Part 1

THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL.

NUMBER 3. SATURDAY, JULY 18, 1840. VOLUME I.

To such of our readers as have not had the good fortune to see the ancient metropolis of Munster, our prefixed illustration will, it is hoped, give some general idea of the situation and grandeur of a group of ruins, which on various accounts claim to rank as the most interesting in the British islands. Ancient buildings of greater extent and higher architectural splendour may indeed be found elsewhere; but in no other spot in the empire can there be seen congregated together so many structures of such different characters and uses, and of such separate and remote ages; their imposing effect being strikingly heightened by the singularity and grandeur of their situation, and the absence from about them of any objects that might destroy the associations they are so well calculated to excite. To give an adequate idea, however, of this magnificent architectural assemblage, would require not one, but a series of views, from its various surrounding sides. These we shall probably furnish in the course of our future numbers; and in the mean time we may state, that the buildings of which it is composed are the following:--

1st, An Ecclesiastical Round Tower, in perfect preservation.

2d, Cormac's Chapel, a small stone-roofed church, with two side-towers, in the Norman style of the eleventh and twelfth centuries--also in good preservation.

3d, A Cathedral, with nave, choir, and transepts, in the pointed style of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, now in ruins, but which was originally only second in extent and the magnificence of its architecture to the cathedrals in our own metropolis.

4th, A strong Castle, which served as the palace of the Archbishops of Cashel.

5th, The Vicar's Hall, and the mansions of the inferior ecclesiastical officers of the Cathedral, which are also in ruins.

If, then, the reader will picture to himself such a group of buildings, standing in solitary grandeur on a lofty, isolated, and on some sides precipitous rock, in the midst of the green luxuriant plains of "the Golden Vale," he may be able to form some idea of the various aspects of sublimity and picturesqueness which it is so well calculated to assume, and of the exciting interest it must necessarily create even in minds of the lowest degree of intellectuality. Viewed from any point, it is, indeed, such a scene as, once beheld, would impress itself on the memory for ever.

It would appear from our ancient histories that the Rock of Cashel was the site of the regal fortress of the Kings of Munster, from ages anterior to the preaching of the gospel in Ireland; and it is stated in the ancient lives of our patron Saint, that the monarch ├ćngus, the son of Nathfraoich, was here converted, with his family, and the nobles of Munster, by St Patrick in the fifth century. It would appear also from the same authorities, that at this period there was a Pagan temple within the fortress, which the Irish apostle destroyed; and though it is nowhere distinctly stated, as far as we are able to discover, that a Christian church was founded on its site in that age, the fact that it was so, may fairly be inferred from the statement in the Tripartite Life of the Saint, in which it is stated that no less than seventeen kings, descended from ├ćngus and his brother Oilioll, being ordained monks, reigned at Cashel, from the time of St Patrick to the reign of Cinngeoghan, who, according to the Annals of Innisfallen, was deposed in the year 901, Cormac MacCuilleanan being set up in his place. However this may be, it can hardly admit of doubt that a church was erected, if not at that time, at least some centuries afterwards, as appears from the existing round tower, which is unquestionably of an age considerably anterior to any of the other structures now remaining. It is said, indeed, and popularly believed, that a cathedral church was erected here in the ninth century by the King-Bishop Cormac MacCuilleanan; and if we had historical authority for this supposition, we might conclude, with every probability, that the round tower was of that age. But no such evidence has been found, and Cashel is only noticed in our annals as a regal residence of the Munster kings, till the beginning of the twelfth century, when, at the year 1101, it is stated in the Annals of the Four Masters, that "a convocation of the people of Leoth Mogha, or the southern half of Ireland, was held at Cashel, at which Murtough O'Brien, with the nobles of the laity and clergy, and O'Dunan, the illustrious bishop and chief senior of Ireland, attended, and on which occasion Murtough O'Brien made such an offering as king never made before him, namely, Cashel of the Kings, which he bestowed on the devout, without the intervention of a laic or an ecclesiastic, but for the use of the religious of Ireland in general." The successor of this monarch, Cormac MacCarthy, being deposed in 1127, as stated in the Annals of Innisfallen, commenced the erection of the church, now popularly called "Cormac's Chapel." He was, however, soon afterwards restored to his throne, and on the completion of this church it was consecrated in 1134. This event is recorded by all our ancient annalists in nearly the following words:--

"1134. The church built by Cormac MacCarthy at Cashel was consecrated this year by the archbishop and bishops of Munster, at which ceremony the nobility of Ireland, both clergy and laity, were present."

