Category Archives: Graveyard

A Sadder Sight than One would Think



‘It was a sadder sight than one would think,
To see that ruined church upon the hill,
Deserted, dreary, lone and desolate;
But then its spire would point to heaven still.
Like standard-bearer wounded in the fight,
Who, with his last remaining strength, upholds
His nation’s banner; so this dying church,
In its last hours, seemed bent on saving souls.

‘Twas sad to see the windows broken through;
But then they let God’s air and sunshine in:
The church, once closed to keep all errors out,
Now seemed as if it prayed more light to win.
And early spring-birds entered fearless there,
Within the church-pale unconverted came,
And built their nests within the pulpit’s shade,
And never dreamed there could be any blame…’





‘I wondered if the ancient fathers slept
In peace, within the churchyard just away,
While this, their pride, their consecrated dome,
So all unheeded crumbled to decay;
And more, if creeds escape while churches fall,
If they’ve no broken doors and windows, too,
By time’s or progress’ hand,—through which the light
Of higher truths comes brightly streaming through.

I climbed with fear the staircase weak and old,
That tottered like a ship by tempest driven,
And wondered if the saints had feared as much,
When through its creed they groped their way to heaven;
And stood within the galleries that ran
From end to end, and bent and gazed below
With heart that trembled like the saints of old,
Lest all should crumble, and I “sink to woe.”…’





‘And, as I gazed, and thought how sad that now
No feet of worshippers its old aisles trod,—
Alike forsaken by its builder, man,
And him to whom they gave, its owner, God;
I heard the voice of children in their mirth,
A group of little faces gathered there,
All unbaptized, some fresh from God’s own hand,
Who played and sported where they knelt in prayer.

I lingered till the human angels passed,—
Until the sun was growing faint and dim,
When, soft and sweet, amid the, stillness there,
The birds—Heaven’s choir—began their vesper hymn;
And while I listened to their “Te Deum,”
That made the ruin with its echo ring,
I said, “Not half so sweet the anthems loud,
That many souls in dim cathedrals sing!”‘



Extracts from The Ruined Church by Achsa Sprague (published posthumously, 1864)
Photographs show the ruins of Coolaghflags church, County Kilkenny, a late mediaeval chapel which was enlarged c.1750.

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Resting in Peace



At the eastern end of the graveyard around St Owen’s church in Ballymore, County Westmeath and surrounded by tombstones going back several hundred years is this little mausoleum or mortuary chapel associated with the Magan family of Umma House which stands some five miles to the south. While the building dates from the 17th century, the doorcase and window are believed to have come from an earlier tower house. The church can be seen here: constructed in 1827 with a loan of £1,043 from the Board of First Fruits, it replaced an earlier place of worship and was intended to hold congregations of up to 300 persons. However, it never attracted a fraction of that number and closed for services in 1959, being unroofed five years later. 



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A Funeral is Passing


‘It is curious to observe how customs and ceremonies degenerate. The present Irish cry, or howl, cannot boast of such melody, nor is the funeral procession conducted with much dignity. The crowd of people who assemble at these funerals sometimes amounts to a thousand, often to four or five hundred. They gather as the bearers of the hearse proceed on their way, and when they pass through any village, or when they come near any houses, they begin to cry—Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Agh! Agh! raising their notes from the first OH! to the last AGH! in a kind of mournful howl. This gives notice to the inhabitants of the village that a FUNERAL IS PASSING and immediately they flock out to follow it. In the province of Munster it is a common thing for the women to follow a funeral, to join in the universal cry with all their might and main for some time, and then to turn and ask—”Arrah! Who is it that’s dead?—who is it we’re crying for?” Even the poorest people have their own burying-places—that is, spots of ground in the churchyards where they say that their ancestors have been buried ever since the wars of Ireland; and if these burial-places are ten miles from the place where a man dies, his friends and neighbours take care to carry his corpse thither. Always one priest, often five or six priests, attend these funerals; each priest repeats a mass, for which he is paid, sometimes a shilling, sometimes half a crown, sometimes half a guinea, or a guinea, according to their circumstances, or, as they say, according to the ability of the deceased. After the burial of any very poor man, who has left a widow or children, the priest makes what is called a COLLECTION for the widow; he goes round to every person present, and each contributes sixpence or a shilling, or what they please. The reader will find in the note upon the word WAKE, more particulars respecting the conclusion of the Irish funerals.’





