Every Catholic Church in Ireland has a set of Stations of the Cross on the wall – fourteen focus points for devotion and reflection on the Way of the Cross. The Stations, as they are universally known in Ireland, come from a long tradition within the Catholic Church, often associated with St Francis, but also with the Via Dolorosa in Jerusalem, and the custom that Pilgrims had of retracing Jesus’ footsteps on the way to Calvary.
Most Stations appear to have been ordered from a catalogue and all look similar, painted in an Italianate Renaissance style and framed in wood. The image above, of one of the stations in a rural church in Cork, is typical.
However, architects, priests, and parish committees sometimes took the bolder step of commissioning Stations from a contemporary artist. The lead image and the one above are both from sets of Stations by Richard King. The lead image is the Deposition (Christ taken down from the Cross) and is in a small church in Foilmore in Kerry, while that immediately above is from Swinford, Co Mayo, as is the one below – a painting that focuses ferociously on the suffering of the crucified Jesus.
This was an important source of income for artists from the beginning of the new Irish State. While we don’t often think of the Catholic Church as a patron of the arts, in practical terms it functioned as such for many painters and sculptors. In fact it is hardly an exaggeration to say that the church was the largest commissioner of contemporary art in Ireland during most of the twentieth century.
Galway Cathedral is a showcase for twentieth-century artists and all fourteen Stations were carved in portland stone by Gabriel Hayes. It took her eighteen years to complete them and she called them ‘the main work of my life.’
Certain architects – Liam McCormack, for example, or Richard Hurley – considered each aspect of their design and included specification for contemporary art. Some indeed, like Eamon Hedderman, worked closely with artists to plan a church holistically, incorporating the art into the integral fabric of the building. A magnificent example of this can be seen in the Church of the Irish Martyrs in Ballycane (Naas) where large-scale graphic stations designed by Michael Burke are surrounded by contemporary glass by George Walsh.
Many of the Irish artists familiar to us from the 20th century catalogues have contributed Stations to churches around the country – sometimes to the large cathedrals but often too to obscure country parishes where the priest (it was usually the priest) wanted something more than a standard imported set. Sean Keating‘s Stations for St John’s Church in Tralee (both images below) are arresting in their drama and strong character studies.
Stations come in many media and I have tried to show a variety in this post by well-known Irish artists. Bath stone was the medium of choice for Ken Thompson – the image below is of one of his stations for St Mel’s Cathedral in Longford. Below that is a Station from Ballywaltrim Church in Bray by the Breton/Irish Sculptor Yann Renard Goulet, although I am not sure what the material is.
Patrick Pye is more commonly associated with his stained glass windows for Irish churches, but his painted Stations for the Church of the Resurrection in Killarney (below) bring a quietly beautiful reflective focus to a contemporary interior.
Sean O’Sullivan was known primarily as a portrait painter, but he also designed Stations, such as the ones below for the church in Newquay in Clare. Using only pencil and colour washes, he has produced powerfully emotive scenes (below).
Stations, however, are often unsigned and so our old friend Anon is responsible for many. A future post will include some of his or hers. The enamel Station below, for example, may be by Nell Murphy, but I can’t confirm this, so Anon it is, for the moment.
I am also planning a post on Stations done in stained glass – they are some really beautiful example, starting of course with Harry Clarke’s Lough Derg windows. But this post will start us off with some of the examples I have seen in churches around the country – let’s call it an Introduction to Irish Contemporary Stations. I’d love to hear from readers who have their own favourite set. And if anyone knows the artist responsible for the Stations in the Franciscan Church in Wexford (example below), do let me know!
Today there is a story to tell, with lots of connections to the West of Ireland – and our own Ballydehob! That’s Levis’s Corner Bar, below, one of the village’s fine hostelries: try them all if you visit. Levis’s is known for its musical events but also for its traditional appearance inside. Look at the photo of the Irish music session (you’ll see me bottom left playing concertina) – that was taken a few years ago, before Covid; we are still waiting for those good times to return. On the wall behind the players you can catch a glimpse of a painting of men with pints and pipes.
There’s a better view of the painting, above. When I first saw it – very many years ago now – I knew immediately that it was based on a photograph that had been taken by Tómás Ó Muicheartaigh – an Irish cultural hero who spent most of his life documenting traditional life, mainly in the western counties. He lived through the founding of the Irish Free State and was an enthusiastic proponent of the Irish language. This sketch portrait of him is by Seán O’Sullivan, a friend and compatriot:
Way back in the 1970s my then wife and I ran a small bookshop in a Devon market town, specialising in folklore and traditional life. It had a substantial section on Ireland, and Irish culture. We stocked a recently-published volume (1970) celebrating the work of Ó Muicheartaigh, and I very soon had to sell myself a copy, as it is a superb record of mainly rural life in Ireland during the early twentieth century. I have it to this day – of course.