It can scarcely be doubted that this was the finest architectural work hitherto erected in Ireland, but its proportions were small; and when, in 1152, the archbishopric of Munster was fixed at Cashel by Cardinal John Paparo, the papal legate, it became necessary to provide a church of greater amplitude. The present cathedral was in consequence erected by Donald O'Brien, King of Limerick, and endowed with ample provisions in lands, and the older church was converted into a chapel, or chapter-house.

But though the present ruined cathedral claims this very early antiquity, its existing architectural features chiefly belong to a later age--namely, the commencement of the fifteenth century, when, as appears from Wares's Antiquities, the cathedral was rebuilt by the archbishop, Richard O'Hedian, or at least repaired, from a very ruinous condition in which it then was. The Vicar's Hall, &c. was also erected by this prelate; and it is not improbable that the castle was erected, or at least re-edified, at the same period. It would appear, however, to have been repaired as late as the sixteenth century, from the shields bearing the arms of Fitzgerald and Butler, which are sculptured on it--prelates of these names having governed the see in succession in the early half of that century.

The interior of the cathedral is crowded with monuments of considerable antiquity; and the tomb of Cormac MacCarthy is to be seen on one side of the north porch, at the entrance to his chapel. It was opened above a century since, and a pastoral staff, of exquisite beauty, and corresponding in style with the ornaments of the chapel, was extracted from it. It is now in the possession of Mr Petrie. The cemetery contains no monument of any considerable age; but on the south side there is a splendid but greatly dilapidated stone cross, which, there can be no doubt, belongs to the twelfth century.

To give any detailed description of the architectural features of these various edifices, would extend beyond the space prescribed by the limits of our little Journal for a single paper; yet, as some description will be expected of us, we shall briefly state a few particulars.

The round tower--the more ancient remain upon the Rock--is fifty-six feet in circumference and ninety feet in height; it contains five stories, has four apertures at top, and has its doorway twelve feet from the ground.

Cormac's Chapel consists of a nave and choir, but has neither transepts nor lateral aisles. It is richly decorated in the Norman style of the time, both exteriorly and interiorly; and the entire length of the building is fifty-three feet. There are crypts between the arches of the choir and nave and the stone roof; and there is a square tower on each side of the building, at the junction of the nave and choir. Taken as a whole, there is no specimen of its kind in the British empire so perfect or curious.

The cathedral, as already stated, consists of a choir, nave, and transepts, with a square tower in the centre. The greatest length, from east to west, is about two hundred and ten feet, and the breadth in the transepts is about a hundred and seventy feet. There are no side aisles, and the windows are of the lancet form, usual in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. A century has not yet elapsed since this magnificent pile was doomed to destruction, and that by one who should have been its most zealous preserver. Archbishop Price, who succeeded to this see in 1744, and died in 1752, not being able, as tradition states, to drive in his carriage up the steep ascent to the church door, procured an act of parliament to remove the cathedral from the Rock of Cashel into the town, on which the roof was taken off for the value of the lead, and the venerable pile was abandoned to ruin!

Of the remarkable historical events connected with these ruins, our space will only permit us to state, that in 1495 the cathedral was burned by Gerald, the eighth Earl of Kildare; for which act, being accused before the king, his excuse was, that it was true, but that he would not have done so but that he had supposed the archbishop was in it; and his candour was rewarded with the chief governorship of Ireland!

In 1647, the cathedral--being filled with a vast number of persons, many of whom were ecclesiastics, who had fled thither for refuge and protection, a strong garrison having been placed in it by Lord Taafe--was taken by storm by the Lord Inchiquin, with a considerable slaughter of the garrison and citizens, including twenty ecclesiastics. It was again taken by Cromwell in the year 1649.

In conclusion, we shall only remark, that the venerable group of ruins of which we have attempted this slight sketch, considered as an object of interest to pleasure tourists, and those of our own country in particular, have not as yet been sufficiently appreciated; and that, as Sir Walter Scott truly remarked, though the scenery of our lakes and mountains may be rivalled in many parts of the sister islands, there is nothing of their class, viewed as a whole, comparable in interest with the ruins on the Rock of Cashel.

P.

POETICAL PROPHECY OF BISHOP BERKELEY.--To our illustrious countryman. Bishop Berkeley, may be with justice applied what he himself says of his favourite, Plato, that "he has joined with an imagination the most splendid and magnificent, an intellect fully as deep and clear." A morsel of poetry from such a writer ought to be preserved as a literary curiosity, and as a proof of the great variety of his talents; but when we consider that the following was written almost in a prophetic spirit, more than a century ago, and consequently long before the events to which he seems to allude could well have been anticipated, it has an additional claim upon our notice.

