Three Irish Places
Colum, Padraic
72 THE COMMONWEAL May 26, 1926 THREE IRISH...
...I sit of the place...
...the cross is covered with sculptures that il- showed the Saint with the nest...
...His community This May time had a longer life than most learned communities have Since she is gone, enjoyed-it lasted for a thousand years, until the This spring I cannot bear English garrison in Athlone destroyed its flickering To walk beneath the weight of lilac scent life in 1552...
...I partook of less heroic calling it this, not because of the traditions connected fare than the bane of a chariot, however, and I did with the place, but because it seems as if we had not come to the daughters of the nephew of Tethra known it at a time in our lives when everything had the Formorian...
...branches, and look on the towers, the ruined churches, There is a stone with a hollow in it that is called the high crosses, and the river bending beyond...
...If we had remained But, Clonmacnoise 1 none other of Ireland's sacred here," said he, speaking of another place further up places has an eyesore planted so permanently upon the river where he and his companions had stayed for it as you have ! a while, "if we had remained here we would have Across the river is Connacht: one sees a few white, plenty of wealth, but few souls would go to Heaven...
...I can see two of the famous crosses...
...A in Glendaloch...
...ized of all Irish counties...
...lustrate a whole mythology...
...They say that a carving in the old thousand years...
...high as it is it seems It looks like a high candle there...
...And I doubt if Kieran, the carpenter's son, glass cases that enclose artificial wreaths on the graves had any care to found a monastery in a place where that break the grasses in Cashel and in Glendalough...
...I look down and into the than herdsmen and cattle...
...He kept it out County Louth is Monasterboice...
...But one does not think of it as really high- this strange place a thousand years ago built it, not everything here has to be on a companionable level...
...swered : "Round a shepherd's grave ; cut away the May 26, 1926 THE COMMONWEAL 73 thorns and thistles, my sons, and make a beautiful spot of birds, belongs to emptiness, to desolation...
...Twas of a know that Glendaloch belongs forever to the simplegirl that proved unkind...
...There are curlews in flocks there ; they To brave the daggers in a robin's song...
...his seer, over the marrow of Fedelm, past the wash- Glendaloch: Glendaloch is legendary--I feel like ing of the horses of Dea...
...little roof of tight slates and with its padlock on the I do not know O'Gnieve's poem in the original, but it door-what of this church that breaks the balance of can hardly be more beautiful than the translation by the towers and stands right in the way of the grave, T. W. Rolleston...
...There is a tower in Monasterboice, and I saw him all ready for one of his frequent journeys...
...a legend-a legend known or unknown...
...are amongst the great pieces of monumental sculpture...
...sixty or seventy, but 6oo feet high...
...Shepherds and saints-one can hardly under an ash-tree that has the wind roaring in its think of any other sort of folk having been here...
...their wings have just the color that the twilight sky The Saint became aware of the nest when the eggs has hereabouts...
...Looklishment...
...A friend sculptures...
...to have made an effort to produce trees that can stand But, Clonmacnoise ! And Turcan, who didst sculpbeside the ancient Irish towers, and over graves, as in ture at the base of thy great cross "an ecclesiastic this place...
...roses might grow abundantly...
...Here are no masses of stones as in the about builders in fables belongs to it...
...the cross of Muiredach in Monasterboice, the crosses They were shepherds who discovered Kevin ; he was here are of limestone and are covered with quaint living in a hollow tree, a young anchoret...
...Apparently there were no cattle around, for Kevin One has never seen a Celtic cross unless one has seen had to command a doe to come down from the moun- the crosses in these places, and, perhaps, the cross in tain to give nourishment to the children...
...on a stone nearby travesty of something done in a great style...
...I rethe other crosses ; its arms with the circle around them member a stained-glass window by Miss Purser that are wider...
...rise up making a call that, more than any other call JESSICA POWERS...
...founded had its great period at the beginning of the One of the round towers-O'Rourke's Tower, I think tenth century-now, the high Round Tower, the ruins it is called, carried my mind up further than any of little churches, are all that remain of the estab- round tower I have ever seen...
...the Deer Stone...
...on one or two that are likenesses of particular friends said one of the severer anchorets to Kevin when he of mine...
...The road goes between high hedges and low so have the wrens that flutter from bush to bush, from walls...
...Its great period was midway between That presses on my nostrils and my heart these dates...
...And in the cone- the remnant of a still higher tower...
...mount it, thinking I should be able to look from it "Thou hast heard that no bird while flying can hatch back to the north and to the place where the hosts her eggs...
...Here are no bogs as in And the Round Tower-everything that we heard the midlands...
...Indeed it is true, that in Ireland the more ancient a Clonmacnoise is not a land of roses...
...At But lately unto me, I am not strong the other side of the river are the flat pastures of Enough without the armor of her love Roscommon...
...We hear of great destructions sing it over to me-an old true-lover's song, she said that were wrought in this place-of pillagings, by it was, and she heard it sung at a wedding in Tormon Norse and Norman, by English and by Irish, but how Feckin forty years before...