There is the photograph in the book, above. It is captioned Piontí Agus Píopaí – Pints and Pipes, hence the title of this post. Below it is a photograph of two Aran Island fishermen relaxing on the rocks while waiting for the weather to improve before they set out to sea. But there is more – a list of the photographs with some expanded captions at the end of the book. The whole book is written in Irish so I have recruited Finola’s help in providing a transcription for the Pints and Pipes – here it is, in the original and then translated:
Piontí Agus Píopaí
Ceathrar pinsinéirí ag baint spraoi as lá an phinsin le píopa agus le pionta Pórtair. B’fhéidir nach mbeadh pionta go hAoine arís acu. A saol ar fad tugtha ar an bhfarraige acu seo. Féach, cé gur istigh ón ngaoth agus ón aimsir atá an ceathrar go bhfuill an cobhar ar píopa gach duine acu. Is mar chosaint are an ngaoth a bhíodh an cobhar agus chun tobac a spáráil, ach ní bhainfí an cobhar anuas den phíopa instigh ná amuigh
Pints and Pipes
Four pensioners enjoying pension day with pipes and pints of porter. They might not have another pint until Friday. They’ve spent their whole lives on the sea. Look, even though the four of them are inside, away from the wind and the weather, the cover is still on each of their pipes. The covers are to protect the tobacco from the wind and to make it last longer and they aren’t taken off inside nor out
So, a fascinating piece of social history. Apart from conjecturing a date for the photo, I didn’t have much information to add when I first published it on Roaringwater Journal in February 2016. Because of the juxtaposition in the book, I guessed that the picture might have been taken around 1938, when Tómás is known to have visited and photographed the Aran Islands (and would have travelled through Kerry to get there). Here is one of his views of a Curragh being launched on Inis Meáin at this time (Dúchas):
I didn’t expect my story of Pints and Pipes to advance beyond this. But, last week, I received a message from a reader who had seen the photograph in Roaringwater Journal and was able to provide very significant additional information!
. . . My name is Joanne and I live in London. My dad found a photo on your website from a blog dated 14 Feb 2016 entitled Images – it is the Tomás Ó Muircheartaigh photograph of the 4 men drinking in a bar. My great-grandad is the man on the far left. It was great to find the photo as it is much better quality than the copy we have, unfortunately my nan had an original postcard but it was borrowed by a representative of Guinness many years ago and never returned!
Joanne, September 2021
Joanne has proved to be a wonderful contact, and I am so grateful to her for providing information and allowing me to use it here. In summary:
. . . My great-grandad’s name was Seán Mac Gearailt but he was known as Skip. He was from Baile Loisce in Kerry. The photo was taken in a bar which was then called Johnny Frank’s in Baile na nGall (Ballydavid) but I think is now called Tigh TP. I can see from the photos that have been digitalised Tomás Ó Muircheartaigh took a lot of photographs at Baile na nGall. Pints and Pipes isn’t in that digitalised collection . . .
. . . I gave my dad a call tonight and discussed the extract with him; he lived with his grandparents as a child in the late 1940’s/50’s and visited regularly so knows a lot about Skip. Dad remembers him collecting his pension on a Friday at Ballydavid and having a beer in Johnny Frank’s before going home to hand over the rest of the pension to his wife – so the extract in the book is correct on that. Skip was primarily a farmer but dad says he did go out fishing in a curragh at night. Dad remembers his nan being worried for him when he was out at sea. Dad doesn’t know the name of the other men in the photograph. Skip was friends with two Moriarty brothers (from Gallarus) – so dad thinks maybe the two men in the middle are them but he can’t know that for sure . . .
Joanne, September 2021
Wow! You can imagine how delighted I was to receive that information. But there’s more. I managed to find some early photos of Ballydavid (Baile na nGall in Irish), which is part of the Corca Dhuibhne Gaeltacht area. In fact we have been there – when we took the Irish language immersion course two years ago.
Regular readers will know my interest in the Napoleonic-era signal towers which dot the coast of Ireland, all built in the early years of the 19th century. There was one at Ballydavid Head, drawn (above) by George Victor Du Noyer as he passed by on one of his geological expeditions on 12 June 1856. We didn’t climb the Head when we visited, but we viewed it from a distance (below). The tower is now a ruin.
We have travelled far, far away from Ballydehob where, in some ways, the weaving of this tale began. We had better return. Here’s a reminder of that painted image of the ‘Pints and Pipes’ photograph in Levis’s Corner Bar. Compare it to the header photograph of this post.
