Later on I attended the Cork steeplechase. There were five events on the card; the jumps were difficult, and one horse was killed, while two or three others met with accidents.
I suppose as we are now on the last lap, it would hardly be fair to Cork and Queenstown to pass them over without noticing them historically, so, if the reader will pardon me, I will take up a little more of his time to sketch briefly the salient features of these two very interesting and ancient towns.
Cork is a mixture of some fine streets, broad quays, and many ill-paved lanes, the whole being set off by a charming frame of scenery that compensates for many a defect. It is a county and a city with a population of 97,281, and is well situated on the Lee, as Spenser thus describes:
"The spreading Lee that, like an island fayre,
Encloseth Corke with his divided floode"—
as it emerges from a wooded and romantic valley upon a considerable extent of flat, alluvial ground, in its course, over which it divides. The island thus formed commences about one mile above the town, is enclosed by the north and south channels of the river, and contains a large portion of the city. "In 1689," says Macaulay, "the city extended over about one-tenth part of the space which it now covers, and was intersected by muddy streams which had long been concealed by arches and buildings. A desolate marsh, in which the sportsman who pursued the water-fowl sank deep in water and mire at every step, covered the area now occupied by stately buildings, the palaces of great commercial societies."
Cork has over four miles of quays, and large sums of money have been spent in harbor improvements; vessels drawing twenty feet of water can discharge at all stages of the tide.
The earliest notice of the town dates from the time of St. Fin Barre, who flourished about the seventh century. He founded an ecclesiastical establishment on the south side of the chief channel of the Lee, and it ultimately attained to a high reputation among the schools of Ireland. Then the Danes, after repeatedly plundering it, took a fancy to settling down here themselves, and carried on a somewhat flourishing commerce until the Anglo-Norman invasion. At that time the ruling power was in the hands of Dermot McCarthy, Lord of Desmond, who promptly made submission to Henry II. on his arrival in 1172, and did him homage. For a long period the English held the place against the Irish, living in a state of almost perpetual siege. They were compelled, Holinshed says, "to watch their gates hourlie, to keepe them shut at service time, at meales, from sun to sun, nor suffer anie stranger to enter the citie with his weapon, but the same to leave at a lodge appointed." Camden also describes it as "a little trading town of great resort, but so beset by rebellious neighbors as to require as constant a watch as if continually besieged."
Cork took an active part in the disturbed history of the Middle Ages. It declared for Perkin Warbeck, and the mayor, John Walters, was hanged for abetting his pretensions. It was made the headquarters of the English forces during the Desmond rebellion. In 1649 it surrendered to Cromwell, who is said to have ordered the bells to be melted for military purposes, saying that, "since gunpowder was invented by a priest, he thought the best use for bells would be to promote them into cannons."
A noticeable event in its history was the siege by William III.'s army under Marlborough and the Duke of Wurtemburg, when the garrison surrendered after holding out five days; the Duke of Grafton was killed on this occasion.
Numerous monastic establishments were founded in early times, nearly all traces of which, as well as of its walls and castles, have been swept away. In the southwestern district of the city is the old cathedral, small and very unlike what a cathedral should be. St. Fin Barre, the founder of the cathedral, was born in the neighborhood of Bandon, and died at Cloyne in 630. His first religious establishment was in an island in Lough Gouganebarra, but about the beginning of the seventh century he founded another on the south bank of the Lee, which became the nucleus of the city of Cork. He was buried here in his own church, and his bones were subsequently enshrined in a silver case; but these relics were carried away by Dermot O'Brien when he plundered the city in 1089. There is little of general interest in the subsequent history of the see. In 1690, at the siege of Cork, a detachment of English troops took possession of the cathedral and attacked the south fort from the tower; the cathedral was so much damaged that it was taken down in 1734 and another erected. With the exception of the tower, which was believed to have formed part of the old church, it was a modern Doric building, with a stumpy spire of white limestone. The mode in which the funds were raised for its erection was the levying of a tax on all the coal imported for five years. This building stood until 1864, when it was taken down in order to erect the present structure upon its site. A cannon-ball fired during the siege of 1690 was found in the tower, forty feet from the ground, and is now on a bracket within the cathedral. In laying the foundations, three distinct burial-places were found, one above the other, and the human remains found exhibited remarkable racial peculiarities.