The Catholic World Volume Iii Part 139

Nothing to conquer now--no call for strength; Naught to contend with--only to wait and bear, And see my withering powers and blighted gifts-- No room to act--nothing to do or dare: Speak now, my soul, if thou hast aught to say If thou seest light or any hope of day.

III.

Fret not this holy stillness with thy cries-- Patience, perturbed clay!

Lest thou should'st drown the voice of the All-wise With clamorous dismay.

Thinkest thou that clouds and mists are less G.o.d's work, Than sun or moon or stars?

His will is good, whether it bind the free Or sunder prison bars.

His hand has measured out each feather's weight Of this most grievous load; He bore the cross we bear, his heart, like ours, Once in life's furnace glowed.

We shall in heaven sing a psalm of joy For every earth-wrung moan; One little hour more, the work well done.

And we are all G.o.d's own.

CONTRASTS

There is no sound of anguish in the air, Bees hum, birds sing, the breeze is balmy-sweet And from the blooming hawthorn overhead A rosy shower droppeth at my feet.

No matter! G.o.d be praised--some untried heart, Sweet with the dewy freshness of life's dawn, Is gathering a glad presage of success From this bright, pitiless, resplendent morn.

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[From the Irish Industrial Magazine.]

THE INDUSTRIAL ARTS OF OUR ANCESTORS.

BY M. HAVERTY, ESQ.

ARTS OF CONSTRUCTION.

In considering the building arts, as practised by the inhabitants of this country in past ages, we must necessarily divide the subject according to epochs. The ethnologist would of course begin with his favorite scientific cla.s.sification of the Stone, the Bronze and the Iron periods; but this division is, to say the least of it, a very arbitrary, very indefinite, and very doubtful one. It leaves much too wide a scope for imagination, and offers no satisfactory explanation of social development; and the following obvious and natural order of periods, in the present instance, will answer our purpose, namely:

1. The Pre-Christian period, extending from some indefinite epoch of the pre-historic ages, down to the establishment of Christianity in Ireland, in the fifth century; 2. The early Christian period, extending from the last-mentioned epoch to the commencement of the Danish wars, in the beginning of the ninth century; 3. The period of obscurity and barbarism into which this country was plunged by those fierce and long-protracted wars, and from which it began to emerge in the reign of Brian, and after the battle of Clontarf, in 1014; 4. The period which followed that just mentioned, and which extends beyond the Anglo-Norman invasion until the native Irish ceased to act as a distinct people; and, [sic--no 5.] 6. The period which was inaugurated by the aforesaid Anglo-Norman epoch, and descended to modern times, embracing the ages, first of n.o.ble Gothic abbeys, and feudal keeps of Norman barons, and walled towns; and then of the fortified bawns and strong solitary towers of new proprietors, in the Tudor, Stuart, and Williamite times.

In the first of these periods there was no stone and mortar masonry known in Ireland, nor was there any knowledge of the arch. Of cyclopean masonry--masonry in which huge stones were frequently employed, but never any cement--some stupendous and wonderful examples belonging to this first period still remain; but there was no cemented work. This we may take as absolutely certain, notwithstanding the notions of some modern antiquaries about the supposed pre-Christian origin of the round towers. This pagan theory of the round towers is a pure creation of what we may call the conjectural school of Irish antiquaries. The ancient Irish never dreamt of it. It was suggested at a time when scarcely anything was known of the original native source of Irish history; and it has seldom been advocated except by those who are either still unacquainted with these sources of our history, or else who are carried away by false ideas of early Irish civilization, and visionary theories of ancient Irish fire-wors.h.i.+p and Orientalism; for all which there is not the slightest foundation in the actual history of the country. It is right that this should be distinctly understood: without entering into lengthened arguments on the subject, which would be out of place here, it ought to be quite sufficient for any rational person to know, that the character of all the remains of undoubted pagan buildings in Ireland is utterly inconsistent with the {781} supposition that the same people who built them also built the round towers; and that such knowledge as we actually possess of the manners and customs of the pagan Irish shows the absurdity of the notion that the round towers were built by them. The pa.s.sages of ancient Irish writings which may be adduced to show that the round towers were built by Christians are extremely numerous, while there is not one single iota of evidence in the written monuments of Irish history, either printed or MS., for their pagan origin--nothing, in fact, but wild, unsupported conjecture and imagination. And such being the case, and all the writings and researches of such distinguished Irish historical scholars as Petrie, O'Donovan, and O'Curry, who have pa.s.sed away, and of Wilde and Todd, and Graves and Reeves, and Ferguson, etc., tending to overturn the visionary theories of Irish antiquities, of which the round tower phantasy has been the most noted, it is time to abandon this last remnant of a false and exploded system.