"AMERICA, 1730.

There shall be sung another golden age, The rise of empires and of arts, The good and great inspiring epic rage, The wisest heads and noblest hearts.

Not such as EUROPE breeds in her decay; Such as she bred when fresh and young, When heavenly flame did animate her clay, By future poets shall be sung.

_Westward the course of empire bends its way_-- The four first acts already past, A fifth shall close the drama and the day; Time's noblest offspring is the last."

THE SCENERY AND ANTIQUITIES OF IRELAND ILLUSTRATED,

BY BARTLETT AND WILLIS.

"Know thyself," was the wise advice of the ancient Greek philosopher; and it is certainly desirable that we should know ourselves, and take every pains in our power to acquire self-knowledge. But the task is by no means an easy one; and hence the poet Burns well exclaims,

"Oh, wad some power the giftie gi'e us, To see oursells as others see us; It wad frae monie a blunder free us, And foolish notion. What airs in dress and gait wad lea' us, And e'en devotion!"

Determined, however, as we for own part always are, to acquire a knowledge of ourselves, we felt no small gratification at the opportunity which, we presumed, would be amply afforded us by the work of Messrs Bartlett and Willis, the first an English artist, and the second an American _litterateur_, who have left their homes, in a most commendable spirit of philanthropy, to depict our scenery and antiquities, and to tell us all that it behoves us to know about them and ourselves. We accordingly lost not a moment in possessing ourselves of the precious treasure that would, as we hoped, "the giftie gi'e us, to see oursells as others see us;" and verily we must acknowledge that our wonderment during its perusal has been excessive, and that it has convinced us that we never knew ourselves before, or ever saw any thing about us with proper eyes. Henceforward we shall be cautious how we trust to the evidence of our senses for any thing we may see, for it is pretty plain that hitherto they have been of no manner of use to us. They have deceived and bamboozled us our whole lives long; and from the present moment we will trust to none save those of Messrs Bartlett and Willis--at least we will never trust to our own.

The very vignette on the title-page gave us some startling notification of the fearful discovery that awaited us. We had flattered ourselves that we were quite familiar with all the remarkable features of Irish scenery, and should not fail at a glance to identify any delineation of them, inasmuch as there is not a river or lake in Ireland of any extent that we have not sailed on, not a mountain that we have not climbed, not a headland or island on our coast that we have not visited. But here was a subject of a striking and most remarkable character that appeared quite new to us, nor should we ever have been able to guess at it, if a friend to whom we applied for information had not assured us, to our utter astonishment, that he was informed it was nothing less than our old acquaintance the Giants' Causeway! The wonder at our blindness, however, in some degree diminished when we perceived--if we can guess at the only point from which such a view could be obtained--that the ingenious artist had represented the sun setting in the north; for as often as we had been at the Causeway, we never had the observation or good fortune to witness such a sight. We must confess, moreover, that our feelings of mortification at our ignorance were partly soothed, when we turned over to the next vignette, which we at once recognised by its bridge to have been intended for Poul-a-phuca, or, as Messrs Bartlett and Willis name it, more correctly we presume, Phoula Phuca! We cannot, however, state the impression left on our minds by each of the prints in succession; but we shall take a glance at two or three of them; and when we have pointed out the particulars that most confounded us in each, we can have little doubt that such of our readers as have never seen the places they are intended to represent, will concur in the conviction that has been forced upon us by our inspection of them.

The first of them that astounded us beyond measure was that called "Ancient Cross, Clonmacnoise." At this place we had erewhile spent some of our happiest hours, meditating among its tombs, and admiring alike its various ancient architectural remains, and the sublimely desolate but appropriate character of its natural scenery. So familiar had we grown with this most exciting scene, that we thought that we should have been able to identify every stone in it blindfold; but that was all a mistake: we had only a dim and erroneous vision of its features; we saw nothing accurately. For instance, the stone cross which forms the principal object in the foreground, and which gives name to this subject--this cross, which we had often drawn and measured, and found to be just fifteen feet in height, as Harris the antiquary had supposed before us, here appears to be more than twenty feet! while the base of it, which to our eyes always presented the appearance of a surface covered with a sculptural design of a deer-hunt, by men, dogs, chariots, and horses, is here an unadorned blank! The small round tower in the middle ground, which, as we believed, stood on the very shore, nearly level with the Shannon, has in this view mounted up the side of the hill. But what struck us as furnishing the most remarkable proofs of our defect of vision is, that the doorway of the great round tower, called O'Rourke's Tower, which, according to our measurement, was five feet six inches in height, and placed at the distance of eight feet from the ground, is here represented as at least twenty feet from it; and the stone wall of the cemetery, which, as it seemed to our perception, ran nearly from the doorway of the tower to within a few yards of the cross, has no existence whatever in the print, its place being occupied by some huge Druidical monument which we never were able to see. The perspective in this view is also of a novel kind, and well worthy of the attention of the Irish artists, and all those in Ireland who may hitherto have supposed that they knew something of this science. They will see that the level lines, or courses, on circular buildings, instead of ascending to the horizontal line when below it, descend to some horizontal line of their own; and that in fact there is not one horizontal line only in the picture, but perhaps a dozen, which fully proves that our previous notions on this point were wholly erroneous.

