An 1889 article syndicated in the Australian press looks at the legacy of the historic Irish abbeys left either in ruins or in Protestant hands following the Reformation. There are a number of points of interest, first the mention of Glenbeigh in the opening paragraph relates to burnings and evictions, not in the sixteenth or seventeenth centuries, but to the evictions in County Kerry in the 1880s during the Land War. Then, despite enlisting John Wesley as a witness, we have a reminder that we are in a pre-ecumenical age with the description of cold Protestant rituals conducted at historic ecclesiastical sites. I noted too the same wistful tone used to describe the lonely, windswept ruins in writings of this period about the 'Celtic church' employed here, as well as the same sense of regretful longing for a lost past. Even at Adare, where 'decay is arrested and beauty reigns', the writer still asks 'But who shall say that Mass will ever again be celebrated within its lonesome wind-swept wall?' The only ancient site where Mass was heard again was at Ballintubber Abbey (here spelt as Ballintoher), County Mayo. The article concludes with an evocative description of a type of 'hedge school' being conducted among its ruins:
THE RUINED ABBEYS IN IRELAND.
JOHN WESLEY said several things of us which are remembered. Most of them were very unkind, but some were involuntary tributes to our better nature. One thing he said was that the Irish are "an immeasurably loving people." Again, he declared that "the poor in Ireland, in general, are well-behaved; all the ill-breeding is among well dressed people." And he described certain dearly beloved brethren as "a well behaved, though genteel, congregation." All these remarks tend to prove that history repeats itself. Nor is the truth of that truism in any way depreciated by his expressions of astonishment at the immense quantity of ruins he found in Ireland. Of course, Wesley had not seen (for instance) the charred walls of the recently evacuated homes in Glenbeigh—the valley of fire, the valley of the evicted—but his days were not long after the Cromwellian wars, not a hundred years removed from the Williamite wars; and then, as now, our ruins of church, castle, and cabin, like our poor, were always with us.
A certain number of our most important ruins have been restored, and retained in Protestant possession; and in such cases a cold ritual is followed in the ancient sanctuary of the faith by a scanty congregation, who fail to see the inconsistency of worshipping at an altar without a sacrifice. Of these are St. Patrick's and Christ Church, in Dublin, St. Canice's in Kilkenny, and the ancient Cathedral of Tuam. Another number have been preserved, in a sense, remaining ruins, beautified with gardens and well-clipped ivy; tho entrance to the dark arched cloisters frowning under rose wreaths, as the Abbeys of Mucross and of Cong. In the lonely Franciscan abbey, which stands in Lord Dunraven's demesne, and is one of the famous group of ruins of Adare, near Limerick, decay is arrested and beauty reigns. But who shall say that Mass will ever again be celebrated within its lonesome wind-swept wall? When I saw it a few years ago summer rain was drifting through the delicate carved tracery of its shattered windows, weft of rain on a woff of sunshine, and a rainbow spanned the green and grey distance beyond it, one jewelled shaft lost in the thick, darkling forest trees over against the east, and the other dissolving its rose and saffron in the flying mists to westward that scudded before a light wind like an exodus of fairies from the gleaming and vanishing woodlands. There it stands, beautiful, like our everlasting hills, its open fretted arches, its mosses and lichens, forming part of our national wealth, as do the purples and violets and stern craggy crests of our mountains. The Franciscan Church of Adare was called in olden time Poor Abbey, as belonging to the Mendicant Friars—the friends, through grief and through danger, of the poverty-stricken Irish. Thomas, seventh Earl of Kildare, and his wife, Joanna, daughter of James, Earl of Desmond, were the chief founders of the abbey, and furnished it with glass windows, a bell of great value, and two silver chalices. Michael the Archangel was the patron of the church. Lord Dunraven believed that pictorial decorations were extensively used within it, "from the traces remaining on the tops.of the semi-circular arches surmounting the tombs, and on the surface of the revealed wall, a few of the patterns and patches of pale green and red being still visible." An old book of travels in Ireland says—"In this stately ruin are some remains of ancient painting yet to be seen, particularly a bishop, with his crozier and mitre, giving his benediction. St. Patrick, St. Brigid, and St. Columba are very conspicuous."
