Corpus of Electronic Texts Edition
Travels in Ireland (Author: Johann Georg Kohl)

chapter 27

The Lakes and Ruins of Glendalough

The Uninhabited Mountains—George Irwin, the Guide of Glenda- lough—Description of Glendalough—The Seven Churches—Hypotheses concerning the Round Towers—Graves within the walls of the Seven Churches—Erin's Pleasure Garden—The Lake of the Serpents—The Skylark—The Bishop of Glendalough—Druidical Ruins—Father Mathew in Glendalough—St. Kevin's Bed—St. Kevin and the Fair Kathleen—A Lake in which no one can be drowned—Peculiar Clothing for the Feet—Departure from Glendalough

I had heard so much in praise of the Seven Churches and the Round Tower of the Vale of Glendalough, that I delayed but a few hours in Rathdrum, and then set out with a little one-horse car into the mountains, to visit that valley. I certainly would have shortened those hours to minutes, had I known beforehand what an incomparable spot is distinguished by the name of Glendalough. The road passes first through the valley of Clara, through which the Avonmore flows, and then some ten miles farther, in a sidelong direction, to the source of the little tributary streams of that river. The surrounding country is very thinly inhabited, and in those ten miles there is only one village, called Laragh. The mountains north of these valleys, however, are still more uninhabited, so much so that they are called ‘the uninhabited mountains,’ and are really a phenomenon in this part of the country, which is only a few miles from Dublin. They stretch from north to south, about fifteen miles in length; from east to west, they have a breadth of ten miles; and within this space not only are there mountains, but valleys also, which are almost completely devoid of inhabitants, and, as the people say, uninhabitable. All is stony, rocky ground, with grass thinly scattered, and no kind of vegetation. The entire region is appropriated to feeding goats, which live here half wild, as in the mountains of Kerry. Nay, sometimes they become altogether wild, so that the herdsmen turn

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hunters, and, instead of catching them for slaughtering, shoot them. In the last Irish rebellion, one of the rebel leaders held out against the English troops in these desolate mountains long after the rest of the country was at peace: after keeping possession for years, he was at last taken, and handed over to his executioners.

It is singular that so wild a district should be found so near the principal city of Ireland. Although there are extensive tracts in the British dominions which are much more fertile than any in Germany, there are at the same time spots infinitely more wild than any thing we can find in our own country, which yet possesses more forests and is less thickly populated; for where have we mountain regions where goats and sheep run half or entirely wild? Even on our highest Alps the cattle are every where kept within fences and watched over. I never remember to have seen in Germany such perfectly wild, neglected tracts of ground, either quite destitute of inhabitants, or with a thinly-scattered and miserable population, as are to be found here in Ireland, and also in some parts of Scotland. Thus the physiognomy of the country is a true picture of its social condition. The English have made a great military road through this wilderness, and erected barracks at the various stations, which, in the time of the rebellion, were all filled with soldiers to keep the desert in check. Some of those barracks are now turned into police stations.

At the Laragh barracks three wild glens meet,—Glenavon, Glenmacnass, and that into which we now turned, Glendalough. Scarcely had we reached the entrance of this valley when we observed a man in a purple-red coat standing at a door; and no sooner had he noticed us than he sprang upon our car, and seating himself by the driver, thus addressed me in a loud voice: ‘Your honour will allow me to go with you? I am the well-known guide of Glendalough: George Irwin is my name, if you please.’ But I must describe the man before I allow him to talk. He had a long, matted beard, frizzled-looking, and clinging round his chin and jawbones like wool; his features were very strongly marked; his cheeks weather-beaten and thin; his forehead high and wrinkled; beneath these wrinkles glowed a pair of eyes that gleamed in their sockets; and between all those wrinkles and ruins, a boldly-arched hawk's nose raised itself. His words were rough, wild, and hoarse, and tumbled out over his tongue, like the wild bog-streams of Ireland over dark rocks and mossy stones; and his voice sounded as if it came from a hollow, and from an organ of speech wasted and worn for years by wind, rain, storm, and whisky. ‘That's my name, your honour,—George Irwin, the guide of

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Glendalough. I have lived here from my youth in this wilderness, and know every corner of the place by heart. I know all the stories our forefathers have handed down from generation to generation to our days, and no one can tell what I know. I have showed all the places here to the great Sir Walter Scott, and his friend, the celebrated Miss Edgeworth; and I was the guide of her gracious Majesty, when she came here as a young princess, with her royal lady mother, the Duchess of Kent. There are a great many other guides here, but none of them can boast of what I can. Get down from the car here, your honour, and follow me, for I only can show you properly all the fine things that are hidden in that valley. This way! this way, your honour!’