What, then, are the remains which we have of the buildings or structures of the ancient Irish belonging to the first, or pagan, period? They are various, and exceedingly numerous. In the first place, there are the _raths_, or earthen forts, with which the whole face of the country is still absolutely dotted. These raths were the dwelling-places of the Irish, not only indeed, in pagan times, but much more recently. They were originally rather steep earthworks, surrounded by a ditch, and topped by a strong paling or stockade; sometimes there was a double or treble line of intrenchment, and within the inner fence the family or families of the occupants dwelt in timber or hurdle houses, of which, from the perishable nature of the materials, no traces of course remain. The cattle, too, were driven for safety within the inclosure, when it was known that an enemy was abroad; and it is probable that the position of a great many of the raths on a sloping surface was selected for purposes of drainage, seeing that the cattle were so frequently to be inclosed. It is also worthy of note, that these earthen forts were always polygonal, generally octagonal, and we have never seen one of them actually round; although it would have been much easier to describe the plain circle than the regular polygonal figure adopted.

When the inclosures were constructed of stone; they were called _cahirs_ or _cashels_. It has been stated by antiquaries that the stone forts were built by the early Irish colonists, called Firbolgs, and the earthen forts by the subsequent colony of Tuath de Danaans; but it is probable that each colony built their strongholds of the materials which they found most convenient. In the rich plains of Meath, where there are very few surface stones that could have been employed for the purpose, we find none but earthen forts; and in the Isles of Arran, where there is little indeed besides solid rock, the Firbolgs necessarily constructed their famous duns of stone. These vast Firbolg duns of Arran must have been impregnable in those days, if defended by sufficient garrison; and their size and number in a place so small and barren show that almost the whole remnant of the race must have been compelled by hard necessity to seek shelter there against their pressing foes. It would also appear that the abundant supply of stone induced the occupants of those Arran forts to subst.i.tute stone houses in their interior for the habitations of timber and wattles used elsewhere; as we here find numerous remains of the small beehive houses, called _cloghanes_, formed by the overlapping of flat stones, laid horizontally, until they meet at top, thus roofing in the house without an arch. Both cloghanes and forts are built, of course, without cement; and no one could for a moment imagine that the Round Tower, of which a portion still {782} remains in the largest island, could possibly have been the work of the same masons.

The style of building is the same in the Duns of Aran; in Staig Fort, in Kerry; in the Greenan of Aileach, in Donegal; and in general in any of the primitive _cahirs_ or _cashels_, wherever they exist in Ireland; nor is there any material difference between these and the similar structures to be found in Wales--such as the Castell-Caeron over Dolbenmaen, in Caernarvons.h.i.+re.

The same Irish word, Saor, (p.r.o.nounced Seer,) originally signified both a carpenter and a mason; and in an Irish poem, at least eight hundred and fifty years old, we have a list of the ancient builders, who erected the princ.i.p.al strongholds of pagan times in Ireland: such as--"Casruba, the high-priced cashel-builder, who employed quick axes to smoothen stones;" and "Rigriu and Garvon, son of Ugarv, the cashel-builders of Aileach," and "Troiglethan, who sculptured images, and was the rath-builder of the Hill of Tara;" while every one familiar with the native Irish traditions has heard the name of Grubban-Saor, to whose skill half the ancient castles of Ireland were, without any reference to chronology, supposed to owe their strength.

An Irish antiquary of the seventeenth century, who enjoyed the friends.h.i.+p of Sir James Ware, writes as if he believed that the ancient pagan Irish understood the use of cement, although, as he confesses, no vestige of stone and mortar work by them remained in his day. But his mode of arguing, as it will be perceived, is very inconclusive. After enumerating several of the ancient raths and cashels of Ireland, he writes: "We have evidence of their having been built like the edifices of other kingdoms of the times in which they were built; and why should they not? for there came no colony into Erin but from the eastern world, as from Spain, etc.; and it would be strange if such a deficiency of intellect should mark the parties who came into Ireland, as that they should not have the sense to form their residences and dwellings after the manner of the countries from which they went forth, or through which they travelled." [See Introduction to Dudley Mac Firbis's great "Book of Genealogies,"

