If you have the tastes of the antiquary, the old Dublin houses and buildings will afford you matter of great interest.
In the first place, there is Dublin Castle, which was built by King John. Of the four original towers, only one now remains. The castle has been the town residence of the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland since Sidney established himself there in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. For the rest, it is a congerie of Government offices of one sort or another.
The castle was built over the Poddle River, which now creeps in darkness, degraded to a common sewer, under the dark and dismal houses, and empties itself in an unclean cascade through a grating in the Quay walls, whence it flows away with the Liffey to the sea. You can visit the Chapel Royal, if you will, and the viceregal apartments are sometimes open to inspection if the Viceroy is not in residence. I lived many years in Dublin without desiring to inspect what may be seen of Dublin Castle, though I have often stood in the castle yard under the Bermingham Tower, and, looking up at that great keep, have remembered how Hugh O’Donnell and his companions escaped by way of the Poddle one Christmas Eve in the spacious days of great Elizabeth, and how the young chieftain of Tyrconnel narrowly escaped the frozen death which befell his companions as they climbed those Dublin mountains over yonder to find refuge with the O’Tooles and O’Byrnes of the Wicklow Hills.
Those were the Irish clans that used to make the English burghers of Dublin shake in their shoes. While they sold their silks or woollens, or sat at meals or exchange, or said their prayers in their churches, they never could be sure that the wild Irish cry would not come ringing at their gates. The O’Byrnes and O’Tooles would swoop down at intervals, and raid the cattle from the fat pastures of the pale, sweeping back again with their spoil to their impregnable fastnesses. Some years ago a Father O’Toole published a book on the Clan of O’Toole, which contained the genealogical tree of the O’Tooles, tracing their descent without a break from Noah. This is a matter of interest to me, as I myself am an O’Toole.
The history of nations is, after all, the history of men—of men and of movements—and it is individual and outstanding men who make for us the milestones of history. Ireland has produced, in proportion to her population, a more than usual number of outstanding men; and, thinking of Dublin houses and monuments of one kind or another, we find it is of men we are thinking, after all.
Thinking of Christ Church, that beautiful Gothic cathedral, I think of St. Patrick, because his staff was preserved there, and was an object of great reverence till it was burnt by a too-zealous reforming Bishop in the days of Elizabeth. St. Patrick was a very delightful saint. One loves the legends that gather about him. I like especially how he wrestled with the angel on Croagh-Patrick, and would not come down from the mountain till he had been granted his several prayers. There were three in particular. The first one was that Ireland should never depart from the Christian faith. “Very well, then,” said the angel, “God grants you that.” “Next,” said Patrick, “I ask that on the Judgment Day I may sit on God’s right hand and judge the Irish people.” “That you can’t have,” said the angel. “Be quiet now, and go down from the mountain.” “What!” said Patrick, “is it for this that I have fasted so many days on the mountain, wrested with evil ones, been exposed to the rain and tempest, prayed hard, fought temptations—only for this?” “Very well, you shall have this,” replied the angel. “And now that you have your wish satisfied, go down from the mountain.” “Not till my third prayer be granted.” “What! a third prayer?” cried the angel. “You ask too much, O Patrick, and you shall not have it. You are too covetous.” “Was it for this?” began Patrick again, with a recital of all he had done and suffered. “Very well, then,” said the angel, tired out; “have your third prayer, but ask no more, for it will not be given to you.” “I ask that all who recite my prayer” (i.e., the prayer known as St. Patrick’s Breastplate) “shall not be lost at the Last Day.” “Very well, then,” said the angel, “you shall have that; but now go down.” “I am content now,” said Patrick; “I will go down.”
He was a fighting saint, despite his many gentlenesses. At Downpatrick, where he built his cathedral, he took a little fawn which his men would have killed, and carried it in his breast. I like the description of him by his friend St. Evan of Monasterevan, which tells us how he was sweet to his friends, but terrible to his enemies.
I think of St. Patrick at Christ Church rather than of St. Lawrence O’Toole, Archbishop of Dublin, who, with Strongbow, that fierce Norman who seized Ireland for Henry II. of England, built Christ Church. St. Lawrence O’Toole’s heart lies here in a reliquary. Here also Lambert Simnel was crowned; but who thinks of that ignoble impostor now?
Christ Church presents an effect of lightness and brightness very different from St. Patrick’s, in which it seems to me it is always afternoon, and winter afternoon. Patrick is in a particularly picturesque slum of the city, in the Earl of Meath’s liberty, hard by the Coombe, which was once a pleasant dell, no doubt, but is now the raggedest of slums. To the Earl of Meath’s liberty came the French silk-weavers expelled from France after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and established the industry of poplin-weaving there.
The man with whom St. Patrick’s Cathedral is associated is Jonathan Swift, and for his sake it is perpetually dark. It is haunted by the tragedy of his life and death. Here Esther Johnson is buried; and over yonder, in the Deanery House, Swift, a sick man, lay in bed and watched the torches in the great church when they were making ready her grave. The strange bitterness of the terrible inscription which commemorates that most unhappy great man seems to colour the atmosphere of St. Patrick’s. “Where fierce indignation can no more lacerate his heart,” he rests by the side of the woman who was faithful to him with a long patience, whose death left him to loneliness and madness.