I followed this man, who drew me after him almost by force, yet at the same time with courteousness, and with constant ‘your honour,’ until he led me to the mountain lakes of Glendalough, which word means ‘the vale of the two lakes.’ In fact, I do not remember ever to have had a more intelligent and entertaining guide than George Irwin, and I regretted nothing more than my inability to understand all the stories, anecdotes, and legends, which flowed from him like a shower.

‘Sir Walter Scott, the great Scottish poet, told me, your honour, that he knew no other spot in the world to be compared to our lakes of Glendalough, in natural beauty and romantic situation; and of the Round Tower, which your honour shall soon see, he said, that it was unique in its kind, and that in Scotland there were only the traces of two such round towers remaining, of which we have a hundred and more in Ireland, and some beautiful and perfect ones among them. Our famous Irish poet, Thomas Moore—our Tommy, as we Irish call him for shortness' sake, your honour, just as we usually call the great Daniel O'Connell simply Dan—our Tommy. I say—I know him these forty years, and he knows me very well too—has made a beautiful poem on those lakes, which your honour shall soon see. It begins—

    1. By that lake, whose gloomy shore
      Skylark never warbles o'er;
      Where the cliff hangs high and steep,
      Young Saint Kevin stole to sleep.
I know the entire poem from beginning to end by heart; but of course your honour knows it very well yourself. The young Princess too, now her gracious Majesty, was delighted with the wild charms of this spot; and I almost believe it is our Glendalough that has made her Majesty think of visiting Erin once more next year. I hope she will also come here again, and I perhaps will have again the honour of guiding her where she then,

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as Princess, tripped after her mother, the Dowager Duchess of Kent, to whom I was obliged to explain every thing, and where she will now appear as mistress. We will not fail in paying high honour to her Majesty, for she will be the second crowned head who has come over to us poor Irish on terms of friendship. Henry II., William III., James, and the other English kings who came to Ireland, all appeared with arms in their hands. The only one who ever trod the soil of the island in friendship hitherto was George IV.; therefore they have eternalized his footprint in the rock at Dublin. But now, your honour, now look here: the wood is lightening here; we are coming out of it altogether; and now look, there you have a view of the much-praised scene. There you see ruins of the Seven Churches, the Round Tower in the middle, and the lakes and the mountains behind.’

So wonderful and remarkable a scene I had really never before seen. Wild, bare, rocky, and dark-coloured mountains ran out into a sharp promontory; to the right the ground descends into the valley of Glendassan, and to the left into that of Glendalough. One can see into both these vallies at the same time, through broad, wide rock-doors. In the foreground, in the midst of the basin formed by the meeting of the two vallies, lie the low ruins of the Seven Churches; and right in the centre, forming the middle point of the landscape, rises the lofty, slender, pillar-temple, that stands, in good preservation, exactly in the middle of this picturesque wilderness, like Pompey's Pillar in the midst of the waste of Alexandria. Behind this temple appear the water-mirrors of the two famous lakes; first the smaller, and behind it, the larger. The entire prospect is ruin,—ruins of nature and art. No tillage, no fields: only from the top of one of the higher rocks we saw rising a dull smoke, marking the hut of an inhabitant of the mountains: and below, in the valley, lay the cabins of two public-house keepers and guides, who offer their services and refreshment to travellers.