‘Certain old women, who cry particularly loud and well, are in great request, and, as a man said to the Editor, “Every one would wish and be proud to have such at his funeral, or at that of his friends.” The lower Irish are wonderfully eager to attend the funerals of their friends and relations, and they make their relationships branch out to a great extent. The proof that a poor man has been well beloved during his life is his having a crowded funeral. To attend a neighbour’s funeral is a cheap proof of humanity, but it does not, as some imagine, cost nothing. The time spent in attending funerals may be safely valued at half a million to the Irish nation; the Editor thinks that double that sum would not be too high an estimate. The habits of profligacy and drunkenness which are acquired at WAKES are here put out of the question. When a labourer, a carpenter, or a smith, is not at his work, which frequently happens, ask where he is gone, and ten to one the answer is—”Oh, faith, please your honour, he couldn’t do a stroke to-day, for he’s gone to THE funeral.” Even beggars, when they grow old, go about begging FOR THEIR OWN FUNERALS that is, begging for money to buy a coffin, candles, pipes, and tobacco.’





‘Those who value customs in proportion to their antiquity, and nations in proportion to their adherence to ancient customs, will doubtless admire the Irish ULLALOO, and the Irish nation, for persevering in this usage from time immemorial. The Editor, however, has observed some alarming symptoms, which seem to prognosticate the declining taste for the Ullaloo in Ireland. In a comic theatrical entertainment, represented not long since on the Dublin stage, a chorus of old women was introduced, who set up the Irish howl round the relics of a physician, who is supposed to have fallen under the wooden sword of Harlequin. After the old women have continued their Ullaloo for a decent time, with all the necessary accompaniments of wringing their hands, wiping or rubbing their eyes with the corners of their gowns or aprons, etc., one of the mourners suddenly suspends her lamentable cries, and, turning to her neighbour, asks, “Arrah now, honey, who is it we’re crying for?”’


Extracts from Castle Rackrent by Maria Edgeworth (1800)
Photographs of a graveyard in Ballingarry, County Limerick
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Designed rather for Military than Ecclesiastical Purposes


‘The churchyard of Mainham is situated close to a remarkable moat near the entrance gate to Clongowes Wood College, the former residence of a family named BROWNE who in their day called the place Castle Browne which reverted to its present ancient name when this well-known Roman Catholic College was founded there. Extensive remains of the old church and buildings in connection with it still exist. By the side of the little trefoiled-headed window of the chancel is a small circular mural table with the following inscription:-
+
IHS
Here lieth ye body of Margrate DILON who deceased February ye 7th 1816 aged 68 years. & also ye body of Danniall BYRN who deceased May ye 30 17_8 aged 77 years.
Erected by Barnaby BYRN
A small coat-of-arms, of the O’BYRNE family is cut in relief below the inscription.’
Lord Walter FitzGerald, Journal of the Association for the Preservation of the Memorials of the Dead, 1904




The Order of Knights of the Hospital of Saint John of Jerusalem, otherwise known as the Knights Hospitaller, was a mediaeval military order founded in the early 12th century. Originally established to care for pilgrims travelling to Jerusalem during the Crusades, the order developed into an international body of mounted knights. Members took an oath to provide hospitality for the sick, injured and poor, while also training for warfare in defence of Christianity. The Knights Hospitaller arrived in Ireland around the same time as the Cambro-Normans and here, as elsewhere, the order was organised around a central Priory and Preceptories. In 1174, Richard de Clare, otherwise known as Strongbow, established the Priory of Ireland and Hospital of St John at Kilmainham on the outskirts of Dublin: it stood to the west of the site where the Royal Hospital Kilmainham now stands (some of the stones of the old priory were supposedly incorporated into the hospital’s chapel). Eventually the order had 129 preceptories across the country, including one already seen here at Kilteel, County Kildare (see Inside the Pale « The Irish Aesthete). Elsewhere in the county, another was found at Mainham. 