translated in "O'Curry's Lectures," pp. 222, etc.] It is quite certain that the early colonizers of Ireland, to whom Mac Firbis thus alludes, were a portion of that great Celtic wave of population which pa.s.sed from East to West over Europe, leaving the same earthern mounds and cyclopean stone structures behind as monuments wherever they went; but it is equally certain, that if these ancient colonies visited a.s.syria, and Egypt, and Greece in their peregrinations, as Mac Firbis believed they did, they did not carry with them a.s.syrian, or Egyptian, or Grecian masonry or architecture into Ireland. The raths and cashels which they constructed were exceedingly simple in their character, and in very few indeed of the former is there the slightest grace of stonework to be discovered. Caves were very often formed under the raths; and Mac Firbis states that under the rath of Bally O Dowda, in Tireragh, he himself had seen "nine smooth stone cellars," and that its walls were still of the height of "a good cow-keep." Nor were the contents of the ancient Irish dwellings less simple than the buildings themselves; for we find by the Brehon Laws that "the Seven valuables of the house of a chieftain were--a caldron, vat, goblet, mug, reins, horse-bridle, and pin;" the first-mentioned articles indicating clearly the usages of hospitality, which always formed the predominating inst.i.tution of the Irish. The same book of Brehon Laws refers to "a house with four doors, and a stream through the centre, to be provided for the sick"--such, apparently, being the ideas at that time of what a hospital should be.

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It is hard to say when the popular notion originated which attributes the ancient raths and mounds to the Danes. It is quite dear that Mac Firbis knew very well they were not Danish, though the idea must have prevailed when he wrote, (A.D. 1650;) for his contemporary, Lord Castlehaven, speaks of withdrawing his troops, during the civil war of 1645, within one of the "Danish forts," which were so numerous in the country; and such was the fas.h.i.+on of attributing all our antiquities to a people who had impressed the memory of the nation with such terrible and indelible traditions of themselves, that even Archdeacon Lynch, the author of "Cambrensis Eversus," supposes the Danes to have been the builders of the round towers. Dr. Molyneux, who wrote toward the close of the same century, treats us to a whole book about "the Danish Forts and Mounds;" but we know perfectly well that the Danes of Ireland resided only in the seaport towns and their vicinities, and had no dwellings, and consequently no raths or mounds in the interior of the country.

Besides the earthen and stone forts, which, it must be remembered, were inhabited in the early Christian as well as in the pagan times, and down to a period which it is impossible now to define, we have several remains of the early Irish habitations, called _cranogues_.

These were small stockaded and generally artificial islands, in the smaller lakes, and were only accessible by means of boats, ancient specimens of which, hewn out of a single tree, have been found in the vicinity of the cranogues in recent times. Some of these cranogues are known to have been occupied in comparatively modern times; and the strong timber stakes by which they were generally surrounded are, in a few instances, still found singularly fresh, and with indications of having been connected by a strong framework.

Of the state of the building arts in Ireland during the early Christian period we are enabled to form a tolerably accurate idea, both by the large number of remains still existing, and by the notices on the subject which we find in historical doc.u.ments. Many of the very earliest Christian edifices devoted to religion in Ireland were built of stone; but it is clear, nevertheless, that the national fas.h.i.+on was to construct them of timber; and this fas.h.i.+on the Irish had in common with the Britons, or, we should rather say, with the Celtic nations generally. Strabo says the houses of the Gauls were constructed of poles and wattle work; and we learn from Bede, that among the Britons building with stone was regarded as a characteristic Roman practice.

We know that both in Ireland and Britain there was a national prejudice in favor of the custom of employing timber to construct their churches. The first three churches erected in Ireland--those, namely, constructed by St. Palladius in his unsuccessful mission immediately before St Patrick--were of oak. Long after this time, in the sixth century, St. Columba lived in a wooden cell in the island of Hy, as his biographer, St. Ad.a.m.nan, relates; and the use of timber for their religious edifices was much in favor with the Columbian monks wherever they settled. So late as the year 1142, when St. Malachy was building the church of the famous Cistercian Abbey of Mellifont, in Louth, he received some opposition from one of the local magnates, because he had undertaken to erect it in an expensive and solid manner of stone; the argument of this person being, that "they were Scots, not Frenchmen," and that a wooden oratory in the old Irish fas.h.i.+on would have sufficed.

It is a curious circ.u.mstance connected with this Abbey of Mellifont, that it is the only Irish edifice of a date older than the Anglo-Norman period in the ruins of which Dr. Petrie discovered any bricks to have been used; and we know that it was erected by monks whom St. Malachy had sent to study in the monastery of St. Bernard, in France; whence the allusion to {784} Frenchmen made by the Irishman who had objected to the style of the building. Still it is plain that the ecclesiastical edifices of stone were very numerous in the country at that very time; for a few years after St. Gelasius, the Archbishop of Armagh, caused a limekiln of vast dimensions to be constructed, in order, as the annalists say, to make lime for the repairs of the churches of Armagh which had been allowed to fall into decay.

