sound and as solid as ever it was. However imposing the _coup d'oeil_ that "the rock-throned pediments and towers" of Cashel may present from without, it is an examination of this gem of antique architectural beauty that gives one the highest opinion of the artistic skill of those whose appreciation of the unique and beautiful led them to choose this towering rock as a fit place on which to raise edifices dedicated to the Deity.

It is strange how it was that the ancient or rather the mediæval Irish, who knew how to erect such beautiful and enduring stone and mortar structures as the round towers, and such gems of architectural beauty as Cormac's Chapel is, and as Mellifont Abbey certainly was, should have housed their kings and chiefs in dwellings of wood, whose only defence was an earthen rampart surmounted by a palisade of stakes, or in a Cyclopean fortress of dry stones. It is absolutely certain that not a single castle built of stones and mortar existed in Ireland prior to the Anglo-French invasion. The Irish knew how to build round towers and churches, but seem never to have thought of building castles until their invaders taught them to build them. The thing looks very curious, but, on closer examination, it does not appear so strange, for it is now pretty well known that none of the Northern nations had castles before the eleventh century. The French seem to have been the first of the Northern nations that had castles. It is very doubtful if there was a castle in Great Britain before the Norman-French conquest. If there were castles in England or Scotland before the battle of Hastings, they were imitations of those on the Continent, and were probably designed and built by Continental architects and mechanics. Neither the Scandinavians nor Northern-Germans appear to have had castles until late in the middle ages, when they copied them from more Southern nations. But it was the Norman-French that brought the art of castle building to its greatest perfection.

The ruins of Hoar Abbey, or St Mary's Abbey, as it is sometimes called, are situated close to the Rock, but not on it. It is believed to have been founded by the Benedictine order in the thirteenth century.

Cashel is interesting in almost every way. There is a magnificent view from its ruin-crowned rock over some of the fairest and most fertile land in Ireland. Nor is a mountain view wanting, for the Galtees, the second highest range of mountains in Ireland, are visible, and a noble range they are, not rounded lumps like so many of the Wicklow Hills, but steep, sheer, cloud-piercing heights,--Alps in miniature. It is a pity that the town, or rather the city, of Cashel is not larger and more thriving. It may have been, like Glendaloch and Kildare, much larger in early Christian times than it is at present, but there does not seem to be any statement of the fact in any of the old Gaelic books, so far as is known to the writer. But whatever may have been the past history of the city of Cashel, no one in search of the picturesque, the unique, or the historic in Ireland should fail to see its Rock. It is said that when Scott visited Ireland he was more impressed by the Rock of Cashel than by anything else of its kind that he saw in the country.

Of all the remains of Christian edifices in Ireland, Cashel, Glendaloch, and Clonmacnois are the most interesting. It is not only by the beauty or peculiarity of their situations that they impress us, for their histories go so far back into the past, when the combat of Christianity with Druidism was still going on, that we may regard them as the advance posts of a purer cult in the ground conquered from paganism. It would be hard to find in Europe three other places of a similar kind more antique, more interesting, or more worthy of being respected. What remains of their hallowed ruins should be guarded with jealous care, and saved from any further uprooting or profanation.

LOCH ERNE

Loch Erne and Loch Ree are not only the most beautiful, but the most historic of the great lakes of Ireland. Loch Neagh is larger than either of them, and Loch Dearg and Loch Corrib are probably nearly as large; but none of those three is as picturesque as either of the two first-mentioned lakes. The shores of Loch Dearg are bolder and more mountainous than those of either Loch Erne or Loch Ree, but Loch Dearg lacks the island-studded surface of the two latter, which is their great charm. Whether Loch Erne or Loch Ree is the more beautiful is not easy to decide. Both are as beautiful sheets of water as can be easily found, but both lack mountain scenery in the true sense of the phrase. There are some high lands on the lower part of Loch Erne, but they can hardly be called mountains. In number and variety of its islands, Loch Erne is only surpassed by that famous lake on the vast St Lawrence, known as the Thousand Isles.

Loch Erne is certainly the most peculiar and also the longest lake in Ireland. From where it may be said to begin, near Belturbet in the County Cavan, to where it ceases to be a lake, and pours its waters into the sea through the river Erne, it is fully thirty-five miles long in a bird line. Its peculiarity consists in its extraordinary beginnings, and the number of its islands. Its beginnings are winding, mazy, and, on the map, almost untraceable water ways, that twist and turn in almost every direction through swamps and bogs, with no attraction save for the sportsman in pursuit of water fowl. As one approaches Enniskillen the glories of Loch Erne commence. There is nothing in the shape of mountains to be seen, but they are not missed; for such is the beauty of green round hills on both sides, and such the wondrous number and variety of the islands, that if there were mountains as lofty as the Alps in view, one could hardly spare time to look at them. The islands seem innumerable, and the shores are so indented with bays, and the lake itself so pierced by jutting headlands, that on sailing on Loch Erne it is often impossible to know an island from a peninsula, or a peninsula from an island. There is certainly no lake in Ireland or in Great Britain whose shores are so indented as are those of Loch Erne. The great charm of its shores and islands is their roundness and their greenness. They are not low or swampy, but high and swelling, forming scenes of quiet, and, it might be said, pastoral beauty, on which one could gaze for days and weeks without tiring. Variety of the most striking kind is one of the peculiarities of Loch Erne. It begins in tortuous, narrow, confused bog streams. It then assumes its fairest aspect, studded with innumerable islands, and sometimes so narrowed by far-entering promontories that it is in some places only a few hundred yards wide; but as it spreads northwards it gets wider and wider, until at last it is like a great inland sea, seven or eight miles wide. If finer views may be had of Loch Ree than of Loch Erne, in variety of scenery, number of islands, and startling contrasts, Loch Erne is without a rival among Irish lakes. If it and Loch Ree had the mountains of Killarney, Killarney might well tremble for the fame it enjoys of being the most beautiful of Irish lakes.