It is so obviously based on the Tómás Ó Muicheartaigh portrait, yet there are some differences. The pipes of the two men in the middle are missing! I can’t tell you why this is the case, but I can tell you now who produced the painting, as I was given a valuable link by Joe O’Leary, landlord of Levis’s (which his been in his family for some generations – but that is another story). The painting has a signature:
Paul Klee was, of course, a well known Swiss-born German artist who lived between 1879 and 1940: he had no connection whatsoever with Ireland! Nor did he have anything to do with this painting, which was in fact from the brush of Raymond Klee, born in Barry, South Wales, in 1925 but living out much of his later life in Bantry, West Cork, until his death there in 2013. During the 1950s and 60s he lived in the Montmatre artists’ quarter in Paris, and is said to have been a close friend of Pablo Picasso. There can be no doubt that the Levis’s painting is his work, as I came across a short video, taken late in his life, in his Ballylickey Gallery. I managed to ‘freeze’ the fast-moving film at this point:
There, you can see the artist himself on the left, and over on the right is the partial image of a huge painting propped up: it’s another version of Pints and Pipes… I wonder what became of it? Or, indeed, of much of the large body of work which he left behind in Ballylickey? You will find examples on the internet, including several from the catalogues of art dealers. He doesn’t seem to have exhibited a particularly consistent style and – by repute – ‘churned out’ some of his works very quickly but – it has to be said – to a willing audience. During tours of the United States he would paint large canvases in front of a crowd – perhaps 200 spectators – and produce work which he immediately sold to the highest bidder in the room! I have selected a couple of images of paintings which might be of interest to my audience. The upper painting is titled The Local, while the lower one is Sky Over Inchydoney.
I must end my tale. Here is a little bonus, especially for my correspondent Joanne – and she won’t see this until she reads this post for the first time. We were leafing through the Tómás Ó Muicheartaigh book; it’s hard to put down – over 300 seminal photographs of Irish life. Finola’s eagle eye picked out one which I had never noticed before – and here it is: Seán Mac Gearailt, Joanne’s Great Grandfather, Skip. The caption underneath is apt. Many thanks, Joanne, for setting me on this journey…
GO mBEIRIMID BEO AR AN AM SEO ARÍS . . .
Thanks go to my very good friend Oliver Nares, who worked on the photographs of Pints and Pipes and Skip for me, and greatly improved their quality. Have look at his own site
The Irish Folklore Commission was established in 1935 in Earlsford Terrace, Dublin – where turf fires burned regularly in the grates. In our library at Nead an Iolair are three books by researchers who gave much of their working lives to the Commission. Bríd Mahon, from Cork, was hired by the Commission as a temporary typist in October 1939. Ten years later she took over as office manager from Máire MacNeill, who was to marry: married women could not be civil servants in Ireland in those days! Seán O’Sullivan was the archivist of the Commission for the duration of its existence (1935 – 1971). In 1971 the project was absorbed by the Department of Irish Folklore, University College, Dublin.
. . . The first things I noticed were the wicker basket heaped with sods of black turf beside an open fire and the smell of the blue peat smoke which I love. It was the first day as a raw recruit to the staff of the Irish Folklore Commission. One wall of the room was lined with manuscripts bound in dark leather. A small dark man was turning the handle of a machine. Shreds of wax from a long cylinder fell into a container. Seán O’Sullivan (1903 – 96), who was the archivist, explained that the wax cylinders he was paring were used by the collectors on clockwork dictating machines called Ediphones to record the tales and traditions of the Irish countryside. He said that they were a great improvement on the old method of taking down information by hand. The only drawback was that the Ediphones had to be carried by the collectors on bicycles, which made riding over stony roads difficult and up mountain paths near impossible . . .
The Second World War was drawing to a close, petrol was scarce and few people owned cars. The Commission employed five full-time collectors, who worked in places as far apart as the Dingle Peninsula in County Kerry and the Bluestacks in County Donegal. When the men had filled a dozen cylinders they transcribed the information onto blue notebooks, using indelible ink. These were sent back to Dublin, carefully packed in boxes. The notebooks were bound and kept in the Commission’s archives and the cylinders were pared and recycled . . .
From Bríd Mahon’s account of her time at the Irish Folklore Commission: While Green Grass Grows Mercier Press, 1998
Bríd Mahon also relates how the Folklore Commission (which survived on a shoestring budget) acquired its Ediphone machines:
. . . In the 1930s Delargy [Séamus Ó Duilearga, Director of the Commission throughout its life] had gone on a lecture tour of America that entailed much travel and long train journeys. Coming to the end of his travels, he happened to find himself sharing a carriage with another traveller. They soon discovered a common interest – both were dedicated fishermen. As the night wore on they got talking about Ireland and the work of the Commission. Delargy remarked that gathering folklore was akin to fishing – both took time and patience. He described how for eight years he had spent every vacation in a remote hamlet in County Kerry, first helping with the housework, afterwards making himself as comfortable as he could on a bag of salt, while he wrote down from the dictation of one of Ireland’s great storytellers hundreds of legends, Fianna tales and miscellanea of folklore. ‘On a night in April 1931 Seán Ó Canaill told me the last tale in his repertoire,” Delargy told his listener. “A month later he was dead. It had been a race against time.”