Another and better example of our preserved but not restored ruin is Mucross, famous because of its dreamlike beauty of the scenery hallowed by the presence of its ancient sanctuary. Standing as it does within echo reach of the bugle call that rings around the Eagle's Nest, within a bird's short flight of the magic shores of Inisfallen, the sweet venerableness of Mucross has been recognised by more human eyes and hearts than have ever found their way into most of our ruined cloisters. Of it an old book tells that "the Festival of St. Francis, the patron saint, is celebrated herein the month of July, upon which occasion the peasantry assemble in great numbers to receive the benediction of their pastors and make their confessions among the tombs and ruined walls of this venerable building nothing can inspire a more sincere feeling of reverence and awe than a glimpse of the reverend minister seated on a tomb, within the dark and gloomy recesses of he abbey, attentively listening or fervently praying over the penitent prostrate at his feet,"
A pendant to this picture is the sketch of the ancient abbey of Askeaton, founded by an Earl of Desmond in 1420 for Friars Minor. Holmes, in his travels in Ireland in the end of last century, describes it as a noble ruin entirely of black marble, in many parts richly ornamented, particularly in the cloisters, the waters of the River Deal rising several feet up to its walls; in the centre of the abbey an aged yew tree surrounded by tombs and broken flags. In this place," says Holmes, "the priest celebrates Mass, unprotected from the inclemency of the weather—a circumstance which denotes either extreme poverty, or, what is stronger, ancient prejudice in favour of this venerated spot; for they frequently walk six or seven miles to this abbey to hear Mass, and go home again. Many parts of the cloisters are exquisitely polished by the accidental friction of the clothes of such as pass to and fro." It may be truly said that these old chroniclers present us with pictures of life which could not be made anywhere out of Ireland.
Our ruins of this order, preserved and unpreserved, are almost innumerable, impressive alike from their own sacred forlornness and from the pathetic beauty of the landscape surrounding them. Yet another grouping may be made, a very small one unfortunately—that of the ruins of ancient shrines which have been restored and are in use for divine worship by the faithful of the present day. One of these is the White Abbey of the Trinitarians, at Adare, which was given by Lord Dunraven to the Catholics of Adare. He had previously converted the remains of the old Augustinian abbey into a parish church for the Protestants of the same place. The old Trinitarian abbey had been used as a ball-court, and there was a project on foot for fitting it up to be a markethouse. One day the Earl walked into the ruin, and standing gazing up at the venerable tower, he was heard to exclaim—" I will never give it to be a den of thieves!" Immediately afterward he sent for the parish priest (Rev. Fr. Lee, 1811), and the old Trinitarian abbey is now the Catholic Church of Adare. he traditions of the ancient abbey are interesting. The Order of the Most Holy Trinity for the Redemption of Captives was founded in 1198 by St. John of Martha and St. Felix of Valois, and was sanctioned by. Pope Innocent III. Its object was the relief and liberation of the Christian captives who had fallen into the hands of the Mohammedans. The habit is a soutane and scapular of white serge, with a red and blue cross on the right breast. The Irish Trinitarians established themselves at Adare, under the shadow of the princely Greraldines. The Franciscan Father, Bonaventure Baron, himself of the noble family of the Geraldines, writing, in 1686, the "Annals of the Order of the Most Holy Trinity for the Redemption of Captives," mentions the blessed Arthur O'Niell as haying been the Provincial of his Order in Ireland and Scotland. This O'Niell was the son of the great Irish chieftain, O'Niell, and died a martyr, preaching the faith in Asia in the year 1282. According to an ancient MS., now lost, he belonged to the house of the Order of Adare.
It is now proposed to restore for purposes of Catholic worship the ancient Abbey of Ballintoher, county Mayo, the only pre-Reformation church in Ireland which has never at any time been forsaken as a place of worship by the people. Fr. Brennan, who has undertaken this worthy work, says:—
"For nearly seven hundred years it has been the only place of worship for the faithful of Ballintoher. Built in 1216 (according to 'Ware's Antiquities' on the site of a church founded seven centuries before by St. Patrick) for the canons regular of St. Augustine, by Cathal O'Connor, King of Connaught, and brother of the last monarch of Ireland, it flourished until the time of Henry VIII., when it shared the fate of the other confiscated abbeys and monasteries of the country. In the last days of the reign of Elizabeth it was completely dismantled. During the Cromwellian campaign 'of the seventeenth century cannon against mediaeval stone masonry' it escaped the attention of the Puritan soldiery, who, fortunately, did not penetrate the beautiful glen in which it is situated, on the northern corner or Lough Carra. Hence its fine architecture still remains perfect. But for the stone groined roof over the chancel, the worshippers have had for the last three hundred years no other roof but the dome of heaven; and in the frosts, snows, and rains of winter they may here be seen kneeling with bared heads, like their forefathers in centuries past. Through wars and persecutions and through penal days they have clung, as the ivy on its ruined walls, to this roofless but beautiful old sanctuary, on whose ancient altar stone the Holy Sacrifice has been offered for nearly seven consecutive centuries."
A former effort to restore the church was interrupted by the famine. It is proposed to carry out the ancient Irish style of the architecture in effecting its restoration. It will be remembered that this Ballintoher was the ruined abbey in which Beranger, the French artist, on coming to sketch and ruminate among the solitary tombs, was startled to find a brisk scene of daily life being enacted— a schoolmaster holding school among the gravestones, his desk a monument larger than the rest, and the children sitting on broken stones around him, writing and casting accounts with chalk on the dark slate flags, made smooth by the disappearance of long obliterated names and inscriptions. — Dublin Correspondence Weekly Register.
The Advocate, Saturday, 5 October 1889, p.10
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