According to the Rev. M Comerford in Collections relating to the Dioceses of Kildare And Leighlin (1883), ‘the old parochial church of Mainham, or Menham, still exists in ruins. It was about 65 feet in length, by 18 in width. A tower with a stone staircase, stands on the south-eastern side and appears to have been designed rather for military than ecclesiastical purposes. The church-ruin stands in the midst of an extensive burial-ground.’ Little has changed since this was written, indeed the church was already recorded as being a ruin by the mid-17th century. Like so many other such places in Ireland, even after the building ceased to be used for religious services, it continued to be used as a burial site, with a number of attractive old funerary monuments found here, not least that mentioned above. 


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The Tomb of the Unknown Family



Today being Hallow’een, here are some rather dejected looking family mausolea in the graveyard of St Mary’s, Croom, County Limerick. One or two of them can be identified, an example being that carrying the notification, ‘This Vault was erected by Denis Lyons Esqr in Memory of his Eldest Son, and as a Burial Place of the Family, AD 1802.’ Another carries the motto ‘Fortes fortuna juvat’ (Fortune favours the Brave), along with the name of Dickson and the date 1806. The families whose remains were interred in several others, however, are no longer known and they are gradually sliding into ruin.


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The Pale Moon was Rising


For the week that’s in it: on the side of a road to the immediate north-west of Tralee, County Kerry can be found the graveyard of Clogherbrien. Seemingly, this site is where Mary O’Connor, the original Rose of Tralee, was buried. According to popular legend, she was a poor but beautiful servant girl with whom William Mulchinock, member of a wealthy merchant family fell in love and about whom he later wrote the following sentimental lines:
‘The pale moon was rising above the green mountains,
The sun was declining beneath the blue sea,
When I strayed with my love by the pure crystal fountain,
That stands in the beautiful Vale of Tralee.
She was lovely and fair as the rose of the summer,
Yet ‘twas not her beauty alone that won me.
Oh no, ‘twas the truth in her eyes ever dawning
That made me love Mary, the Rose of Tralee.’





The same popular tale proposes that in 1843, having been falsely accused of the murder of another local man, William Mulchinock was forced to abandon the lovely Mary O’Connor and flee Ireland, moving to India where he became a war correspondent on the Northwest frontier during the Afghanistan War. Supposedly, following the intervention of fellow Irishman and Commander-in-Chief of the British army in India, Field-Marshall Hugh Gough, after six years Mulchinock was able to return home. However, the day he arrived back in Tralee happened to coincide with Mary O’Connor’s funeral.  Seemingly Mulchinock was heartbroken, although he recovered sufficiently to marry later that year and move to the United States where he and his wife Alice had a number of children, Mulchinock, legend would have it, then abandoned this family, preferring to return once more to Tralee where he pined for Mary O’Connor before dying of fever in 1864. 





For all its whimsical charm, the above story bears little semblance to the truth. William Pembroke Mulchinock (1820-64) was indeed the member of a well-to-do merchant family in Tralee, and indeed a supporter of the Young Ireland movement in the 1840s. On the other hand, the date of his marriage to Alice Keogh of Ballinasloe was 1847 (when he was supposed still to be in India) and, accompanied by his wife and a young daughter, he emigrated to the United States in 1848: the couple would later have a son. In New York, Mulchinock worked for various newspapers and wrote verses, publishing a collection in 1851: tellingly, this volume (dedicated to Henry Longfellow) did not include ‘The Rose of Tralee.’ That poem had already appeared in print in 1846, when included in a volume called The heir of Abbotsville by English author, Edward Mordaunt Spencer, published the verses in his 1846 volume, The heir of Abbotsville, with an annotation stating ‘Set to music by Stephen Glover, and published by C. Jeffreys, Soho-square.’ As for Mulchinock, it is true that his marriage failed and that he returned to Tralee where in 1861 he was one of the founders of the Kerry Star, the first Roman Catholic-run newspaper in Kerry, dying of fever in October 1864. Returning to Mary O’Connor, her own supposed burial place is marked not by one of the handsome table tombs which proliferate in Clogherbrien graveyard, but by a singularly ugly modern monument. 


