tag="{http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml}img"/>

SHANDON CHURCH TOWER.

bells. Seventeen hundred and fifty is the date cast on each of the eight.

St. Anne Shandon, or Sean-dun, signifying “the old fort,” is situated on Shandon Hill, and is really a suburb of Cork. Its fame, in the minds of most, reverts to Father Prout’s world-famous lyric, “The Bells of Shandon.” If “in the mood,” the listener will experience much the same emotions as are set forth in those pleasing stanzas. If not, as with most other things which have been similarly eulogized, the traveller will condemn it as mere hollow sentiment and “bosh.” But the latter will, likely enough, not prove to be the case.

The church was erected on the site of the old Church of Our Lady, or St. Mary Shandon, a very ancient edifice, destroyed at the burning of the suburbs at the siege of Cork by Marlborough in 1690. In the decretal epistles of Pope Innocent III., it is mentioned as the Church of St. Mary in the Mountain. In 1536, the rector of St. Mary’s, one Dominick Tyrrey, was elevated to the see of Cork, of which he was the first Protestant bishop. The Rev. Francis Mahony (“Father Prout”), though he spent much of his life abroad, is buried in the churchyard in the family vault at the foot of the tower.

The tower, or steeple, which contains the celebrated bells, is of unique construction. It consists of a tower and lantern (170 feet high) of three stories each. Two sides of the steeple, west and south, are built of limestone, and two, north and east, of red stone.

The chime of bells itself does not take a high rank among campanologists, since it is not very excellent either in voice or power. Still, given certain conditions, one may well realize Mahony’s (Father Prout’s) sentiments:

CORK.

In the little cemetery of the monastery of the Christian Brothers, near by, rest the remains of Gerald Griffin, the novelist and poet, author of “The Colleen Bawn.”

The history of Cork is too vast to chronicle here, but its interest lies rather with the more or less fragmentary recollections, which all of us have, of the traditions and legends of its environment.

In the ninth century Cork was frequently plundered by the Danes, who, in 1020, founded, for purposes of trade, the nucleus of the present city. At the time of the English invasion it was the capital of Desmond, King of Munster, who did homage to Henry II., and resigned the city to him. For receiving Perkin Warbeck, the pretender to the throne of England, with royal honours in 1493, the Mayor of Cork was hanged, and the city lost its charter, which was, however, restored in 1609.

During the civil war, Cork held out for King Charles, but its garrison was ultimately surprised and taken.

When, in 1685, the bigoted and cruel Louis XIV. revoked the Edict of Nantes, Cork, though a Catholic community, opened her friendly arms to welcome the fugitive sons of France, and threw around them the mantle of her protection.

The name of St. Finbarr, the first Bishop of Cork, is so commonly referred to in connection with Southern Ireland that it is perhaps allowable to extract and reprint here, from Butler’s “Lives of the Saints,” the leading events of his life:

“Called by some St. Barrus, or Barrœus, he was a native of Connaught, and instituted a monastery at Lough Eirc, which lake, said the antiquarian Harris, was the hollowed basin in which the greater part of the city of Cork now sits. From this monastery and its immediate surroundings grew up the present city of Cork. St. Finbarr’s disciple, St. Colman, founded the see of Cloyne, of which he became first bishop. St. Nessan succeeded St. Finbarr at the monastery and built the town of Cork. (This saint, too, is honoured, locally, on the 17th of March and 1st of December.)

“The name under which St. Finbarr was baptized was Locahan, the surname Finbarr, or Barr the White, was given to him afterward. He was Bishop of Cork seventeen years, and died at Cloyne, fifteen miles distant. His body was buried in his own cathedral at Cork, which bears his name, and his reliques, some years after, were put in a silver shrine and preserved in the same edifice.”

The Abbey of St. Finbarr was a veritable outpost of Christianity. Dungarvan owes its name, and Waterford its Christianity, to Brother Garvan of this abbey; while Brother Brian became the patron of St. Brienne in France.

Cork University was a glorious institution in its time, and many who had no prejudices in favour of Ireland have endorsed its virtues from the times of Johnson to those of Newman, Hallam, and Macaulay.

After the fall of the Western Roman Empire the schools and the abbeys of Ireland became famous. “Hither fled the timid for safety, and the leisured for learning.” Students came from all lands and teachers went out to all lands.

England’s Alfred came here to study, and Charlemagne drew his teachers from this “school of the West,” as it was afterward called by Johnson.

One ancient scrivener writes that at this period nearly all the learned were under the influence of Ireland. The great universities of Oxford, Paris, and Pavia, if not actually of Irish inception, were greatly indebted to the learning which spread forth from the Green Isle. There is scarcely a Continental centre of learning, from Palermo to Bruges, or from Grenada to Cologne, where some Irish saint, patron, or monkish scholar is not known and revered.

Cork should be endeared to Americans by reason of the association with the city of two whose names will never be forgotten—William Penn, the Quaker, and Father Mathew, the great temperance advocate.

In proof of the successful labours of the latter, a great writer of his time stated that not a single instance of drunkenness came under his observation during a sojourn of some weeks in