The primitive wooden churches were, at least in some instances, constructed of planed boards, and were thatched with reeds, the walls being also frequently protected by a covering of reeds, for which, in later times, a sheeting of lead was sometimes subst.i.tuted. This use of lead sheeting became very general in England; but we may presume that it was employed in comparatively few cases in Ireland. Sometimes, instead of boards or hewn timber, wattles were employed, and these were plastered with mud, the wattles being formed of strong twigs interlaced. We shall presently see that the use of wattles for building purposes was in vogue in Ireland up to comparatively modern times. It is stated in the life of St. Patrick, that when that apostle visited Tyrawley, in the county of Sligo, finding that timber was not abundant, he erected a church of mud--so ancient is the custom of employing that material for building in Ireland--a material, however, which never could be rendered as suitable for the purpose in our moist climate, as it is found to be in some of the southern portions of Europe.

From the very introduction of Christianity, we repeat, stone and mortar were frequently employed for the building of churches in Ireland. A building of this description was always called in Irish _Damhliag_, a word literally signifying "stone church." This term is still preserved in the name of Duleek in the county of Meath, where the old stone church so called, and which is supposed, on good authority, to have been the very first such edifice erected in Ireland, is still in good preservation; it was built by St. Kienan, a disciple of St. Patrick, who died in 490; and its age is thus established beyond any doubt. The stone building, or _Damhliag_, as Dr. Petrie has remarked, is always latinized by the old Irish writers _templum, ecclesia_, or _basilica_; while the wooden building is simply called oratorium.

The ancient Irish churches are almost invariably small, seldom exceeding 80 feet in length, and not usually being more than 60 feet.

The great church or cathedral of Armagh was originally 140 feet long; but this was almost a solitary exception. The smaller churches are simple oblong quadrangles, while in the larger ones there is a second and smaller quadrangle at the east end, which was the chancel or sanctuary, and which is separated from the nave by a large semicircular arch. The entrance door was always originally in the west end, and square-headed, the top lintel being generally formed of a single very large flat stone; but in every instance the square-headed western doorway was in process of time built up, and another doorway, in the pointed style, opened in the south wall, near its western extremity. The windows are extremely small, and very few, generally not more than three, two of which are in the sanctuary, and all being in the south wall; they are frequently triangular-headed, formed by two flat stones leaning against each other; and it is probable that in many cases they were never glazed. The sides of the doorways and windows are inclined, in the manner of the cyclopean buildings--a style of architecture with which they have more than one point in common; for enormous stones are frequently used, the single stone being made to form both faces of the wall. Polygonal stones are employed, without any attempt to build in courses; and even flat stones are often placed at angles, when, with the aid of very little skill, they might have {785} been placed horizontally; while another singular feature often to be observed in the oldest Irish stone churches is, that the side walls and ends are built up independently, and not bound together at the corners by any interlapping stones. All these peculiarities are to be found, in a very marked degree, in the extremely curious specimens of seventh and eighth century buildings in the South Islands of Arran; and, with the exception of some Christian _cloghanes_, and some stone-roofed oratories like those near Dingle, all these early Christian edifices have been built with lime cement.

From the rudeness of the masonry in the buildings of the early Christian period, a very curious argument has been adduced in favor of the Pagan origin of the Round Towers. Some persons, in fact, do not hesitate to argue that, as the Round Towers frequently exhibit a better style of masonry than the ruined churches in their neighborhood, they must have been erected by some _earlier_ race of builders, thus adopting the very opposite to the correct and natural conclusion which the premises would suggest. Such persons must have a very misty idea of Irish history; they do not appear to be aware that there is no country in Europe, except Greece and Rome, of which the ancient history can boast of such a clear and consecutive series of written and traditional annals as that of Ireland. This is the acknowledged opinion of the most learned investigators. There is, then, no room whatever for any such conjectural race or epoch as that which the theory in question would suppose in Irish history; there is no room for such wild hypotheses as may be framed, for instance, to account for the remains of extinct civilized races in the interior of North America. Any one who has the singularly distinct chain of ancient Irish chronicles present to his mind must be aware of this fact, and must know perfectly well that there was no mysterious unknown race in Ireland before the introduction of Christianity who could have built the round towers--even if it were probable that such a race would have built these, and left no other fragment of stone and mortar work in the land! As to the disparity sometimes to be observed in the masonry of the towers and the ancient churches beside them, it can be explained without any such absurd hypothesis. It is clear from the mouldings of the windows, and other architectural details, and even from the statements of our annalists, that some of the Round Towers are not older than the eleventh or twelfth century, and consequently their masonry might well be superior to that of churches built some four or five hundred years before them. But, even when the builders were contemporary, they were not such dull craftsmen as not to have understood perfectly well that a more careful style of workmans.h.i.+p was required in an edifice which they should carry to a height of 120 or 130 feet than in one of which the walls would not exceed 10 or 14 feet in elevation. In fact, a little consideration must show any enlightened man that the theory to which we have referred is utterly untenable.

