It’s been an eclectic week – Amanda, Peter and I had a skite out to Inchydoney, and I finished off the week with a trip to Barley Cove.
Inchydoney Island is a beautiful, unique and historical part of West Cork. Just south of Clonakilty, it was indeed once an island but now is connected to the mainland with causeways. The reason for our trip was to check out an intriguing stone, spotted by Willie O’Regan, along the shore. Willie’s thought was that it might be an Ogham stone and he wanted to check that out. It had fallen forward out of the bank in recent high tides, revealing parallel grooves along its length – just the sort of thing you might expect from an Ogham stone.
We rendezvoused with Willie on the north side of Inchydoney, across from Clonakilty (above) and walked along the shore, while he told us about the history of the area. We could see across the pond known locally as the Beamish Lake to the Hungerford House, originally called Inchydoney House. It has been purchased and magnificently restored in recent years, the owners pouring resources and loving attention into their project, including restoring the walled garden.
The shoreline had been – er – shored up by rocks and rubble all along its length. It may originally have been walled – designed landscapes were very popular in the 18th century – take a look at New Court, for example. There may also have been small inlets and launching places along the edge. At one such possible spot Willie showed us what he had found.
We examined it thoroughly and took lots of photos. It wasn’t an Ogham stone – although anyone could be forgiven for mistaking it for one! The grooves are actually plough marks.
As the plough passes over and through the soil, it runs across stones that are just at the right depth below the surface, gouging out these grooves. Over the years, many grooves appear. Sometime the stones, if they are small enough, roll over and the grooves appear on other surfaces, as seems to be the case with this stone.
Plough-marked stones like this could be any age – this one could be medieval or more recent. It was probably finally unearthed and tossed to the edge of the field to join the other rocks keeping the water from eroding the shorelines, eventually falling forward and revealing itself to Willie’s keenly observing eyes. It tells a story – a story of cultivation and hard work and a story of never throwing anything away, and a story of a man who walks these shores for pure pleasure and never misses a trick. Thanks, Willie – we had such a good time on this walk!
And Barley Cove? As last year, I went out to see what I could see of the Early Sand-grass. A remarkably homely little tuft of grass that is nevertheless precious because it is extremely rare. I found lots and it felt so good to be out in the fresh air, lying in the dunes, and taking an unconscionable number of photographs of this humble little representative of our incredible West Cork biodiversity.
And then home through some of the most scenic coastline in Ireland. Not that I’m biased.
It’s not often an art exhibition has me running to my word processor to get a post out, but this one did it for me! On the surface, this is a quirky, amusing, thought-provoking, installation about the annual Harvest Festival, as practised in the autumn in Church of Ireland communities all over Ireland. Except it’s so much more than that. It’s titled Flail, and it’s on right now at Uillinn.
Debbie Godsell has taken the idea of the harvest festival and the communities that celebrate it, and turned it into a personal exploration of her own experience with it, as a child growing up in the C of I, and as a photographer recording the custom of decorating churches. In Ireland, this is a custom unique to the Protestant church – the minority religion. As such, there’s a strangeness to it when viewed by someone who grew up Catholic. Not strange in the sense of peculiar, but in the sense of unknown, slightly other-worldly, why-have-I-never-known-about-this?
But yes, it is quirky and amusing. Just take a look at these heads – they are the first thing you notice when you come in, titled ‘Ancestors’. Made from all kinds of found materials, some represent real people (hello, Great-Aunt Molly!) although most are simply heads – a bit like you might find on a scarecrow out in the fields around harvest time.
But after the first encounter you realise that this also of course, is the thought-provoking part of this exhibition Now you notice that they are on sticks, mirroring perhaps the heads on pikes that seemed to spell the end on many rebellions against English rule down through the centuries. In her notes, Godsell states:
Here,the heads take on an unsettling childlike quality, drawing from elements of folk drama and ritual. Rudimentary in form, they are a fusion of figures from Irish history and the artist’s own imagined lineage. Blurring the line between historical facts and personal mythology, the work interrogates themes of memory, identity and inherited trauma, challenging how history is constructed and remembered.
What does it mean, in Ireland, to be part of a minority religion? What has it meant in the past, and now? What if that religion was perceived to track closely with class, and land ownership, and unionist sympathies?