Loch Erne is divided into upper and lower lakes. The clean and thriving town of Enniskillen is situated on the straight, or narrow river, that joins the two lakes; but it may be said that there are not two lakes, but only one, for Enniskillen is situated where the lake narrows into what might be called a river, but a river full of islands and bays, just as the upper lake is. Its multitude of islands is the charm of Loch Erne. The best authorities say that there are a hundred and nine islands in the lower lake, and ninety in the upper. It is a shame that a small steam-boat does not ply regularly, at least in summer time, from one end of this noble sheet of water to the other. If Loch Erne, with its marvellous variety and beauty of scenery, were in any other European country, there would be not one but half-a-dozen steam-boats on it. It is strange that the inhabitants of Enniskillen do not make an effort to establish a line of light draft-steamers on Loch Erne that would ply on both upper and lower lakes. A small steamer does sometimes, according to report, ply in the summer between Enniskillen and Beleek; but it does not appear that any steamer has ever navigated the waters of the upper lake, which is the more picturesque of the two. Nothing could more plainly show the backward condition of Ireland than the fact that there is no regular line of passenger steam-boats either on the Upper Shannon or on Loch Erne. Tourists, or those in search of picturesque localities, will never go to places where there is not proper accommodation for them. No matter how beautiful the scenery may be, it will not be visited by any large number of people unless they can have comforts in travelling and lodging. Switzerland attracts more rich people to visit it in summer-time than any other country in the world; but, with all its marvellous beauties of mountain, lake, and river, it would never attract the multitudes that go there every year if they did not find good travelling and good hotel accommodation. In Switzerland there are steam-boats on every lake and on every river where there are beautiful sights to be seen. There are lakes in it that are visited every year by crowds of tourists, who would find sights as beautiful on Loch Erne or on Loch Ree, and who would visit those lakes if they knew that they could find on their waters, or on their shores, the travelling comforts and the hotel comforts they find in Switzerland. It has to be frankly admitted that the reason why the beauties of Ireland are so comparatively little known is largely owing to the Irish themselves. Let them provide better accommodation for the travelling public, and Ireland will attract people who heretofore have never visited it.

Loch Erne is, as has been already stated, thirty-five miles long, and is navigable, or could with very little expense be made navigable, for light draft steam-boats all that distance. If there is anything in the shape of an aquatic excursion that could be really delightful, it would be a sail on Loch Erne, especially on the narrow waters of the upper lake, where, on the windiest day, the most nervous or the most delicate would have nothing to fear from a rough sea, as they would on Loch Ree or on Loch Dearg, where the water is sometimes very far from smooth, even in summer. On Loch Erne, especially on the upper lake, change of scene takes place every minute. It is a continual surprise of green islands, flowery promontories, swelling hills, and tortuous passages, and is on a fine summer or autumn day something to enchant even the most indifferent to the beauties of nature.

It is really deplorable that not alone the antiquities but the beauties of Ireland are not better known to people of other countries. They never can be known as they should be until better facilities for knowing them are to be had. Much has been done of late in providing better hotel accommodation, and much more will be done in the same line before long. Up to a few years ago it was impossible to find an hotel where any respectable person would like to stay in some of the most beautiful places and amid some of the grandest scenery of Donegal, Mayo, and Kerry; but there are now dozens of hotels in those localities where the most fastidious will find all the comforts they could reasonably expect. But the internal navigation of the country is fearfully neglected. The peculiar glory, or at least one of the principal attractions of Ireland in a scenic point of view, is its lakes and rivers. No other country perhaps in the world, of equal size, has such an abundance of lakes and rivers; but in no country, except it may be Finnland or Central Africa, are so few steam-boats to be seen on inland waters. It was right to move first in the direction of good hotel accommodation, but the next move ought to be to provide passenger steam-boats to ply on the great waters of such noble lakes as Loch Erne, Loch Corrib, Loch Ree, and Loch Dearg, and on all the waters of the Upper Shannon. It is to be hoped that the present sad want of accommodation on Irish lakes and rivers will be of short duration, for the people of Ireland seem to be awakening to the knowledge not only that they have a country, but that it is one of the most beautiful countries in the world.

But Loch Erne has attractions besides its multitudinous islands, its jutting promontories, winding shores, and encircling hills. It has attractions for the antiquarian as well as for the lover of nature.

One of the most ancient of Ireland's ancient round towers stands on Devinish Island, in the upper lake. It is one of the most perfect, if it is not one of the highest, round towers in the country. There would be no use in speculating on its age, for we are generally left completely in the dark as to the time of the erection of round towers. There are many allusions to them in Irish annals, but the time of the building of them is mentioned only in a few places. The first mention of Devinish by the Four Masters is in A.D. 721, telling of the death of one of its abbots. Devinish, spelled correctly, _Daimhinis_, means "ox island." A Christian church was erected on it at a very early date, probably during the lifetime of St Patrick, for we are told in ancient Annals that Molaise, who appears to have been the first abbot of the monastery that was there, died in 563. A Latin life of St Aeden says that Molaise "ruled many monks in an island in _Stagno Erne_, called Daimhinis by the Irish." It was plundered and burnt many times by the Danes, or some other Northmen, but almost devastated by them in 836, and at other times; it was burnt in 1157 and in 1360. It seems, not like Glendaloch, Monasterboice, and many other places that were abandoned at an early date, to have had a church or monastery on it until the beginning of the seventeenth century. The last mention of it by the Four Masters is under the year 1602.

MELLIFONT AND MONASTERBOICE

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 Cé" 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.