...were laid...
...There are the great until the eggs were hatched and the fledglings were crosses cut in sandstone that have been standing for a ready to fly...
...It is topless...
...The Round Tower is over a hundred feet ing on it one can believe that the men who lived in high...
...It was can we believe that such things happened when we "Once I was at a nobleman's wedding...
...Here are no shadowed glens the little churches, the tombstones that lurk behind and dark tarns as in Wicklow, the county that is at yew-trees and great laurels and ancient walls, the the other side of Dublin County...
...Turcan 1 Clonmacnoise 1 the power of being stirred by heroic memories...
...She was Iona : what is put up for modern monuments is a milked into the hollow of the stone...
...And the faces shown in Birds, naturally, are in the legends relating to the them are the faces of Irish people of today-I look place...
...I liked the song...
...Anyway, Saint Kevin sculpture, the Cross of Muiredach...
...72 THE COMMONWEAL May 26, 1926 THREE IRISH PLACES By PADRAIC COLUM I CAME into Louth by the ways Cuchulinn came Irish yew-trees, dark and upright and lonesome, grow into it when he visited Emer in her father's Dun here and go well with the graves, the crosses, and the hereabout: From the dark covert of the sea, tower...
...the cross at Monasterboice belongs to his throw some pagan mystery that was connected with school...
...between the crosses and the yew-trees the swalacross the great sow's back, between the god and lows fly...
...friendly houses...
...When a prince asked him middle of the half-acre of graves and grass that is where he should build an oratory for him, Kevin anMonasterboice...
...he came, some say in the fifth, Two crosses, two towers, the ruins of two churches some, in the sixth century...
...These flats press the spirit of the place...
...And cattle...
...With ill intent...
...He was once praying, I like, too...
...Along the roads graze goats and geese-very wall to wall, from ivy-clump to ivy-clump, and the shaggy goats and very white geese...
...sitting on a chair, holding a teacher's ferule or rod, Clonmacnoise: "In a quiet watered land, a land of on the top of which is an owl, the symbol of wisdom, roses, stands Saint Kieran's city fair...
...they are in the County Roscommon...
...Louth is green and quern-stone that has been left here-they all have level...
...Now Clonmacnoise stands open to the sky where Since she is lost the broad, slow-flowing Shannon makes a bend...
...The walls of West and Northwest...
...Its fields grow oats and barley, and graze legends that have not been transmitted to us...
...Beside the other shaped Irish yew-trees that grow near it, nature seems tower is a ruined church with a beautiful doorway...
...0 servant of God, whither art thou bound...
...These yewI like Louth...
...It was in 544 that Saint Kieran came here and laid the foundation of a place of learning...
...Turcan was the sculptor of the higher of of mine, a scholar, maintains that Kevin came to over- the two...
...hearted...
...miles the tide comes up the river...
...So while its end rests on a beast denoting ignorance," the poem about Clonmacnoise-surely one of the most what of that little Protestant church with its horrid beautiful poems about a place ever written-begins...
...It has in it what is most authentic grey ruin of an ancient church as one looks at Clonin Irish literature-the sense of kinship with the dead, macnoise from the river...
...no one was ever here except shepherds and The Boyne has an outlet to the sea here : for two saints...
...I have seen on them herons taller and his arms, in the Irish fashion, outstretched so that he with wider wings than I have ever seen in any other formed a cross...
...Like is the mark of where the father sat...
...For one thing, it is the only part of great piece of broken wall stands between me and Ireland where one sees shepherds and sheep rather the outlook to the north...
...Anyway I came into the County Louth...
...it is not near burial place is the more it is desecrated, and that one any place that at any time might have been a land of gets used to seeing foolish little marble headstones and roses...
...While one of the churches was being The crosses at Monasterboice, and the crosses here, built the wife of a worker died, leaving two infants...
...It seems to me to be the most human- trees-surely they have a legend that we once knew...
...when they rise up and drift away palm that was held out and laid her eggs in the nest...
...when it is out great A story told about Saint Kevin seems to me to exmuddy flats are left where the road goes...
...the dark lakes here...
...She was good enough to of an age of fable...
...Then, rather than disturb the motherMonasterboice: But, of course, the great glory of bird, he kept his hand outstretched...
...It is shorter than is always represented with a blackbird's nest...
...A blackbird built her nest in the place in Ireland...
...And I remember red-breasts that sing into the evening, the herons that that I came upon an old woman in a very little field fly over the waters, and the lakes-or rather, the two who was quite surrounded with goats and she was tams of dark water that are here-they are all out singing a slow old song...
...There is that masterpiece of Irish church illustrated this legend...
...One expects a particular sort of legend of Queen Maeve were held back by Cuchulinn...
...The monastery that he -these are the visible monuments in Clonmacnoise...
Vol. 4 • May 1926 • No. 3