‘All this is now in a sad condition, as your honour sees,’ began Irwin again; ‘but formerly, when the great city of Dublin was still a turf-bog, a flourishing city stood here. There was here a high school of divinity, to which foreigners came from France and Germany, even from Italy, (from Palermo, for instance,) here to draw wisdom and knowledge from one of the light-fountains of our island. This was in the earliest centuries of Christianity. There stood here a college, a convent, many buildings for the students, the professors, and those belonging to the convent; and then, no less than seven churches! The number seven, as your honour knows, was always a sacred number all the world over, in the east

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as in the west. There were seven wise men in Greece; the ancients admired the seven wonders of the world; the bishops in Asia Minor held seven councils; we are told of seven sacraments and seven deadly sins by our religion; and the efore our Irish forefathers also built always seven churches in the finest spots in Erin. Most of those groups of Seven Churches lie on our beautiful, proud river, the Shannon, the king of all the rivers of Great Britain. There are four such Seven Churches there. The first is in Lough Ree, through which the Shannon flows, on an island called Inchclorin; then at Athlone, on the bank of the river, lie the Seven Churches of Clonmacnoise; farther on, the Seven Churches of Inniscaltra, in Lough Derg; and, lastly, at the mouth of the Shannon, the Seven Churches of Scattery Island. The farthest west of the Seven Churches in our country are on the island Arranmore, from the shore of which the inhabitants think they can see Paradise in clear weather, and of which Tommy sings that he often dreams:
    1. Oh Arranmore, loved Arranmore!
      How oft I dream of thee!
I have been there too, your honour, and could tell you many things of those distant islands, but that I must show you the place here, and that I have many things still to explain to you about our Seven Churches of Glendalough. All those Seven Churches I have named, as well as the others, originated in the first ages of Christianity in our land. But even before St. Patrick brought us the light from the Holy Land—in those ancient days when Fionnuala, daughter of Lir, was still flitting around the lakes and rivers of Ireland, longing for deliverance,—even then, God was already honoured here.’

‘There, on the tongue of land between the two lakes, I will show your honour some remains of Druid temples; and here you see before you the tall Round Tower, built in our land by the Fire-worshippers of the East. There are certainly some learned men, your honour, who, as I well know, will not believe that those towers ought to be ascribed to orientals, and suppose that they were built by Christians in later times, for other purposes. But this is not true; for, in the first place, all travellers who have come here have assured me that in no country in Europe is there any thing like our Irish Round Towers, and that they have seen similar ones only in the East. And besides, we common Irish know well enough of ourselves by whom those towers were raised, and what purpose they served. The priests of the fire-worshippers ascended to the top of the tower, and shouted at sunrise towards all quarters of the compass, ‘Baal! Baal! Baal!’ to announce to the faithful

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the arrival of the great star, and the time of prayer. We know this well enough, for it has been so handed down to us from our forefathers, from generation to generation. Baal, or Bel, your honour, was the name of the principal god of the orientals, as we know also from the Bible, from Bel at Babel. There is still a Round Tower in Ireland, in the county of Mayo, in the west of Connaught, which to the present day bears the name of Bel or Baal. Besides, I could show your honour, if it were not so cloudy there behind us, a mountain which to this day is called Bel's, or Baal's Mountain. One can see this mountain plainly from the Round Tower, and over it, in summer, the sun rises. I think the priests perceived the sun every morning on the summit of that mountain, and I suppose that on that account they called it the Hill of the Sun.’

I once more beg my German readers to observe, that I record these words of George Irwin, not as the over-strained fancies of an ignorant individual, but because they perfectly represent the views, opinions, and far-and-wide believed traditions of the Irish people; and because, if we will not believe that there is any truth in them, we must at least believe in as great a wonder, a strange monomania to which an entire people has blindly resigned itself.

The Round Tower of Glendalough is one of the most perfect and highest in Ireland. It is 110 feet high, and 51 feet in circumference. Besides a little doorway, which can be easily climbed to from the ground, it has four small windows near the top, and two others farther down. It appears to be built of two kinds of stone—of granite, and clay-slate wedged in between the granite blocks. It is almost impossible to view without emotion this majestic, uncommon, and also perplexing kind of building, in which all the Irish take so great an interest, that almost every one who has written any thing, has put on paper his own theory of the object of the Round Towers. Not only have professors and authors ex professo published treatises on those matters, but many amateurs of Irish antiquities have also produced their theories. When you meet with an idle rector, or a curate or vicar living alone, the one will not fail to tell you that he rejects all hitherto proposed hypotheses about the Round Towers, and has a theory of his own, which he will commit to paper as soon as his business will allow him; and the other will say, he has long since prepared a little treatise on the subject, which, on account of different obstacles, is not yet printed.

