Corpus of Electronic Texts Edition
Magdalena von Dobeneck's Letters from Ireland to Paul Johann Anselm von Feuerbach (Author: Magdalena von Dobeneck née Feuerbach)
Chapter 5
XI
Dungannon, 18 June.
The castle is filling up with guests, and twenty rooms are already occupied by strangers from the neighbourhood. You do not pay visits in England and Ireland like we do, in pairs, but rather entire families arrive for quartering. Lord and Lady, children with nurse and governess, servants and horses. So I often adapt to the hustle and bustle around me and make myself comfortable. A thoroughly erudite sir honoured unlearned me today again, not only with his gaze, but also with hours of conversation. Our quirky country squire acted solo upstairs, imitating Kemble, offering whole scenes from Hamlet. A chair represented a person he addressed, his voice changing in line with the different characters so that I had to admire him. But soon I was bored. I sat down leisurely in an armchair, in English style, and so it happened that the afore-mentioned scholar, a pale, thin and black manikin, descended from the mountain of his scholarship into the valley of my ignorance. He himself told me the other day (according to the country's custom!) with a sense of self assurance that he knew all languages. ‘Really?’ I asked, more astonished by his sense of certainty than by his
p.54
great genius. I asked him for some historical notes about Ireland. ‘Please tell me about the origin of this people, about nature scenes, etc.’ ‘My pleasure!’ he replied with a smile that threatened to kill all his learned wrinkles. He moved closer. ‘A lecture, then? A chapter from ...’ — ‘Whatever you like,’ I answered. ‘You will enrich my letters to Germany, because what you are telling me is to be recorded in the minutes, and will reach, not exactly the treasure chamber of a German academy, but nevertheless a scholar's study.’ ‘Are you a writer?’, he asked hastily — ‘oh no, just a chatterbox.’ (Plaudertasche) This word, never heard before, opened up a field for him, as big as the Lüneburg Heath, a field for profound inquiry. Whether this was a real root-word, one that migrated to German from other languages? — ‘I beg you, sir,’ I replied impatiently, ‘what is the reason that the Irish mostly have southern faces, dark hair, and black eyes?’ ‘Yes, I was about to begin, madam. Because the Irish are believed to be of Spanish descent. The Phoenicians mixed, as you may know,’ (here I frowned) ‘with the original Celtic race. Earlier, they lived along the Spanish coast, and had intercourse with the Irish. A colony of Spaniards came over to their country too, and their oldest religious customs suggest that Celtic tribes populated Ireland. On their hills and plains lie the scattered remnants of their idolatry. Here there is a circle of standing stones, which represents
p.55
an altar or seat of law (unhewn pillars), being the symbol of the sun among the Phoenicians, and there is a place of torturous idolatry where children had to die and burn in sacrifice. In Ireland, this bloody site was called Magh-Sleacth10 or the place of slaughter. Magh-Sleacht however was the name of a stone, edged with gold, and surrounded by twelve rough stones. This was called after an Irish idol: Crom Cruach. Every nation that had conquered Ireland, that is every colony that settled here, worshipped this Crom Cruach until the advent of the apostle St. Patrick. At that time the first-born of men and animals were sacrificed to the idols. Tighernmas Mac Follaigh, King of Ireland, confirmed these sacrifices by his orders. Men and women had to lie in front of the dead stones, crouched to the ground, until the blood came out of their noses, foreheads, ears and elbows. Many of them lay dead, and hence the name of Magh-Sleacht, a place of slaughter.11 Through the Phoenicians' contacts with Persia, the custom of fire worshipping also came to Ireland.12 Just like the Persians, they called their priests druids and magicians; and around St. Patrick's time the latter warned the king not a little about the consequences of the new faith. The Phoenicians venerated the sun as the main object of worship; and so did the Irish, calling it Baal or Bel. — Thus St. Patrick said in his confessions referring to this idolatry: ‘The sun we see rises every day after God's command for our service and benefit, but it does not govern
p.56
our affairs nor does its splendour last forever. Those who worship it now will be duly punished. We, however, believe in and pray to the eternal true sun, Christ the Lord.’ Near Wexford there is a place called Grenor (Greenore), or the place of the sun fire, where St. Patrick is said to have overthrown a pagan altar and built a church. In the middle of the fifth century Patrick only calls the higher classes ‘Scots’, which is considered proof that Ireland was not yet completely occupied by this people (which are descended from the Scythians).’ Here I interrupted the tireless scholar, to get some respite, with the following question: ‘when I hear the Irish man speaking next to the Englishman, it seems to me that the latter's pronunciation, compared to that of the Irishman, is like Swabian to Northern German. Is that right?’ ‘In some respects it is’, he said with a smile, but with a somewhat weary tone. He may have longed for refreshments, because he did not let the servant who had just appeared with steaming tea, wait for long.
The gallery clock strikes nine. Suddenly a door opens here and there, and the loud laughter around us stops. My lord slowly walks through the hall and the butler follows him, carrying a large book and a lectern. ‘It is the time of prayer.’ Every Sunday evening at this hour, the Lord of the manor in Ireland reads a short sermon or psalm. I follow the ladies into the dining room, which
p.57
I now see transformed into a chapel. In the middle, in front of a table, my lord is standing — to the right there are rows of chairs, and before these ladies and gentlemen are kneeling. To the left all the servants, a hundred in number, are symmetrically arranged. The whole thing has a festive air, but I was bothered to hear my neighbour whispering with a dandy who, pointing to the left side, asked her: ‘Don't you smell the stable?’ Anyway, the Sunday celebration among the English, though for many of them only a matter of outward form, at least expresses the fear of God, and therefore it is venerable to me; I would like to call it a bridge leading to the true, childlike fear of God. — I will never forget that Sunday when an Irish girl of eight years took her little brother by the hand and led him from the noisy nursery with the words: ‘Come! It's Sunday, and we do not play on this day.’ I had followed her into the garden and chatted for a long time with the dear child; at last I asked her: ‘Tell me, who is the Saviour? where is He?’ After reflecting for a while, she replied in a friendly way: ‘He is so great that heaven cannot contain him, and so small that He has room in my heart.’
Last Sunday, my Lady and I drove to Dungannon church. In the choir there was a kind of stand that we entered. The pews were handsomely covered in red velvet. I had already placed all sorts of bookmarks in my Common Prayerbook to be able to follow the service. Here every Sunday
p.58
has its particular penitential psalms and readings from the Gospel. One kneels while they are being read aloud, also during the litany, to which the congregation, as in the Roman Church, also responds with a ‘Lord have mercy on us.’ Behind a green curtain on our right hand side, there stood twelve choristers dressed in white, singing the Kyrie eleison movingly. Only after plenty of the Word of God had been read aloud did the actual sermon begin, which made up the shorter part of the service. I was pleased to find in the Anglican Church what I had always wished for in our Protestant rite, I mean kneeling down as an external sign of the fear of God. At least here in England and Ireland a devoted mind may freely follow the inner urge of the heart. — I have often witnessed the fact that the English strictly observe the Sunday when travelling; they gather around the Bible and the Common Prayerbook at the same hour as at home. Everything is observed exactly as in the church. The English are in a certain respect in spiritual communion with all their brothers, across whatever countries they may be scattered. — Farewell, dear father, I send my warmest greetings from across the sea.
p.59