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The Heavy Hand is Uppermost




After last Friday’s text about the Massy mausoleum in the graveyard of Ardagh, County Limerick (Blessed are the Dead « The Irish Aesthete), here is another such monument in the same site. In this instance, it commemorates William Smith O’Brien, one of the key figures in the Young Ireland movement who, following a failed armed uprising in 1848, was transported to Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania), although pardoned and permitted to return to his native country in 1856. Erected the year after O’Brien’s death in 1864, the mausoleum was designed by Limerick-born architect William Fogerty in the Hiberno-Romanesque style. It contains the remains not just of O’Brien but also his wife Lucy Caroline Gabbett, who predeceased him, and the couple’s eldest son Edward William O’Brien, described on an inscription  as “A Just Man, Lover of His People.” Above the cast-iron panelled door can be seen the O’Brien coat of arms carved in sandstone. The chevron pattern mouldings above the door are supported by Connemara marble columns, and note how the outermost limestone arch concludes in balls of shamrocks. Inside the tympanum is O’Brien’s motto,  ‘Is laidir an lamh in uachtair’ (The heavy hand is uppermost) Sandstone and limestone are also employed in alternate bands around the rest of the building, with a series of blind arches on three sides.




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Blessed are the Dead



Following last Monday’s entry about Glenville, County Limerick, here in a nearby graveyard is the Massy Mausoleum, dating from 1864 although Eyre Massy, whose remains it holds, only died five years later. The limestone mausoleum also contains the remains of Charles Massy, who had emigrated to Australia (where his descendants still live). On the south side, below the Massy coat of arms, is a sarcophagus in raised relief on which is inscribed a quotation from the Book of Revelation, ‘Blessed are the dead which die in Christ/from henceforth yea saith the Spirit/That they may rest from their labours/and their works do follow them.’


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Left of Centre



After last week’s coverage of Loughton, County Offaly, here is the site where various members of the families who once owned the property are interred. Dating from 1830, the mausoleum stands in the graveyard of nearby Borrisnafarney church, erected the previous year with funds provided by the late Thomas Ryder Pepper who, it will be remembered, had died in 1828 following a hunting accident. Of dressed limestone with a pitched slab stone roof, the Gothic Revival building has buttresses at each corner and at the centre of the side elevations, at the top of which run lines of arcades. One curious detail: note how the pointed arch doorcase is not quite in the middle of the building (instead being slightly to the left of centre). Having fallen into some disrepair, the mausoleum underwent restoration in 2022.



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Somewhat Pharaonic



On high ground to the south of St Finian’s church in Kinnitty, County Offaly, this is a mausoleum erected to commemorate the Bernard family who lived nearby at Castle Bernard (now Kinnitty Castle). There seems to be some confusion over who was responsible for commissioning the structure, with many writers proposing that, following time spent in Egypt, Richard Wellesley Bernard did so in 1834 , but since he was then only aged 12 and had yet to leave Ireland, this seems unlikely. It may instead have been his father, Thomas Bernard, who died that year and was also responsible for rebuilding the family house. In the Pevsner Guide to this part of the country, Andrew Tierney proposes that the inspiration for the mausoleum came from the first century BC Pyramid of Cestius found next to the Protestant Cemetery in Rome. Of grey sandstone ashlar, rather unusually, the blocks run diagonally across each face before interlocking in the middle. Notice also how the cast-iron doors giving access to the interior are laid flush with the wall.



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