Peter Costello
Summer outings (No.3 in a six-part series)
Clonmacnoise is one of the most remarkable places in Ireland. However, back in the late 1940s, the Emergency had left it even more isolated, a place which in the right light could seem unchanged since Early Christian times in Ireland. One of the pioneers of exploring Ireland’s inland waterways was Tom Rolt, who hired a boat in Athlone with a limited supply of fuel (still rationed in 1946). Here, from Green and Silver, is his evocation of St Ciaran’s city, lost in the broad bogs of central Ireland…
The scenery along the Shannon, with the exception of Lough Derg, cannot be called spectacular, and this is especially true of the nine-and-a-half mile reach from Athlone to Clonmacnoise.
The country is so flat that in clear weather it is possible to stand on Athlone Bridge and see quite distinctly the shape of the Slieve Bloom mountains thirty miles and more away to the south. The great river winds tortuously through reed fringed levels of water meadows interspersed with patches of bogland which, in time of winter flood, become a great inland sea…
Yet despite its monotony there is, for the river lover, a curious fascination about this great stream of Shannon, the tall reeds rustling and bowing to the wind, the spaciousness of the illimitable levels and over all the wide Irish sky which, even on a sunless day, has a strange luminous quality…
At length we sighted a line of low green hills, another of the eskers of glacial drift which interrupt the levels of the plain. Some time ago the rain had stopped, and now the sun suddenly burst out upon the hills so that their greenness seemed to shine with a brilliance that was almost unreal.
A grey round tower over-topped the shoulder of the hill, and we knew that we were approaching Clonmacnoise. But there was still some way to go for the esker deflects the river’s course, causing it to wind round its flanks until, rounding a sharp turn, we saw the ruins of the Seven Churches directly ahead of us.
After we had had some tea we rowed off in the dinghy, landing directly at the foot of the slope that led up to the ruins…
[His first impressions were affected by the way in which modern graves cruelly intruded upon the medieval graves that filled the enclosure, with ancient bones being often scattered across the grass. The hasty structure used for celebrating Mass in times of pilgrimage also seemed rawly out of place to his conservator’s eye.]
Long before our great abbeys were thought of, this silent place beside the Shannon was a great seat of learning”
From the point of view of the sight-seer, the most note-worthy features of Clonmacnoise are the High Cross, or the Cross of the Scriptures as it is called, to distinguish it from the other crosses within the precincts, and the beautiful doorway and chancel arch of the Nuns Church a quarter of a mile distant along an old causeway.
The Celtic Cross is said to have been erected in the year 914 by Abbot Colman over the grave of King Flann Sinna, the Ard Ri. Between them, these two had founded the cathedral church of Clonmacnoise where, beneath the chancel, Rory O’Connor the last king of Ireland lies buried. The Cross, of elaborate Hiberno-Romanesque workmanship and displaying upon its shaft a number of sym-bolical groups of figures, is in a wonderful state of preservation.
Doorways
The doorway and arch at the Nuns Church belong to the 12th Century and are said to have been erected by Dervorgilla, wife of Tiernan O’Rourke who, because her faithlessness led to the Norman invasion, has been called the ‘Helen of Ireland’.
With these exceptions there is nothing at Clonmacnoise to compare in glory of architecture with our mediaeval monuments.
Yet, with the possible exception of Glastonbury, we have nothing to compare with these ruins in their historical importance. It is for this reason that I have felt moved to speak so strongly about their present state.
Clonmacnoise is a monument not of national but of European significance. Long before our great abbeys were thought of, this silent place beside the Shannon was a great seat of learning, culture and Christian faith, a lighthouse of the arts of living in the long night of chaos and barbarism which fell upon Europe after the collapse of the Roman Empire, an influence which transcended national boundaries.
There was no sound at all but the distant pipe of the curlew crying over the darkening bogs”
Today, when Europe bids fair to fall into a similar state, there are those who believe that it will once again be Ireland’s destiny to become a citadel of Christianity and the humanities…
We clambered up the ruined stair of the castle that evening and sat upon the battlements looking out over the ruins and the river. The wind had fallen completely with the sun, the sky was over-cast and it was very still. There was no sound at all but the distant pipe of the curlew crying over the darkening bogs.
No landscape can have changed so little in 1,000 years. In these days of chaos, arrogance and confused thinking it is a pity, I thought, that more men cannot contemplate in quietness such immutable solitudes.
Their influence is salutory and chastening. They make man aware of his creaturehood, of the brevity of a life ‘bounded by a sleep’, and of the vanity of ambition. But while it thus humbles him, the natural world enlarges man’s humanity by enabling him to perceive the potential greatness of the human spirit with its unique creative capacity. It is a paradox that this perception should be born of humility and perish with pride, but so it is.
I believe that it was for this reason that the Celtic saints sought solitude and built their churches in the loneliness of the bogs or upon the crags and islands of a wild coast. St Ciaran was no exception, and he seems to have loved especially the Shannon [and] Clonmacnoise. Did he come as we had done, sailing down the river in a hide-covered curragh?
Slightly edited from passages in Green and Silver, by L. T. C. Rolt (London: Allen & Unwin, 1949). Another account of a visit to Clonmacnoise, also written soon after World War II, with a more local emphasis will be found in Harry Rice’s delightful Thanks for the Memory (Athlone Printing Works, 1952).
Next time: Boswell and Johnson on Columcille’s Iona in 1773.