Over these past few years we traveled to Galway several times for doctor appointments. It's four hours each way, but we couldn't stay. But we like Galway, so at the end of February we took an overnight trip to visit wells and windows.
Athenry is an old town, the strategic "Ford of the King." Its walls and castle were repeatedly attacked, the last time in 1572. Wikipedia says the town "did not begin to truly recover till the late 1990s."
We stayed in the lovely Old Barracks, a repurposing of exactly what you think it was. In the hotel's restaurant I ate the best onion bhaji burger ever, and the next morning Artemis had a Full Irish breakfast re-imagined in vegetarian, including delicious white and black sausage.
A few miles away is Lough Rea, where we went to see the windows of St. Brendan's Cathedral. The church commemorates the 6th century founder of a church and university on the site. This he did after discovering America.
Those of us who like Neo-Gothic architecture and Arts and Crafts —honestly, who doesn't?—are fortunate these movements coincided with a massive Catholic church rebuilding effort in Ireland shortly before Independence.
The grounds of the cathedral contain a few unremarkable monuments in a pretty lawn overlooking the lake.
All of which is ruined by this torture tableau.
I believe in freedom of religion as much as anyone, but I wish they would keep this snuff porn away from children.
As I said, we came for the windows. My photos of the cathedral interior are terrible. There are better ones at Roaringwater Journal, as usual.
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| Altar rail |
Behold the Queen of Heaven.
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St. Brigid of the waters.
I know it's ridiculous to post photographs of windows. You have to be there to comprehend their marvelous magic.
Speaking of magic:
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I know it seems contradictory for an apostate like me to enter these sacred sites to gawk at art and ridicule practices. But I took to heart long ago the motto of College Five: ars longa, vita brevis! I hope this cathedral stands for another thousand years. I don't care what meaning people make of it, as long as they fall to their knees.
The Church knows people come for the art. That's what the art is for. In this cathedral, immediately on entering you see this elaborate list of art works and artists.
Speaking of magic: Down at the bottom, notice "Sodality Banners?" This is a Sodality Banner:
These banners were designed by Jack, Lily, and Elizabeth Yeats, and ... Pamela Colman Smith? The artist behind the Rider-Waite tarot, the world's most famous esoteric work of art? Yes, that Pamela Colman Smith.
Smith worked on this project five years before the commission from A.E. Waite in 1909. Four years before that in 1901, she had joined the Golden Dawn, secret society and progenitor of much of modern paganism. She wasn't the first, or last, pagans to create ecclesiastical art. (At the end of her life, she converted to Catholicism.) According to "Pamela Colman Smith and the Yeats Family," (Joan Coldwell, Canadian Journal of Irish Studies Nov 1977) Colman Smith contributed a design of St. Brigid to art collective that created these Sodality Banners.
"Sodality" refers to the community, usually women, who produced the sacred garments of priests, altar clothes, and banners like these, carried in procession. (More banner images here on the cathedral's website. )
When I think of the millions of people taking buses from Dublin to the Cliffs of Moher, while passing by this treasure house….We can't wait to share it with our next visitors.
Not far from the cathedral is the Lough Rea Brigid's well.
We sat in the rare sunshine for a while before taking off into the countryside seeking St. Colman's well.
Couldn't find it. We stopped in at a petrol station to see if they sold the kind of map for the area that indicates "holy wells." I saw no map display, and when I asked if they had maps, the cashier looked confused and showed me GAA lottery tickets. Then I spelled m-a-p-s, in case there was a language barrier. I was offered a tide table. I accept now I live in a world where maps do not exist, nor do younger people know what they were.
Using satellite imagery, we located the Well of the King of Sundays. A lovely walled oval, tucked away behind a ruined house and two cattle gates.
Inside the sacred enclosure is the well (on the right), a votive shrine (details below) and shelter for open-air rituals. The stream flowing from the well has been channeled to surround the Queen of Heaven's shrine the left. (In the center you see the queen of my heaven.)
Queen of Heaven
On the left is the aspect of the Virgin often seen at Irish wells. In the center is Jesus and his Sacred Heart. The aspect on the right is the Virgin who cried real tears in that one episode of "Derry Girls." On the far right is the Infant Jesus of Prague or "Baby Jesus as a Wean" also seen on Derry Girls.
At the end of the day we stopped at Our Lady's Well in Athenry. According to the interpretive plaques, this is a beloved place to come at the end of the day for a contemplative walk or to meet up with a friend. This is exactly what we found there.
We were there on the day Russia invaded Ukraine, so I asked the Virgin to kick Putin's ass.
This Virgin has a history of interceding in armed conflict, as this statue commemorates.
Tradition tells the story that a Marian apparition took place here on 15th August 1249 after the Battle of Athenry. An account in the Annals of Iar Connacht record that a battle took place. The Normans within the town requested the Irish not to attack and to honour the feast-day. However, the Irish made an attack and they were defeated.(link)
Several months ago I planned a trip to Lourdes with a friend who has a chronic illness. We had to cancel it, but at Our Lady's Well I prayed for her, in my Epicurean way, at this version of the Grotto. I prayed my friend would be healed from her disease and "kick its ass."