But we must hurry on. What have we got next? "Clew Bay from West Port," or "Baie De Clew, vue de West Port." Well, we believe this is intended for the beautiful Bay of Westport, called Clew Bay; but, if so, what has become of the beautiful country of Murisk, renowned in Irish song, which used to be situated at the base of Croagh Phadraig, or Croagh Patric? And is this the noble Reek itself? Good heavens! but it must have suffered from some strange convulsion since we saw it; it has been actually torn into a perpendicular cliff from its very summit to its base. But what are we thinking of? It was, we suppose, always so; and our not having observed it, is only a proof that we were never able to look at it correctly--and we should know better in future.

One peep more, and we shall have done. What is this? Scene from Cloonacartin Hill, Connemara. Ay, that's a scene we have looked at for many an hour. That group of jagged and pointed mountains to the left is the glorious Twelve Pins of Binnabeola. We never indeed saw them grouped so closely together, or standing so upright; but no matter: the hurricane of last year perhaps has blown them together, and carried away their sloping bases. But what do we see in the middle ground? The two lakes of Derry Clare and Lough Ina joined in one; and the rapid and unnavigable river which united them, or which we thought we saw there--where is it? _Non est incentus_: alas! alas! it is not to be found. Most wonderful! Lough Ina, with its three little wooded islands, no longer exists as a separate lake. It has, however, now got ten islands instead of three; but, then, they are all bare--all, all!--and the ancient ones have lost their wood. In like manner the flat heathy grounds between the mountains and the lakes to the right, have wholly disappeared, and nothing but water is to be seen in their place.

But our limits will not permit us to notice any more of Mr Bartlett's innumerable discoveries, which are equally remarkable in all his other views; so, after making him our grateful bow, we turn to the labours of his coadjutor, the celebrated author of "Pencillings by the Way," little doubting that by his lucubrations we shall be equally edified and astonished. Mr Willis does not attempt a description of the scenes depicted by his co-labourer--it would, perhaps, be a difficult task for him, as in the instance of the view from Cloonacartin Hill, which we have noticed. But instead thereof, he treats us to pencillings of his own of a very graphic character, and usually as little like nature, as we had supposed it in Ireland, as even the drawings of Mr Bartlett. The chief difference between them is, that while the sketches of the one are landscape, those of the other are generally in the figure line; and after the model of the Dutch masters, mostly consisting of hackney-car drivers, waiters, chambermaids, and, what his principal forte lies in, beggars! In his sketches of the latter he beats Callot himself; they are evidently drawn for love of the thing. After witnessing "the splendid failure at Eglintoun Castle," Mr Willis embarks at Port-Patrick, and lands at Donaghadee. This he tells us he did in imitation of St Patrick, "who evidently," like Mr Willis, "knew enough of geography to decide which point of Scotland was nearest to the opposite shore." This was new to us; but it should be noted in chronicles. He then travels on an Irish car to Belfast, and, like more of our modern visitors who favour us with their lucubrations, gives us a sketch of the said car, horse, and its driver, which, of course, are all singular things in their way. The pencilling, however, is a pleasant one enough, as it shows us that the car-driver very soon smoked the character of the travellers he had to take care of, and quizzed accordingly in a very proper and creditable Irish style. After a dangerous journey Mr Willis arrives safely in Belfast, and proceeds to give us his sketch of its inhabitants in the following words:--

"It was market-day at Belfast, and the streets were thronged with the country people, the most inactive crowd of human beings, it struck me, that I had ever seen. The women were all crouching under their grey cloaks, or squatting upon the thills of the potato-carts, or upon steps or curb-stones; and the men were leaning where there was any thing to lean against, or dragging their feet heavily after them, in a listless lounge along the pavement. It was difficult to remember that this was the most energetic and mercurial population in the world; yet a second thought tells one that there is an analogy in this to the habits of the most powerful of the animal creation--the lion and the leopard, when not excited, taking their ease like the Irishman."

Men of Belfast, what think you of that? But hear him out--