A beautiful young maiden was staying at the house of this kinglet, who would not allow her marry; and all unbecoming intimacy was also strictly forbidden between her and any member of the king’s household. But the smith, not knowing or ignoring this prohibition, won the affections of the lady, and married her in secret. The result was the conception of Barry. When this became visible, the king was so wrathful at this contempt of his authority, that he ordered the parents to be burned to death. But the great lime-kiln, lighted to carry out this sentence, was extinguished by a violent storm of rain, accompanied with fiery flashes of lightning.
This was, of course, attributed to the fact that the child, which the lady bore in her womb, was destined by God for great things, as in truth, subsequent events proved to be the fact. Indeed, the Martyrology of Donegal makes a still more incredible statement, that “Barre spoke in his mother’s womb, and also immediately after his birth, in order to justify his father and mother, as his Life states in the first chapter.”[347] This speaking in the womb may, perhaps, be understood in the metaphorical sense already explained.
St. Barry had for his teacher a holy man called in the Irish Life Mac Cuirp, or Curporius in the Latin Lives. Mac Cuirp is stated to have spent some time in Rome, and to have been whilst there a disciple of St. Gregory the Great. St. Gregory was Pope from A.D. 590 to 604, but for some years previous to A.D. 590 he had held various offices in the church; and it was probably between A.D. 575 and 590 that the Irish monk had an opportunity of becoming his disciple in the great monastery of St. Andrew, which was once the private mansion of St. Gregory.
From a master so trained for some time in Rome itself, young Barry had an opportunity of acquiring a fuller knowledge of ecclesiastical discipline, as well as sounder and wider theological views than the ordinary Irish schools could at the time afford. How long he remained under the care of this holy man is unknown; but from the active life which St. Barry led, we must infer that he began to preach and found churches whilst he was still a young man. We are told that even before he came to Cork he had founded twelve churches in various parts of the country. Amongst these we find special reference to the Church of Achadh Duirbchon near Cuas Barra, which was somewhere in the neighbourhood of the river Blackwater, and probably not far from Fermoy. For it is said that after he founded this church, he crossed the river and came to Cill Cluana, and built a church there also. Cill Cluana is supposed to be the place since known as Cloyne; this, however, we venture to think is improbable, for St. Colman, the founder of Cloyne, was a contemporary of St. Brendan, and must have flourished and founded the Church of Cloyne many years before Barry could have arrived at man’s estate. There is a Kilclooney in the barony of Condons and Clangibbon, County Cork, which is much more likely to have been the Church of Cill Cluana erected at this period by St. Barry.
We are told that two disciples of St. Ruadhan of Lorrha, Cormac and Baoithen by name, travelled thither. They were directed by their own master, St. Ruadhan, to remain where the tongues of their bells would sound. To their surprise the silent bells rang out, when they had come to Barry’s Church at Cill-Cluana, and they were much grieved when they found it occupied, without, as they thought, any chance of their being allowed to remain in the place. But Barry, knowing the divine will, at once gave them his own church, and they remained there, whilst he himself went elsewhere to found new churches for the honour of God and the advantage of the people.
It is probable that Gougane Barra, so celebrated for its wild romantic beauty, was the earliest foundation of St. Barry, and that it was there during the years of his retirement that he prepared himself for that great spiritual work, which he afterwards accomplished.
This lovely lake is situated amongst the mountains on the western border of Cork, and in that very territory of Muskerry where St. Barry is said to have been born, so that he was probably familiar with it from his childhood. The savage grandeur of this mountain valley has been celebrated both in poetry and in prose by many writers; and, no doubt, Callanan’s stanzas are familiar to all our readers. The lake is surrounded on all sides by an amphitheatre of lofty and rugged mountains, rising up in naked grandeur from its lonely shores. Only at one place towards the south-east is there an opening, where the infant Lee bursts through the rocky barrier of loose stones and dashes down in foaming leaps to the lower lake of Inchigheela. The lake itself covers about 90 acres. Its waters flowing down from the heathery slopes of the hills are rather dark in colour, and abound in fish; although, it is said, that trout were more numerous heretofore in these waters. Towards the south-east of the lake, which is oval in form, is the island that formed the retreat of St. Finbarr. It is deeply and beautifully green, where the broken walls do not cover the turf, and contrasts strikingly with the dark waters of the lake, and the bluish gray of the rugged precipices that frown down on the gloomy landscape. Its shores too are beautifully fringed with hoary ash trees, and a few willows that stoop to kiss the wavelets:—
“There grows the wild ash, and a time stricken willow
Looks chidingly down on the mirth of the billow;
As like some gay child that sad monitor scorning,
It lightly laughs back to the laugh of the morning.”
The works of man are in ruins, but the face of nature is changeless and grand as it ever was. There is still the “zone of dark hills” that brighten in the lightning’s flash, when the rocks give back the thunder’s voice in a thousand echoes. There are still the “thousand wild fountains”—in summer tiny rivulets, but in rainy weather angry cataracts leaping from rock to rock. It is true the glory of the woods that once belted these mountains is gone, and nothing now remains but the island grove, which is all the more attractive because no foliage elsewhere relieves the eye, weary with the hungry grey of the rocks and the dark brown of the heather.
But the ancient church with its solitary cells and courtyard are all in ruins—ruins, too, even in this wild retreat, that have apparently been wrought by the hand of man. The little island on which these ruins stand is near the southern shore of the lake. It is approached by a low narrow causeway, which connects it with the shore. From the causeway the pilgrim walks through an avenue of ash trees towards a terrace, which is elevated four or five steps before him. On this terrace there is an ancient quadrangular caiseal, which had two monastic cells built into each side of the quadrangle. These cells arched overhead were about four feet wide, ten feet deep, and eight feet high. The masonry is of a primitive character, and may be of the age of Barry himself, for we find the circular arch as early as the first quarter of the seventh century. In the centre of this courtyard there is a mound having stone steps around, and surmounted by an ancient wooden cross. This cross marks the principal penitential station, and closely resembles some of the mission crosses seen in the churchyards of our country churches. The church and monastery proper were outside this enclosure, and are now quite ruinous. They were probably coeval with the cells in the enclosure; but it is quite unusual to find them outside the enclosing wall. The quadrangular cashel, too, is quite a peculiar feature, and shows that it is of a later and undoubtedly Christian origin.