Mr. Parker, a high authority on questions of architectural antiquity, has, in his valuable series of papers on the subject in the "Gentleman's Magazine," thrown considerable light on Irish mediaeval architecture. One point, of which he has been decidedly the first observer, is, that all the details of an ancient building in Ireland seldom or never belong to the period at which the building was, according to record, erected. This is an extremely carious fact; and there can be no doubt of Mr. Parker's accuracy on the point; but it appears to us that he invariably finds his remark verified in castles and abbeys of the Anglo-Norman period in Ireland. To what, then, is the peculiarity to be attributed? Could the architects have been Irish, and could they have adopted their principles from the study of older edifices {786} in England? On this point we are not aware that he comes to any conclusion; but, in describing the interesting details of Cormac's Chapel, on the Rock of Cashel--one of the most valuable remains of mediaeval architecture in the empire, and which was built some fifty years before the Anglo-Norman invasion--he says, "It is neither earlier nor later in style than buildings of the same date in England; and with the exception of a few particulars, agrees in detail with them." From this we may conclude, that before the arrival of the Anglo-Normans the Irish architects were fully up to the contemporary state of their art, though subsequently the Anglo-Irish fell into the anachronisms which Mr. Parker so frequently points out.

When Henry II. resolved on spending the Christmas of 1171 in Dublin, there was no building in that old capital of the Ostmen sufficiently s.p.a.cious to accommodate his court; and a pavilion was accordingly constructed for the purpose of plastered wattles, in the Irish fas.h.i.+on, on a site at the south side of the present Dame street This mode of constructing houses must have been very convenient in times when the face of a country was liable every other year to be devastated by war, and when it would have been folly to erect a habitation intended to be permanent. The destruction of all the dwellings in a territory at that time, was not quite so ruinous a catastrophe as it might seem to us, especially as it was a very usual thing to have the granaries under ground.

The employment of wattles for one purpose or other, in the construction of buildings, appears to have been very long retained in Ireland; and they seem to have been constantly used by the masons as centering in the building of arches, as may be seen from an examination of any of the ruined abbeys or castles throughout the country, where the impression of the interwoven twigs will always be found in the mortar of the vaulted roofs and arches. Mr. Parker appears to have been particularly struck by this circ.u.mstance, which, however, is familiar to every Irish antiquary; but he tells us that he has found the same thing in a few instances in England.

A French gentleman, who travelled through Ireland in 1644, has left us a curious account of the mode of constructing their habitations employed at that time by the rural population. He writes: "The towns are built in the English fas.h.i.+on, but the houses in the country are in this manner: two stakes are fixed in the ground, across which is a transverse pole, to support two rows of rafters on the two sides, which are covered with leaves and straw. The cabins are of another fas.h.i.+on. There are four walls the height of a man, supporting rafters, over which they thatch with straw and leaves; they are without chimneys, and make the fire in the middle of the hut, which greatly incommodes those who are not fond of smoke."

The writer goes on to describe the fortified domiciles of the gentry.

He says: "The castles or houses of the n.o.bility consist of four walls extremely high, thatched with straw; but, to tell the truth, they are nothing but square towers without windows, or, at least, having such small apertures as to give no more light than there is in a prison; they have little furniture, and cover their room with rushes, of which they make their beds in summer, and of straw in winter; they put the rushes a foot deep on their floors, and on their windows, and many of them ornament the ceilings with branches." (The Tour of M. De la Boullaye le Gouz.)

This description is applicable to those numerous, solitary, and gloomy buildings called castles, the ruins of which are so conspicuous in every part of the country, and a considerable number of which were erected by the Undertakers, in the reign of James I.; while it must be confessed that the mode of constructing the hovels of the peasantry, as described in the preceding extract, has not undergone much improvement, up to the present day, in many parts of Ireland.

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