From the Lost Church 'tis thought that soft
Faint ringing cometh on the wind:
Once many pilgrims trod the path,
But no one now the way can find."
See also Das Versunkene Kloster, by the same sweet poet, commencing:
"Ein Kloster ist versunken
Tief in den wilden See."
After Port Royal (in the West Indies) was submerged, at the close of the seventeenth century, sailors in those parts for many years had stories of anchoring in the chimneys and steeples, and would declare they heard the church bells ringing beneath the water, agitated by the waves or spirits of the deep.
The case of the Round Towers seen in Lough Neagh, I need not bring forward, as no sound of bells has ever been heard from them.
There is one lost church so famous as to occur to the mind of every reader, I mean that of the Ten Tribes of Israel. After the lapse of thousands of years, we have here an historical problem, which time, perhaps, will never solve. We have a less famous, but still most interesting, instance of a lost church in Greenland. Soon after the introduction of Christianity, about the year 1000, a number of churches and a monastery were erected along the east coast of Greenland, and a bishop was ordained for the spiritual guidance of the colony. For some four hundred years an intercourse was maintained between this colony and Norway and Denmark. In the year 1406 the last bishop was sent over to Greenland. Since then the colony has not been heard of. Many have been the attempts to recover this lost church of East Greenland, but hitherto in vain.