The Seven Churches lie, in the same manner as those on Scattery Island, and in a more or less ruined state, about the Round Tower, and the entire area of the ruins serves at this day

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for a churchyard. The people of the glens around bury their dead here, some in the sacred precincts of the old churches, and others near them, and near the pillar-temple. Close to the foot of this primeval building I saw the recent grave of a little girl: the cross on the grave had been ornamented with cut-paper wreaths, which the wind had partially dispersed. A small division of the ruins, called the sacristy, is specially reserved for the burial of the priests of the neighbourhood. St. Kevin, the famous saint of this place, prayed that heaven might grant his petition, that all who should be buried within the circuit of the Seven Churches might on the day of judgment be saved, or at least be judged less severely. Therefore the inhabitants of the surrounding country, on I know not what day of June, assemble here, and adorn the graves and crosses of those dear to them, and the stones of the old ruins, with flowers, branches, and cut papers, in memory of St. Kevin's goodness, and in honour of their dead.

‘This is a fine festival, your honour, and the entire churchyard is then full of people, singing and praying, who have streamed in from twenty or thirty miles round, and met in Glendalough. As they are free from anxiety with respect to the souls of their departed friends, confiding in their hopes of being saved at the judgment, the festival is not altogether a mourning one; and they sometimes indulge in a certain degree of gaiety over the graves. I might almost call this festival ‘Erin's pleasure-garden.’ Yes! churchyards and ruins are indeed Erin's pleasure-gardens.’

Here also the people show several old graves as those of Irish kings, which lie surrounded by the graves of the poor of modern days. The entrance to the ruins is by an old half-ruined Saxon doorway, wreathed with ivy. Amid the stones which lie about among the ruins, and by the little stream which runs near the edge of the churchyard, are several very curious ones, to which particular virtues of a strange nature are ascribed. There is one which has a hole for kneeling in; and the prayers offered in this hole are supposed to have a particular efficacy. Then there is an ancient cross, which women embrace to render them more prolific; but as Irish women are generally blest with plenty of children, this cross is quite superfluous. In the old churches there are many strange articles of furniture which I never saw before; for instance, an ancient baptismal font, in which the children were entirely immersed, and which was also covered with a lid through which the head only appeared.

Next to the site of the ruins lies, as I have said, the first, or little lake. ‘It is called also the Lake of Serpents, your honour, or Lough Napeastia. This lake, your honour, is so called, because

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St. Patrick banished into it all the serpents of Ireland, so that even to the present day not a serpent is to be found in all Ireland, except in the depths of this lake. The serpents were naturally very much discontented with this watery dwelling, your honour, and particularly one of them, a very big one, which came often from the lake out on the shore, and prayed St. Patrick to allow her a little freedom. The good-natured saint marked out a space near the lake, which she might look on as her own territory. The serpent now considered herself as unrestrained mistress in this domain; and when they began to build one of the Seven Churches on it, she was very much displeased, and always came out of the water by night, and threw down what had been built by day. As the workmen could not in any way get rid of her, at last St. Patrick prayed God to release him from his word pledged to the serpent, and to grant that he might be at liberty not to keep his promise, and to drive her again into the water. God permitted it, and so it was done; and the serpent was forced again into the pond, and since then dared not come out again, to disturb the work of the workmen.’ I think it is sufficiently evident that this legend must have originated in the head of an Irishman.

‘Is not that a wonderful story, your honour? But much more wonderful, and not less true, is what is affirmed of the upper lake, —that never since St. Patrick's time has a lark built a nest on its shore, or even been able to fly over it. For thirteen hundred years, your honour,—this is a certain truth,—one single lark has not flown over this lake. Tommy Moore, too, confirms this when he sings,

    1. By that lake, whose gloomy shore
      Skylark never warbles o'er.
This happens, your honour, because it was the skylarks who used to rouse the workmen early to their work, when they were building the Seven Churches here by the lake. The ‘undertakers’, who employed the workmen, took this song of the lark to mark the commencement of the day and the labour. In those days they had no clocks; and in the long winter nights, and dark overcast days in summer, they only knew how to reckon their hours by burning wax tapers. When now those larks, which had helped in so holy and beautiful a work, were dead, by St. Kevin's decree no others were thought worthy of singing their song here after those pious larks.’