We pride ourselves, in Ireland, now, on being a pluralistic and non-sectarian society. But if that is true at all, it is only recently so. The Ireland I grew up in – in the 50s and 60s – was deeply sectarian. Protestants and Catholics rarely mixed and we were forbidden, on pain of sin, to enter each other’s churches. We were educated separately, played some different sports (Anyone for lacrosse? How about men’s hockey?), sounded different, went to separate Brownie troupes, studied different curricula at school . . .
This exhibition explores the harvest-related parts of that separateness, but the opening, in which Debbie Godsell was interviewed by art critic Cristín Leach, also featured a discussion on folklore and a hymn by Cristín!
Cristín has said that Flail is ‘complicated territory’ for her and the hymn, Harvesting History, sprang almost spontaneously from engaging with the first Flail exhibition. It has been beautifully set to music by Susan Nares, and the West Cork Choral Singers presented it at the opening. Here’s a snippet.
I was particularly fascinated by the folklore discussion. As Roaringwater Journal readers know, we have used the Duchas/Schools Folklore Collection extensively over the years. One particularly important piece of research for me was to look at what it had to say about the Reverend Fisher – Saint and/or Souper of Toormore. What I found was a little shocking and it opened my eyes to an aspect of this wonderful resource that I had never previously considered – the decidedly sectarian nature of the collections. While some Protestant National Schools did participate in the School’s Collection of 1937/38, Protestants are very under-represented as informants. See this excellent article from History Ireland for more on this*.
Cristín and Debbie talked about the prevailing view of Protestants as seen in the overwhelmingly Catholic responses in the Collection – and it wasn’t a pretty picture. As I discovered with Fisher, and as Amanda has discovered with Holy Wells Folklore, the Protestants are basically blamed for anything misfortunate or discreditable – some examples here, and here and here.
Go see this exhibition if you can. It’s fascinating, but more than that, it’s important. We are still trying to come to grips with our history, in Ireland. Art like this helps immeasurably.
* A ‘Protestant folk’? Author(s): Deirdre Nuttall and Críostóir MacCarthaigh Source: History Ireland , Vol. 25, No. 5 (September–October 2017), pp. 48-51 Published by: Wordwell Ltd. Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/90014607
This week I experienced, in Virtual Reality, what is was to belong to a Flying Column during the Irish War of Independence. With the men, I crawled through a West Cork field, gun at the ready, alert for any sign of the British army or the Black and Tans.
Or, at least, that’s what it felt like, and I must admit to a slight pounding of the heart as we were crouched behind that stone wall. In reality, I was on a swivel chair in the old Uillinn coffee shop, now repurposed as a VR theatre, wearing a VR headset. The Sean Keating painting that this experience is based on is the iconic Men of the South and you can read all about it here.
Kathleen was ruined financially by all her support for the cause. Letters of support for her pension application were fulsome in praise of her work and her commitment. She was awarded a grade E pension in 1939. She died, here in 1945, aged 50. She had not married and had no children, and all memory of her gradually disappeared from Ballydehob. When Karen went looking for the house she had lived in, it seemed nobody could remember the heroic Kathleen O’Connell who had once lived here.
How wrong we were! Memory of Kathleen was far from dead. A relative of hers recently contacted Karen and on Friday afternoon we spent several hours with him and his charming grandson, rediscovering Kathleen from a man in whose family her memory was still fully alive. (He didn’t want his photo in the blog post, although Neven, the grandson, was happy to be in it.)
The first thing he showed us was her grave, at the historic Abbey Graveyard in Bantry. It contained many family members, including Kathleen. Our guide had knowledge of everyone in the grave and how they were related, and told us that there were probably more people in the plot than commemorated on the headstone. The grave looks out over the sea at Bantry.
Next, he brought us to the cabin belonging to her Uncle Pat where she sheltered men on the run. It’s located in the hills behind Ballydehob, down several lonely boreens and across a couple of (very muddy) fields. The cabin, now roofless, still stands and still has the wonderful oak mantle across the open fireplace.
We marvelled that Kathleen was doing all this on her bicycle – it’s several kilometres above Ballydehob and about 100 metres above sea level. And of course few of the roads would have been paved at that time. Our guide told us that she was totally and passionately committed to the cause, and that, since she was an only child, she carried her parents along with her. It was really they who underwrote all the expenses she incurred in her work.
