The Streets Were Very Narrow.

The last week's wash, that looked as if the Shannon was further away than it is, fluttered from the broken windows of the fifth story.

All the shops were open; there did not seem to be any buyers, but if there were, they might get supplied. The very old huckster women sat by their baskets of very small and very wizened apples, and infinitesimal pears that had forgotten to grow. Two women, one in a third-story window and one on the street, were exchanging strong compliments. In fact, as our cousins would say, "there was no Sunday in that English quarter worth a cent." I made my escape with a sick longing for some one to carry a gospel of good tidings of great joy in there.

Next morning I found out the English Cathedral, which is at the very border, so to speak, of that forgotten place. It stands in pretty grounds. The elderly gentleman who has the care of it, and who shows it off like a pet child, happened to be there, and took charge of me. He was determined I should conscientiously see and hear all about that church. This church was built in 1194 by Donagh O'Brien, King of Munster. It was not new even then, for King Donagh made his new church out of an old palace of his.

I followed that old man while he pointed out the relics of the old and the glories of the new, the magnificent painted windows, the velvet of the costliest that covered the altar, the carvings of price, the cushions and the carpets, and, a few steps away, the fluttering rags, the horrible poverty, the hopeless lives of the English quarter. Truly the fat and the wool are in one place, and the flock on the dark mountains in another. Outside are various stone cupboards, called vaults, where highbred dust moulders in state free from any beggarly admixture.

That old man wished to delude me up unknown steps to the battlements and up to other battlements on the top of the church tower - it was raining heavily, and the gray clouds lying on the house tops, you could hardly have seen across two streets - to see the view forsooth; then he volunteered to set the bells ringing in my honor, but I declined. He then told me of the bells - it was new to me; it may not be new to others. They were - well - taken without leave from Italy. The Italian who cast them pilgrimed over the world in search of them. Sailing up the Shannon he heard his long-lost bells, and it killed him, the joy did.

The puritan soldiers destroyed the profusion of statues that decorated this church. Noticed one simple monument to one Dan Hayes, an honest man and a lover of his country. Near this cathedral is the house where Ireton died, tall and smoky, battered and fallen into age, but very high. Its broken windows showed several poverty-stricken faces looking down on the cathedral grounds, which, of course, are kept locked.

Enter page number Go  Previous Next
Page 172 of 208
Words from 88352 to 88870 of 107283