‘St. Kevin was the builder of those Seven Churches, your honour; and he was also the first bishop of Glendalough. Many bishops succeeded him, and many treasures, both ecclesiastical and secular, were laid up here. As long as the four Irish kings

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still ruled our island, and as long as our Erin was still untroubled by foreign enemies, this place remained uninjured; but it was afterwards often plundered by the Danes, and then by the Saxons, and was often the scene of contests between the English and the O'Byrnes, a clan which lived in this neighbourhood. In the year 1309, for instance, the English ventured too far into this wild mountain country, under Lord Grey, and were attacked by the chieftain of the O'Byrnes, and defeated with great slaughter. The Seven Churches here, like all the Seven Churches in Ireland, which were all founded by ancient high-honoured Irish saints, and near which the kings of Ireland lived and were buried, fell into neglect and ruin under the English government. The bishopric of Glendalough was united with that of Dublin; and to this day, the Archbishop of Dublin is also called Bishop of Glendalough, though nothing but ruins is now indicated by the name. Your honour may remark too, that although those ruins are so completely and entirely fallen, we Irish have still preserved their names, and to this day this pile is called ‘Trinity Church’, that wall ‘Our Lady's Chapel’, and that other, ‘St. Kevin's Church.’ And we will keep these names as long as one stone of the churches stands on another.’

The isthmus between the two lakes is covered with some traces of old ditches and masonry, which are thought by the people to be the work of the Druids. Among others, there is an entire circle of well-preserved walls, seventeen feet in diameter, which Irwin set down without hesitation as a Druidical temple. Others believe that it was merely a pen or fold, used by the herdsmen for their cattle,—a somewhat curious alternative. I am not disposed to adopt either supposition, the wall being too insignificant for a temple and too good and solid for a fold. Near the Druidical buildings stand the remains of a single stone cross, which, as Irwin argued, proved still more conclusively the heathen origin of the former, because, as he said, the early Christians often erected crosses on the sites of heathen worship, so as to consecrate them to the true God.

On the 3rd of June, last year, this Druidical isthmus was the theatre of a great temperance festival. Father Mathew having visited the neighbourhood, selected this ancient place, and appointed the meeting to be held on the day (the feast of St. Kevin) so much honoured by the Irish people. ‘Upon this stone wall, your honour,’ said my guide, ‘the God-gifted man stood, and preached to the people with a powerful voice. They were collected together from all the neighbouring glens,—some from Glenmacnass and Glenavonmore, some from the Vale of Avoca, some

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from the far side of Lugduff, from Glenmalure, and the goatherds of the Uninhabited Mountains,—and there were from 20,000 to 30,000 people assembled here, and among them many of the nobility and gentry. All the different temperance societies were present, with their bands of music. Twenty-four temperance bands, with their followers, passed through the little village of Rathdrum alone on that day. Never, since St. Kevin's time, were so many people assembled here for a pious object. The man of God preached and gave the pledge to thousands. I think, your honour, that those who took the pledge here, between the lake full of serpents, and the one deserted by the larks, in sight of St. Kevin's bed, in the neighbourhood of the Seven Churches, and of the old, honoured, pillar-temple, on ground, too, that was holy even in the time of our Druid forefathers of old,—I think that they, I say, will not readily break the pledge.’

