Patrick Comerford
Cad a dheanfaimid feasta gan adhmad …
“what shall do from now on without trees …”
The lament for the destruction of the trees on the historic estate of Kilcash must be the best-known and best-loved poem in the Irish language. For generations, Cill Chaise or Kilcash was a staple of the Irish syllabus and the poem is etched in our memories. But the story of Kilcash in south Tipperary is often forgotten.
Traditionally, Kilcash was attributed to Father John Lane of Carrick-on-Suir who died in 1776. Now, two natives of Kilcash, John Flood of the School of English at Trinity College Dublin and the local historian Phil Flood have come to surprising conclusions about its authorship. They tell the story of Kilcash – the poem, the castle, and the parish, with its church, graveyard and traditions – in their new book, Kilcash 1190-1801. The work is of literary, historical and archaeological importance for anyone interested in the castle and parish on the southern slopes of Slievenamon.
Monastic foundation
Folklore says the story of Kilcash could date back to a monastic foundation by Colman Mac Erc around the year 550, but its history begins at the end of the 12th century. Soon after, Kilcash passed to the de Vale or Wall family, one of whose most celebrated (or infamous) members was the second wife of Sir Richard de Vale, Dame Alice de Kytler, tried for heresy and witchcraft in 1324. The Floods display their ironic sense of humour as they described Dame Alice’s main accusers, her children and step-children, insisting her wealth was derived from defrauding the heirs of her four husbands while claiming at the same time that throughout her life she had regular intercourse with a demon.
Kilcash passed to the Butlers around 1540, and the tower house was erected by the last of the de Vales or the first Butlers. Over the generations, the Butlers acquired a number of curious relics, including the arm of Archbishop Oliver Plunket, which later passed to the Dominican Convent in Cabra, and a supposed portion of the True Cross, now preserved at Holy Cross Abbey.
The Floods also link the story of Kilcash with Cromwell, Charles II, the arrival of the Ottomans at the gates of Vienna in 1683, Patrick Sarsfield, James II and his illegitimate progeny, and the “Ladies of Llangollen”, Lady Eleanor Butler and Sarah Ponsonby. Lady Eleanor’s brother John was known as “Jack o’ the Castle”, but he was a Jack of two castles, inheriting both Kilcash and Kilkenny Castle in 1766. The Ormonde titles were in legal limbo since the death of the Jacobite rebel 2nd Duke in Avignon in 1745 and Jack set to reclaiming them, becoming the 17th Earl of Ormonde.
Jack was dismissed by Wolfe Tone as “a drunken beast, without a character of any kind but that of a blockhead”, and his move to Kilkenny Castle spelt disaster for Kilcash. His son Walter, in need of hard cash to support an extravagant lifestyle, sold off the famous trees in two lots in 1797 and 1801 as well as the materials of the castle. In 1811, he even sold the family's hereditary right to the prisage of wines – the office that gave the very name Butler to the family – to the crown for £216,000.
Sale of timber
The Floods doubt that John Lane was the author of the poem, and point out that he was long dead before the sale of the timber began in 1797. They suggest the poem was composed in the early 19th century after the sale of the remaining timber and the ruination of the castle, and point out that the earliest reference to a written copy of the song is in February 1843.
Nevertheless, Kilcash has an authentic link with the Gaelic poets dating back to the Song for Lady Iveagh, written after the death of Col Thomas Butler's widow, Lady Margaret, in 1744. The marriage of her daughter Honora and Valentine Browne of Kenmare was celebrated in two poems by Aogan O Rathaille – Epithalamium for Lord Kenmare and The Good Omen – in which he celebrated an alliance between the “Prince of Kilcash” and the “King of Kilarney”. The return of Jack o’ the Castle from France in 1761 was celebrated by the Gaelic poet Liam O Meachair in his Song for Young John Butler.
Despite the poetry, the laments and the prosperity of the Butlers, Kilcash Castle lay neglected if not forgotten for generations. The hand-over of the castle was first suggested by the Ormonde Estate in the 1970s, but the negotiations took 25 years. Eventually, the castle was bought for the nominal sum of £500, but as soon as it passed into public ownership in 1998 the public was denied access and its gates were locked because of the hazardous state of the buildings. While the Floods were writing, the gable of one outbuilding collapsed in a storm. The site is in danger of further deterioration, an archaeological survey remains to be carried out, and repairs are a matter of great urgency.
