Wanderings in Ireland

by Michael Myers Shoemaker

This morning the pony cart is in requisition and, with one of the ladies, I am off for a visit to the buried city of Bannow. It is sometimes pleasant to banish the auto and jaunt slowly along. The pony understands that to-day we have all the time there is and so takes it leisurely with every now and then a grab at the hawthorn blossoms which bend temptingly toward him in the narrow lanes. He seems to know the way and finally wanders close down by the sea to where at the end of a long grassy lane we are halted by a high-barred gate through which some cattle gaze wonderingly outward. Wending our way through the tall grasses we mount to where Bannow church holds its ruined watch over the dead within and around it and over the city buried in the sands and under the sea. Aside from the sanctuary there is no evidence that man ever lived here, yet back in the days of James I. Bannow was a prosperous town paying the crown rents on two hundred and more houses, but a great storm arose in that same reign and so filled up the entrance to its harbour as to destroy it, and from that period onward the sentence of death was carried out against the ancient city. Higher and higher rose the sands until they covered all except this ruined church and the dead which lie around it, but,—here comes in a strange law or custom,—though there was absolutely nothing to represent, the place for generations returned two members to Parliament, and for the loss of this privilege the Earl of Ely received fifteen thousand pounds sterling. Certainly those two members were not annoyed by the wishes or opinions of their constituents deep in their graves here.

As I move through the long grasses to enter the ruins I pause a moment to pay tribute at the tomb of one Walter French, a man who passed one hundred and forty years upon the earth and "died in the prime of life." His last illness was the result of his walking some miles carrying a piece of iron weighing over one hundred weight, and which "somewhat strained the muscles around his heart, and he sickened and died, much to the astonishment of all who knew him." He has been dead but a short time and there are many now here who remember him well. Peace to his ashes, and here on this breezy down beneath the shadow of this ancient church and with yonder murmuring sea close by it should be peaceful enough even for the dead. The church is one of the oldest in Ireland and long antedates the English invasion.

It is not extensive, but it is quaint and interesting and possesses some curious monuments and one pretentious stone sarcophagus. Who slept there, I wonder?—there is no trace of him now. Bishop or layman, he has vanished, leaving no sign or name; and when he does come again will he pass by here? How strange Bannow church will appear to him then—and where will he search for the mortal part of him? It is certainly not here in this tomb which he vainly imagined would hold his body inviolate throughout all time and to the portals of eternity.

This is a Sunday afternoon of midsummer, a warm balmy day when the waters have gone to sleep and the bees hum drowsily. Over the hills and through the lanes come groups of peasantry, in their Sunday best. The usual number of dogs appear and chase imaginary rabbits through the long grasses, and on yonder flat tombstone a lad and lassie are gaily dancing a jig, and I doubt if the mortal or spiritual part of the sleeper beneath them is at all disturbed by the apparent desecration of his resting-place.

Save on Sunday the living rarely come here but to leave one of their number who has passed the far horizon of life, or sometimes to dance by day as we see them, or in the moonlight, on the great flat tombstones of the Boyse family in the chancel, listening while they rest to the constant advice of the wood doves to "take two coos, Paddy."

We are favoured with the same admonition, but though those fine red cows are tempting we pass onward, to the increasing indignation of the inhabitants of yonder trees.

As we turn for a last look at Bannow church on its green hill, the roofless gables are sharply silhouetted against the glow of evening, and the lad and lassie are still gaily dancing their jig, and two others on a neighbouring slab are "sittin' familiar."

So leaving them we wander back, to find the pony, after having her fill of daisies and grasses, has lain down in the shafts and gone to sleep. When we reach home there is still much of the evening left, and, deserting the pony—for which it casts reproachful glances upon us—we enter the motor and roll away again.