On the second lake a boat awaited us, and we embarked in it, to enjoy a view of the rugged overhanging rocks of Lugduff and Mullacop, which advance to the edge of the shore. The chief wonder in these cliffs is St. Kevin's bed, a little hollow, which is seen some forty feet above the water, and is approached by narrow steps cut in the rock. It appears to have been hollowed out by the hand of man, and is so small that one person only can conveniently stretch himself out in it. It is also said by the people to possess the same virtues in regard to the fruitfulness of women which are ascribed to the cross I have already mentioned. I have neglected to observe, that whilst we continued within the bounds of Glendalough, in addition to our principal guides, we were accompanied by a party of idle women, girls, boys, and children, who followed us every where. Such a retinue the stranger in Ireland has always behind him; and he finds it as difficult lo get rid of it, as O'Connell does to rid himself of his tail. One cannot drive those people away by entreating or scolding: they run constantly after one, at first merely gaping in silence, but afterwards joining in the conversation and assisting the real guide. This our tail now rushed to St. Kevin's bed, and seemed anxious to creep in all together, until one old woman drove all the others away, proclaiming that it was her privilege to show a stranger the position of a woman in Kevin's bed. She accordingly crouched herself in it like a bird in its nest, or the image of a saint in its niche, and, as seen from the lake, presented a very comical appearance.

The legend which the Irish tell of this bed is very poetical:—‘St. Kevin, your honour, was a young man, who probably felt like other young men, and also devoted the best part of his feelings

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to the fair sex, until he turned his thoughts to himself, and pledged his love to higher things, and determined to renounce the world and its joys, and, above all things, woman. Hardest of all for him was the parting from the fair Kathleen, a beautiful young maiden whom he loved, and who loved him too in her heart, and lamented his attachment to holy things. Young Kevin fled from her in vain: for wherever he retired, his beloved one followed him, and by her presence kindled anew the fire of his earthly love. At last he found the lonely lake of Glendalough, and his little inaccessible cave, where he fixed his quarters by night, in hopes of sleeping here in peace; but the loving one followed his steps here also. She climbed the steep rocks, and, one morning at sunrise, discovered her beloved sleeping on his hard couch. In loving admiration she bowed herself over his couch and gazed on him, folding her hands the while, and praying to heaven in his behalf. Kevin awoke from holy dreams for holy works, and when he saw the female form looking down into his narrow cell, his first impulse was directed against her. Hastily he sprang up and pushed her back. The fair and unfortunate Kathleen fell down the rough rocks, sank in the waters below, and disappeared. St. Kevin looked after her, and when he saw the lovely form sinking, felt himself once more stirred with emotion and love. As he could not now help her, he fell on his knees, and prayed for her soul. His prayer re-echoed from the rocks, and when he looked up, he saw her spirit smiling on him, gently gliding away over the waves of the lake. He now passed all the rest of his life in seriousness and piety, and God also granted his prayer, that no one in future should be drowned in that lake. In fact, your honour, during the 1300 years that have passed since St. Kevin's time, no human being has been drowned in its waters. People bathe here indeed without scruple, but in the other one, the Serpents' Lake, no one bathes. No one ventures even to put a foot into its enchanted waters. All these things are true, your honour, and conformable to history, as I tell them to your honour; and if any authors relate them otherwise, they are wrong. We, though we write no books, nor ever read any either, have a much purer source to draw from, for we have it all handed down from generation to generation.’

In winter, however, thought I, it must be difficult to distinguish between the blessed and the enchanted water; for then it often happens that the entire valley of Glendalough is covered by one and the same great sheet of water.

The ground behind the lake looked very wild and lonely. A pair of eagles build their nest on one of the rocks, and the

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mountaineers who managed our boat informed us, that they sometimes approached these eagles, armed with their shillelaghs, and deprived them of their young.

These people have a strange clothing for the feet: it is a kind of stocking, without a sole, which covers only the upper part of the foot; and there is a hole in the fore part of the stocking, through which the great toe protrudes, and thus the stocking is secured to the foot. These stockings, for which the bare foot forms the sole, are a very ancient fashion in this country; and it is only very recently that leather shoes have been introduced.

As we returned from the most distant corner of the lake, we recalled with pleasure the succession of fair scenes we had surveyed—the dark rocks, the Druidical isthmus, Father Mathew's festival, the Lake of Serpents, St. Patrick's soft-heartedness, the graves, the pillar-temple—what riches! At last we passed out through the little ivy-covered ruined gateway; and near an old hawthorn, which Irwin pointed out as marking the bounds of the town that once stood here, we seated ourselves on our car, and drove off silently, thanking the Irish for their ‘jaunting-cars,’ whose formation allowed us so to sit, that, instead of the horses before us, we could see the vanishing landscape of Glendalough behind us, on which our eyes remained eagerly fastened as long as possible.