In the family, it was understood that she had been engaged to a man who was a member of a Flying Column – just like one of the Men of the South, but that he had been shot. We could only wonder at the trauma and distress she had experienced. She left for America in 1925, but returned to live in Ballydehob, and her father eventually outlived her.
Our final mementoes of Kathleen were particularly poignant. Surviving in the family were two of her books, school books we think, in which she had written her name.
Each was very British – a reminder to us all what the standard school fare was at the time when we were members of the British Empire.
I have located a copy of the Royal Prince Reader (1910) on EBay – in Rajastan! A further reminder that empire was promoted through children’s literature as much as through military occupation.
Somehow these two books, her own possessions, brought Kathleen to life as nothing else could have done. We imagined her devouring these stories in school, and her gradual disillusion as she matured with what the Empire stood for.
It is an immense comfort to know that she is not forgotten after all.
I’ve had the most marvellous Muskerry weekend! Muskerry (pronounced Muss-cree), or Múscraí as it is more properly spelled in Irish, encompasses a large area in west Cork and much of it is Irish speaking. This weekend my two destinations were Ballingeary and Inchigeelagh. We didn’t stop at Gougane Barra on the way this time, but can’t resist including this photo to remind you of the stunning scenery there.
Ballingeary was Saturday and our destination was the village hall, for the last night of the original ceoldráma (musical), Gobnait! This production is by the same team who mounted An Tuairin Dubh a couple of years ago and I was dying to see their new musical. I wasn’t disappointed!
The story tells of the legend of St Gobnait, who travels from the Aran Islands to Ballyvourney – she knows she will have reached the “site of her resurrection” when she sees nine white deer (below). Patron saint of smiths and beekeepers, stories abound and are kept alive with an annual pilgrimage. We have written about Gobnait several times. Here’s a link to a post from only last year, one of the last posts that Robert wrote, in fact.
But to really understand how St Gobnait journeyed to Ballyvourney, you must read Amanda’s 3 part post (Part 1 and Part 2 and Part 3) where she traces her peregrination from the Aran Islands to Ballyvourney, stopping along the way to lend her name to churches and holy wells. This is followed by a summary of her life and work in Ballyvourney.
The Musical – it’s an opera, really, told the story very dramatically and with great liveliness and enthusiasm from the cast. The singing was lovely and there was lots of interesting choreography and stage settings – the Sulán River, for example, was very effectively rendered by means of moving actors and a huge gauze sheet (below). The words were projected as sur-titles, so even though my Irish is not a strong as I would wish, I could follow along with no problem.
It seems like the whole village of Ballingeary was involved – from those directing us to parking to those at the desks and tea-counter, everyone from miles around was joining in the fun and the effort. The hall was packed, as it has been every night, and we delivered a standing ovation at the end of the evening – so well deserved.
I loved how Gobnait’s costume in the second half was based on Seamus Murphy’s famlous statue of her at her holy well in Ballyvourney.
Having gone home and slept, I got in the car again this morning for another trip to Múscraí – this time to Inchigeelagh and to one of my favourite West Cork churches. Before I tell you about the trip, here are two reasons I like this church. The first is this little gem of St Oliver Plunkett. It’s the work of Kevin Kelly, of the Abbey Studios – and my photograph of it features on the front cover of a book! I haven’t got my copy of the book yet – it’s on its way.
The purpose of my trip was to attend a mass in memory of Eileen Ryan. Eileen died in Zimbabwe, aged only 38, in 1983. and each year since, her husband Ken makes the journey from Dublin to attend the mass. Ken, a friend from the stained glass world (he’s the Chairman of Abbey Stained Glass Studios), had invited me to attend, since I live ‘nearby.’ I am so glad I did.
Y’know, you forget how life is lived and celebrated in rural Ireland – the ritual, followed by the release, the laughter, and food and the friendliness. As a total stranger, I was included in all of that – we were singing in a pub an hour after the mass ended, and eating delicious soup and brown bread and cake in a family member’s house an hour after that. I felt like I had made new friends – and have already promised to give a stained glass talk at their annual festival next year.
Harry did several wonderful St Brigid windows, and included Brigid as a saint in larger scenes. There are also Brigid windows attributed to him that he actually didn’t do, but that’s a blog for another time. Today I want to give you a flavour of his take on Brigid, because this was a saint that must have been especially meaningful to him – his mother was a Brigid!
