One Irish Summer

by William Eleroy Curtis

The island is approached by a narrow, artificial causeway, at the head of which is an arched tomb built into the side of the mountain, in which Father Mahoney, a recluse, was buried in 1728. He was the last of the monks to live in the little abbey. He is regarded by the peasants as next to St. Fin-Barre in holiness, and Fin-Barre is ranked next to St. Patrick, only a little below him in their veneration. When the old women passed Father Mahoney’s tomb they knelt and kissed it and said their prayers.

Chapel Erected by Mr. John R. Walsh of Chicago on the Island of Gougane-Barra

The ruins of St. Fin-Barre’s hermitage, which has been carefully restored, consist of a quadrangle of stone about thirty-six feet square, and there are eight cells with arched entrances in which the monks used to live. Over the entrance to each cell are modern plaster casts of the stations of the cross, and in the center, upon a pyramid of five steps, a plain wooden cross has been erected.

The little chapel erected by Mr. Walsh upon the foundation of St. Fin-Barre’s Oratory is thirty-six feet long by fourteen feet broad with a simple little altar and an altar rail. The remainder of the space is filled with wooden seats. There is no organ or other musical instrument, and the services that are held there every third Sunday in the month by an itinerant priest are of the simplest order. But the celebration of the anniversary of the saint on the 24th of September brings the peasants from all the country around and is attended with great solemnity. The people carry their rations with them, and camp upon the shore of the lake and along the roadway that leads down from the tarn. When we were there in June the entire island was a mass of rhododendrons in the fullness of their purple glory. If you searched the world over you could not find a more beautiful abode for a saint in peace and retirement. It has been the theme of many poems, and a native bard has painted with graphic lines the scene that is hallowed by so many pious associations and surrounded with so much natural beauty.

It is one of the holiest places in Ireland, and the consecrated waters of a spring called St. Fin-Barre’s Well, which has been carefully walled in, have the power to heal all kinds of diseases except those that have been caused by dissipation. At the annual festival of St. Fin-Barre the peasants bring their sick children and even their ailing animals to be cured. And the neighboring bushes that surround the well and the wooden crosses that have been erected there in recognition of relief are hung with votive offerings. A penitent who comes to be cleansed of his sins may find full instructions engraven upon a large slab of brown stone. It is said to be more than two hundred years old, but records the good deeds of Rev. Dennis Mahoney, who died in 1728. It is necessary to say five “aves” and five “paters” at the first station of the cross within the ruins, and add five more at each as they are passed, making forty “aves” and forty “paters” at the last cell.

Of course, there is a legend connected with the well—there always is—and in this case St. Patrick, after banishing the reptiles from the country, overlooked one hideous snake. It crawled into the Well of Gougane to escape him, and it created serious depredation in the surrounding country, coming out at night to attack the flocks of sheep and the herds of goats and cattle, until St. Patrick came here and drove it out by sprinkling the well with holy water. “The ould enemy” vanished and has never since ventured to leave his loathsome slime upon the green banks of the island. In order to prevent his return St. Patrick sent St. Fin-Barre here to watch the well and exterminate the monster if it came again. But it has not reappeared, and as a token of gratitude St. Fin-Barre erected the Cathedral of Cork and founded a great monastery beside it, leaving several devoted priests here in his hermitage to keep watch of things.

The driver gave us an hour to see this lovely and sacred place, and then we returned to the main road, resumed our journey, and soon entered the Pass of Keimaneigh, which divides these savage mountains in twain and permits people to pass from the former kingdom of the MacCarthy clan to that of the outlawed O’Sullivans. The mountains were split by some terrible cataclysm ages ago, but Nature has done what she could to heal the wound. The almost perpendicular walls were clothed with wild ivy, arbutus, hawthorn, laburnum, rhododendron, and other trees and shrubs, which were glorious in color and light up the gloom of the gorge with wonderful beauty. We have many grander canyons in the Rocky Mountains, and several of the fiords on the Norwegian coast are grander and inclosed by loftier peaks and more precipitous walls, but none of them that I have seen are anywhere near as beautiful.