Delargy’s travelling companion was impressed by the meeting. “I wish you well in your undertaking, Mr Delargy,” were his parting words as the train pulled into Grand Central Station, New York. But it wasn’t the end of the story. Delargy was scarcely back in Dublin when a consignment of Ediphone machines arrived with the compliments of the President of the Edison Company. The accompanying note read: “To a fellow traveller and fisher of men.” These Ediphones were used by the collectors for many years . . .
Left – Séamas Mac Aonghusa (Seamus Ennis) was responsible for recording over 2,000 songs and dance tunes while working for the Folklore Commission. Right – an Ediphone being transported in rural Ireland (1945)
More from Bríd Mahon:
Seán O’Sullivan showed me an international folktale known in Irish as ‘Ao Mhic an Bhradáin agus Ó Mhic an Bhradáin’ (‘Hugh and O, the Two Sons of the Salmon’) . . .
It was the earliest known folktale, first discovered on Egyptian papyrus 3,250 years before. During my years with the Commission hundreds of variants of that far-flung story were gathered in remote hamlets on the western seaboard of Ireland, in parts of Munster, in northwest Ulster and from a group of travelling people on the borders of Wicklow and Wexford . . .
Nothing would satisfy me but to find a version of the ‘earliest known folktale’ to finish off this post. But, search high and low, the only example I could find is written in Irish and amounts to 5,000 words! With my very limited skills and many translation aids I have begun to work on the story. I’ll give you a taster, but the full tale will have to wait for another day:
Hugh and O, the Two Sons of the Salmon
It came out that there was a poor man whose only means of making a living was catching fish. If he came home with no fish, he wasn’t lucky. He could only do his best. The poor man had a wife for many years, but no children came to them, and they were both now well into old age.
On a day he was out fishing with his rod and a fine salmon came to him. It was hard work, but he reeled in the fish and was about to kill it when it spoke to him! “Don’t kill me’’ said the salmon, “Let me go and I will tell you a story of good fortune.”
The poor man was amazed to hear the salmon speak, but he replied: “I will hear the story and, if I am pleased, I will let you go”.
“Listen now”, said the salmon. “I know you have been upset that you have no children; I am glad to tell you that you will soon have two sons.”
“That is certain to be untrue”, said the fisherman.
“I am not telling you a lie”, said the salmon. “Let me go and you will see that I am telling you the truth.”
The fisherman cut the line and released the salmon. He returned home and told his wife the great news. She was not impressed. “It’s a pity you did not bring the salmon back with you: it’s clear that he was mocking you!”
Nevertheless, within the year the couple were surprised to have two sons. “Look now”, said the fisherman, “wasn’t it the truth that the salmon told me?”
“By my soul it was”, said the woman, “but what shall we call these two?”
‘We will call them É Mhic and Ó Bhradáin” said the fisherman. And so it was. They were known as Hugh and O, the Two Sons of the Salmon. You could not put anything between them in looks, manner or speech.
As the boys grew, so did the luck of the fisherman. Every time he went out with his rod his catch increased fourfold, and they became rich enough that each boy could have a hawk, a greyhound and a horse. The boys also had the luck with their hunting.
At twenty years of age Hugh told his brother that he would leave and seek his fortune in the world. “If I am not back in twelve months, then come and find me,” he said . . .
Old photographs are irresistible. The collection of Tomás Ó Muircheartaigh who travelled and photographed the west of Ireland during the 1930s, 40s and 50s is an invaluable documentary of the times in which he lived. Ó Muircheartaigh’s pictures record rural life and – most impressively – the people who lived it. This is a post, mainly of portraits, taken from a book of his work published posthumously in 1970, and now hard to find.
Tomás was President of Conradh na Gaelige (The Gaelic League) between 1955 and 1959, and his photographs appeared on the cover of many editions of the League’s monthly magazine.
The portraits, sadly, do not record the names of the subjects nor – often – their localities. We only know, on the whole, that his travels were centred on west Kerry and the Blasket Islands. The images, however, are powerfully evocative and time and place are, perhaps, irrelevant.
Tomás Ó Muircheartaigh 1907 – 1967, sketched by Sean O’Sullivan:
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