The South Isles of Aran (County Galway)

Close by are the remains of the hermitage, partly sunk in the rock, and of some cloghauns, or stone-roofed dwellings. How those solitaries, who for centuries held up the lamp of learning which shone across Europe during the long night which followed the breaking up of the Roman empire, could live in such comfortless cells, it is impossible to apprehend: circular chambers about twenty feet in exterior diameter, with a hole in the stone beehive roof for a chimney, and with an Egyptian-like doorway that a tall man could with difficulty enter. Teampul-Chiarain has a beautiful eastern window, with some crosses. Four miles from Kilronan are Kilmurvey and Teampul McDuach, a sixth-century church, consisting of nave and choir in beautiful preservation. There are windows there of remote antiquity, with lintels formed of two leaning stones; and there is a semicircular window of great beauty of a more recent date. There is a stone leaning against the eastern gable with a rudely cut opening which seems to have been the head of the more ancient window. The narrow doorway is like the entrance to an Egyptian tomb. Another small church, Teampul-beg, together with a holy well and monastic enclosure, is worthy of inspection. At the north-western side of the Inishmore island, and six miles from Kilronan, are the remains of the seven churches, one of which is called Teampul Brecain-the church of St. Braccan, who was the founder of the monastery of Ardbraccan, now the cathedral church of the diocese of Meath. The ruined church of Teampul-saght-Machree is an object of interest on the middle island. The eastern island in ancient times was called Aran-Coemhan in honour of St. Coemhan (St. Kevin), brother of St. Kevin of Glendalough. He was one of the most renowned of the saints of Aran, and is believed to have not unfrequently abated storms after being piously invoked.

There is a legend in the islands worthy of remembrance by those whose marriages are as yet unblest with children. We speak of that of St. Braccan's bed, where many a fair devotee has prayed and has had her prayers granted, as Anna of old had in the temple of Silo,[6] when the Lord bestowed on her childless marriage a child who was afterwards the prophet Samuel.

The churches are all of small dimensions-never more than sixty feet in length-at the eastern end of which is not unfrequently a chancel in which the altar was placed. Between the nave of the church and the chancel was the chancel arch of a semicircular form, a very beautiful specimen of which exists in the Protestant cathedral of Tuam. These temples, very imperfectly lighted by small windows splaying inwards, do not appear to have ever been glazed. The chancel had usually two or three windows-one of which is always in the centre of the east end, with another in the south wall, another in the south wall of the nave, sometimes, though rarely, two in number. The windows are frequently triangular-headed, but more usually arched semicircularly, whilst the doorway is almost universally covered by a horizontal lintel consisting of a single stone. In all cases the sides of the doorways incline like the doorways in the old Cyclopean buildings, to which they bear a striking resemblance. The smaller churches were usually roofed with stone, whilst the larger ones were roofed with wood covered with thatch. The wells are carefully preserved, the scarcity of water rendering the possession of a well almost as precious to them as to the Eastern shepherds in the days of Rebecca.

The Aran churches, it must be admitted, have little in them to interest the mind or captivate the senses; nevertheless, in their symmetrical simplicity, their dimly lighted naves, in the total absence of everything that could distract attention, there is an expression of fitness for their purpose too often wanting in modern temples of the highest pretensions.

The monastic establishments close by contained little that would savour of luxury. The cells of the friars were low, narrow huts, built of the roughest materials, which formed, by the regular distribution of the streets, a large and populous village, enclosing within a common wall a church and hospital, perhaps a library. The austere inmates slept on the ground, on a hard mat or a rough blanket, and the same bundle of palm leaves, served them as a seat by day and a pillow by night. The brethren were supported by their manual labour, and the duty of labour was strenuously recommended as a penance, as an exercise, and as the most laudable means of securing their daily subsistence. "Laborare est orare" was a monastic maxim. The garden and the fields which the industry of the monks had rescued from the forest or the morass were cultivated by their ceaseless toil. In the evening they assembled for vocal or mental prayer, and they were awakened by a rustic horn, or by the convent bell in the night, for the public worship of the monastery. Even sleep, the last refuge of the unhappy, was rigorously measured; and it was to lives of self-denial like this that great multitudes in the first century of the Christian era betook themselves. Pliny, who lived when Christ was crucified, surveyed with astonishment the monks of the first century, "a solitary people," he says, "who dwelt amongst the palm trees near the Dead Sea, who increased, and who subsisted without money, who fled from the pleasures of life, and who derived from the disgust and repentance of mankind a perpetual supply of voluntary associates."[7]

On Inisheer island is a signal tower, and near it is an old castle on an eminence. Here is shown the "bed of St. Coemhan," much famed for its miraculous cures. On the south-west point is a lighthouse showing a light one hundred and ten feet in height. It is stated in the Leabhar-braec that one of the Popes was interred in the great island of Aran. The same is repeated in one of the volumes of the Ordnance Survey, a work which, never printed, is stowed away on the shelves of the Royal Irish Academy, liable at any moment to be destroyed by a conflagration. In the three or four volumes on the county of Galway are contained, and in the English language, the inquisitions of Elizabeth, the subsequent patents of James I., and much learning touching tithes, fisheries, abbeys, abbey lands, priories, and monasteries, as well as letters on these subjects between Petrie and O'Donovan and other antiquarians employed on that survey.

Footnote

[2] II. Coke's Reports, part iii. Preface, p. viii.

[3] The "Old Sea," the ancient name of the Atlantic in Irish.

[4] Sir Aubrey De Vere, "Irish Odes," p. 274.

[5] Colgani, Acta SS. Hiberniæ.

[6] 1 Sam. i. 9-17.

[7] Pliny, Hist. Nat., v. 15.

CHAPTER III

ISLES OF ARAN, 14TH-18TH CENTURIES.

a.d. 1308. The trade of Galway, which at the time of the Anglo-Norman invasion in the twelfth century was at zero, rapidly rose to a comparatively high figure in the fourteenth century. In 1300 the customs receipts were £24 15s. 2d. at that port, and in...