Brigid (sometimes given as Bridget) MacGonigal was born in Sligo and married Joshua Clarke, then an up-and-coming church decorator in Dublin and they had four children. Harry, their third child arrived in 1889. Brigid was never strong and died in Bray in August 1903, leaving her family bereft. Harry was 14 and that year marked the end of his schooling at Belvedere as he and his older brother Walter joined the family business to help run it. Harry was a sensitive child and it is likely that he missed and mourned his mother for many years. He also inherited her weak lungs and struggled, as she did, with his health.
I will start with the place that launched Harry’s career, the Honan Chapel at University College Cork (I’ll finish with the one that is on my lead photo). And in fact it is his first windows for that Chapel – a three light, depicting Brigid, Patrick and Columcille, our three Patron Saints. This window is over the entrance, facing west, which, with Harry’s preference for dark colours and some internal lighting issues in the chapel, makes it hard to photograph.
Harry had completed a detailed sketch design for this window in 1914 (Nicole Gordon Bowe has an image of that design in her magnificent The Life and Work of Harry Clarke) and the window was made in 1915. There are a few differences between the sketch design and the finished window, but on the whole, the window is true to Harry’s original vision for it. His notes for the window refer to
Top: The Angel with the cloth of heaven forming background
The Figure: With emblems – the church, the inextinguishable spiritual lamp – the calf and the oak.
The Base: Are four angels carrying the prayers, prophesies, miracles and charities of St Brigid, also are shown the five lilies – she has been called the Mary of Ireland and these lilies symbolise the five provinces of Ireland over which she held spiritual control.
The cloth of heaven has been imagined as fronds in deeps reds, while St Brigid is shown as mature, wise and compassionate. She is holding a church which looks a lot like St Kevin’s Kitchen in Glendalough. In her other hand is a brown oak leaf, threaded through her fingers. The calf peers out from her right side. As befits a Mary of the Gael, she wears a deep blue robe.
The predella (lowest section, above) shows four angels, but what they are carrying are torches – a reference to the spiritual lamp and the fire associated with Brigid. The symbols of the five provinces, recognisably lilies in the sketch design, have changed to another flower I can’t name. Note the tiny details, though – the crucifixion scene in the borders on the left and the right. The other detail to note here is that the fingers, of Brigid and the angels are ‘normal’ – Harry has not yet developed his signature long tapering fingers and pointed sleeves (among the idiosyncratic elements he called his “gadgets’).
His next Brigid (above) was for the Nativity window in Castletownsend – I have written about that window extensively here so pop over and have a browse if you fancy. The Castletownsend Brigid, done in 1918, looks quite similar to the Honan Brigid and has the same oak leaf entwined in her fingers. The difference is that she is carrying the sacred lamp, has the Harry Clarke fingers, and is spelled S Bridget – the English version rather than the Irish Naomh Brighid of the Honan. [For non-Irish speaking readers – the small dot on top of consonants in Irish is now normally rendered as H – as in Briġid is now Brighid.]
The next two windows, Terenure (above and below, details) from 1920 and Cloughjordan from 1924, show Brigid among a host of other saints. In Terenure the subject of the large window is The Crucifixion and the Adoration of the Cross by Irish Saints, and this is a large, three-light window behind the main altar. The saints are not all easy to identify, despite having their names in their haloes, but first and foremost among them are Patrick on the left and Brigid on the right.
Brigid is dressed in a blue robe which drapes on the ground around her, and has a golden trim to her sleeves.
In St Michael and St John’s Church in Cloughjordan, Co Tipperary, the theme of the large, five-light, window is The Ascension with Irish Saints and St Michael and St James. Gordon Bowe designates this one a Harry Clarke (B). That means that this window was initially conceived and designed by him but executed by his studio under his close supervision. This is the first window we have come across, in this series, that is not wholly Harry’s own work, and this is a measure of how busy the Studios had become with Harry at the helm.
As in Terenure, Brigid is here as one of the Irish saints. She is depicted as very young, wide-eyed, and carrying a church which now looks more medieval than Romanesque (neither would have been appropriate to her era) and is probably a nod to the Cathedral in Kildare.
