An Irish Ruin
by R.H. Horne.
Originally published in Howitt's Journal (William Lovett) vol.1 #6 (06 Feb 1847).
On the hard and stony road, running for the most part between walls of loose stones, and leading towards New Quay, on the western coast of Clare, you arrive at a narrower road branching off to the right, also between close lines of the same kind of loose walls, and winding away as if to some dreary quarry, or wholesale manufactory of tomb-stones in their first rough outline and raw condition of vain-glory. After proceeding some thing less than two Irish miles through these winding walls, varied with nothing whatever, beyond the different sizes and uncouth shapes of the component parts—craggy stones and rifts of rock—you at length arrive at-a little elevation of the road, where you first descry the grim, grey, grisly, hard-favoured ruins of Corcumroe Abbey. In no guide-book, or hand-book, or tourist-book, are you likely to find a word about this strange, battered, pale, gigantic, stony Scarecrow of something once majestic.
Over the nearest wall of loose lime-rock, you look across a sort of enclosure or field, the chief produce of which is evidently a great crop of stones. There are as many large stones as patches of grass, and often covering as much space. The enclosure has a motley hue of green and grey-white all over it; and, on the whole, the grey-white predominates. The next enclosure beyond, has yet more stones, and less grass. The next again, is much larger, and like the last, except that it has one long, sprawling, ragged patch of green, the grass being mixed with short rushes and swamp, with here and there a little pool. Beyond this is another much narrower field, entirely covered with stones and rough, flat, rocky fragments, terminated by another wall more compactly built, and twice as high as any of the rest—and within that last enclosure stand the ruins of the Abbey of Corcumroe. It is no slight task to make your way there.
A traveller in Ireland, who wishes, or is obliged, to betake himself across several of these sort of walled enclosures, invariably begins by clambering over them: it is quite in the natural order of things to do so; but after a time, he becomes better instructed by the example of the Irish principle of action in this district. When they come to a wall of these loose stones, they just pull down a big hole—and walk through. The process is not without its dangers, in the way of broken knees and pounded toes; you need not, however, concern yourself about piling them up again in their place, as nobody minds such things in these parts. Nor can this plan be adopted in every case, except with the higher range of stones, the lower and middle ones being generally too heavy and straggling. The last wall of the enclosures already spoken of, was also inaccessible by such means, as it was composed almost entirely of large masses, and packed and fitted together much closer than any of the rest. It therefore had to be scaled. There was no other way of reaching the Abbey; and the task was not difficult, owing to the number of protuberances; besides this, in one particular place there were direct and intentional assistances of this kind. Nearly in front of this part of the wall was a rough-hewn slab of a tomb, bearing the following inscription, the post mortem ambition of which appears sadly at variance with its fate of utter obscurity:—"Patt McCarthy—for him, and Posterity."
After passing the swampy field—plashing through the slushes and rushes, or leaping from stone to stone—then the grey, rocky enclosure—and lastly, surmounting the high wall—you have at last the rare privilege of approaching the most unpicturesque, unromantic, and uninviting ruin that could possibly be conceived. The beauty of Corcumroe Abbey is its matchless ugliness. There is no sort of invention in our account of it. Isolated, unknown, set aside from the rest of the world in a desert of old stones, the place does exist as here set down; and though nobody goes to see it, the name is nevertheless discoverable in some few maps of Ireland—the map published by Charles Knight, being one of these few instances. The writer of this only heard of it by accident, in consequence of a traveller losing his way to Rathbourney, who came "all unawares" upon the strange ruin, to his pale confusion;—by whose incoherencies about it, the hearer aforesaid confesses to have been inspired to make this sore-footed pilgrimage.
Coreumroe presents the appearance of some old, battered, hollow-eyed fossil remains of a sort of colossal beast or giant-monster, wearing, as in mockery, a poor scanty rag of ivy-mantle upon one ridgy shoulder; and standing up, as it does, so grim and grey amidst all these grey stones—and stony fields—and loose walls—it gives one the impression of an abortive annihilation—a thing that was about to be abolished from the earth's surface, but that the process failed midway—and it remained as a grotesque old spectral petrifaction.
The interior is not more inviting. You pass over heaps of human bones, and gravestones, and partition walls, all broken up and pounded down together, and lying like masses of wreck, and rubbish, and death-lumber; and quantities of dry sea-weed and sea-shells are mingled with the stones and the bones—remnants of fish, and of men not drowned; therefore, the fish must have been drowned (as they would term it) by being cast upon dry land. But how up here? Some tempest from the Atlantic must have driven them before it, as the distance is not many miles, and then left them here to flap, and gasp, and stare amid these hard and hopeless ruins. Bones of all the limbs of mortal men, whole and in fragments, of all shapes and sizes, were to be seen in profusion;—skulls, half full of water, with many-legged creatures swimming about in them, round and round, at play; other skulls, with weeds growing in them and wild flowers flourishing out of the eye-holes, and a tuft of bright green moss in the lower jaw. At the extremity of one division of the interior, on climbing up through a broken vault, you suddenly descry upon a deep ledge beneath a large arched window aperture, a heap of skulls piled up together, all with their hollow faces turned the same way, and looking directly towards the place where you ascend—hundreds of great, black, hollow eye-holes, all staring darkness at you. It is terrible—the first impression, something dismaying to the imagination, and confounding the will, so that you can neither advance nor retire. You expect some ghastly chorus to burst upon your ear. The next thing of which you become conscious, is the continuous and pregnant silence. A weed, or a tassel of long grass, rustles and whispers from the walls above—or a few crumbs and a little dry dust or mortar, fall down near you, causing you to gaze round, yet see nothing—and then, again, the silence and creeping progress of deathly time!
My car-driver now came to join me. After securing the horse and car (an easy task enough in such a place) he had slowly followed across the enclosure, but remained sitting upon the top of the high wall a few minutes. He then ventured down, and came walking on tiptoe into the ruins. Presently he emerged in his ascent through a broken stair from below, and approached me, holding his breath. Solitary investigations and musings were now at an end. There was no shaking him off. He was evidently afraid to leave me, and every now and then appeared to utter an inward prayer.
The only tomb in any state of preservation, worthy of particular notice, is the family tomb of O'Loughlin, King of Burren. Beneath it, at the right hand side, in a hollow recess, like a trough, under a very acute-angled arch, lies a gaunt stone figure at full length, very rudely carved. It purports to be the effigy of Connor O'Loughlin, Prince of Burren. Nothing further is said upon the stone; a far more dignified proceeding, under the circumstances, than that of poor Mr. Patt McCarthy, outside the high wall. The face of the effigy of the Prince of Burren is nearly all worn away—flat and featureless—but the features appearing to have been large and long rather than prominent. A skull from among the wrecks above had_rolled down into the recess. I took it up, and handed it to the young carman. He received it very reverentially—gazed down at it a little while in silence; and then said, in a devout tone, "A thick skull—the Lord be praised!" I suppose there was some connexion of ideas in his mind; at all events, he said it with great reverence.
Two old rooks appear to have a sort of home in the ragged, sapless ivy on the upper part of the ruins, and are even believed to sleep there every night. It is also affirmed that sheep are sometimes to be seen near the walls, cropping such grass and weed as they can find. The Abbey is surrounded by huge fragments of rock, as you bend your gaze below;—and, looking upward, a few small patches of green field and brown arable land are visible, here and there; while huge mountains of grey stones, in a wide and forbidding circle, enclose the spectral ruins of Corcumroe in their bleak and barren embrace.