And so we come to the last Brigid that Harry ever did*. It is from the famous and controversial Geneva window, now in the Wolfsonian Museum in Miami. If you have not yet seen the marvellous documentary that Ardall O’Hanlon has made about this, I highly recommend you do. It’s available on the RTE Player as of this time of writing. The Brigid panel is among the less controversial images in the whole window. It’s based on a play by Lady Gregory called The Story Brought by Brigit. According to Marie T Mullan in her lovely book,Exiled from Ireland: Harry Clarke’s Geneva Window,
The play is a passion play, but it is based on the legend, popular in Ireland and Scotland, that St Brigit was present at the birth and crucifixion of Jesus. Brigit mingles with the crowds from the time of Jesus’s triumphant entry into Jerusalem until after his death. She is a foreigner, observing and commenting. She tells people she is Jesus’s foster mother and brought Mary and Jesus to Ireland to escape Herod. . . The icon of Christ Crucified is a the vesica, a shape used often in art for a picture within a picture, and has the traditional beaded frame. Brigit is absorbed in the icon.
Note Brigid’s golden scapular and elaborate headdress. Also the stylised butterfly and the little woodland creatures in the scene.
I think that’s a good place to stop. Harry did another Brigid, for the Oblate Fathers in north Dublin’s Belcamp Hall. This is a sorry tale in which the buildings, once left by the priests were subject to appalling vandalism and the windows are in storage, and haven’t been seen for years. This is tragic.
* Thanks to my friend Jack Zagar for the Photos of the Geneva Window.
I’ve been without power for half a day and without internet (aaaargh!) for the last few days, finally restored last night. So this is a brief post and of course it has to be about the weather. This is what Storm Éowin (a character from Tolkien, apparently) looked like as it barrelled towards us across the Atlantic last Thursday night, packing winds of 147kmh.
Screenshot
The whole country came to a standstill and I lay awake listening to the tiles rattle on the roof and various ominous crashings and bangings and thinking about my PV panels and how secure they are. I need not have worried – Éowin roared over us and did less damage around here than our most ferocious one ever, Storm Darwin. I hunkered down on Friday, boiling water on the wood stove – and even had neighbours over for coffee!
Some parts of the country got very badly hit indeed and are still without power and are coping with the damage, so we were comparatively lucky. And now it’s Sunday and Storm Herminia is hitting us – although inexplicably it’s also called Storm Hugo on the Met Éireann website, with a yellow warning already in place. To show you what it looks like outside, I am reposting a stop-motion video we made several years ago of how the weather sweeps across our view. This is a thirty minute session of Irish weather coming in to Roaringwater Bay compressed to thirty seconds, each frame being shot a second apart.
And now I will re-post the results of Storm Darwin – so far the worst storm we have experienced in our time here. The rest of this post dates from 2014:
Storm Darwin, 2014
By Rossbrin Cove, after Storm Darwin
We looked back recently and counted the number of posts both of us have done on the subject of the weather, and decided not to do any more on pain of boring our readership to death. But this week Met Eireann issued a rare Code Red warning and their direst predictions came true. The Southwest of Ireland was pounded by hurricane force winds, the like of which many people had never experienced before. Storm Darwin wreaked havoc in our corner of the world.
We were lucky! Our power was off for several hours, but our house is set up so we can still stay warm, run water, and cook. We lost a few more trees, including two that fell over the road, blocking access. Our terrific landscaper, Thomas, chainsawed them off so that at least cars could get by. Trees that came down in our neighbour’s property severed our telephone cable and we have been told that it could be ten days before this is fixed – so we have no landline and no internet. We use our cell phones to connect whenever we can in cafes in town or in friends’ houses, but reception has been spotty all week due to storm damage.
We’re almost out of trees now in the haggard
Many of our neighbours have not been so fortunate and are still without power. For some this can also mean no water and no way to cook. The County Council has issued a warning to boil drinking water amid fears that water supplies have been contaminated. All over the countryside crews are out clearing away trees and restoring cables. Two young men were swept to their deaths by huge waves on the north side of the Sheep’s Head. Another man, part of a telephone repair crew, has died while working on the high wires. Roads and towns flooded although this time the storm surges did not coincide with high spring tides so the water damage was not as bad as it had been earlier in the year.
Welcome to the UCD Library Cultural Heritage Collections blog. Discover and explore the historical treasures housed within our Archives, Special Collections, National Folklore Collection and Digital Library
Roaringwater Journal 