Kilcash Church stands nearby, forlorn and forgotten. The east gable is almost completely destroyed, and the chancel arch is missing. But this is a church of archaeological significance. The chancel dates from the 10th to the early 12th century. There lie three graves of members of the Comerford family, including the oldest remaining tomb in the church, that of James Comerford who died in 1691. The Romanesque doorway on the south wall is an unusual position, drawing comparisons with the Romanesque doorways at nearby Kilsheelin and Cormac’s Chapel on the Rock of Cashel.
New edition
Cill Chaise exists in several hundred versions and has been translated by Michael Cavanagh, Thomas Kinsella and Frank O'Connor. Now, Prof Daiti O hOgain of UCD has produced a new edition of the Irish text which may become the definitive version. His text is accompanied by a new English translation, and the poet Eilean Ní Chuilleanain of TCD has written a poetic translation based on Prof O hOgain’s Irish text.
This feature was published as the column ‘An Irishman’s Diary’ in ‘The Irish Times’ on 28 December 1999.
PATRICK COMERFORD: an online journal on Anglicanism, theology, spirituality, history, architecture, travel, poetry, beach walks ... and more
28 December 1999
25 June 1999
Peace in the walled city as Israeli tourists
honour Aegean's ancient Jewish culture
Rhodes
Letter
Patrick Comerford
The Seahorse Fountain in the Square of the Hebrew Martyrs remembering those members of the Jewish community of Rhodes who perished at Auschwitz (Photograph: Carlos Delgado)
The elegant Seahorse Fountain in the old walled city of Rhodes provides refreshing relief for tourists in the blistering summer heat. Few if any notice Lucia Soulam as she trudges each day from the fountain through the narrow street of Pindarou and up the alley-ways of Dosiadou and Simiou.
As Lucia opens the tall brown doors leading into a cobbled courtyard, the only hint that this building is worth visiting is a small, fading, typed notice to say it is open to visitors daily between 10 a.m. and 5 p.m. Through the thick layers of heavy brown paint, it is difficult to make out the traces of two raised Stars of David. These alone indicate that this is the oldest surviving synagogue in Greece, and the last remaining synagogue in “La Judeira,” the old Jewish quarter in the south-east corner of the walled city.
There have been Jews in Rhodes since at least the time of Herod the Great. After the Spanish Inquisition, an influx of Sephardic refugees from Spain and Portugal saw a growth in the Jewish population and a new input into Jewish culture in the Aegean. The Jews of Rhodes were doctors and merchants, printers and bankers, craftsmen and traders. Unlike the Greek Christians of Rhodes, they were permitted by the Ottoman Turks to live within the walls of the crusader city.
For over 200 years, 12 successive generations of the Israel family provided the Chief Rabbis of Rhodes. In the 19th century, four of the five banks on the island were in Jewish hands, and the first department store in Rhodes was owned by a Jewish family.
When the Jewish community in Rhodes was at its height in the 1920s, there were 4,000 or more Jews living on the island. Today, sadly, there are only 35, in seven families; the number of adult male Jews is so small that it is increasingly difficult to find the quorum of 10 men needed to form a congregation for services on a Friday night or Saturday morning. The Holocaust virtually destroyed one of the oldest Jewish communities in the eastern Mediterranean.
The Kahal Shalom is the last remaining synagogue in a city that once had six. The floor inside and the courtyards outside are decorated with the graceful black and white pebble mosaic patterns or kochlaki, which are distinctive throughout the Dodecanese. A plaque in the courtyard on the east side bears the date Kislev 5338 in the Jewish calendar, showing Kahal Shalom (“the Holy Congregation of Plentiful Peace”) dates back to the year 1577.
But more immediate history and its horrors are recalled on a plaque in the west-side courtyard: it lists the names of 100 families who were wiped out in the Holocaust.
As the Italians – who captured the Dodecanese from the Ottomans in 1912 – passed increasingly repressive measures in the 1930s, the Jews of Rhodes began to leave in large numbers. By the end of the 1930s, there were still 2,000 or more on the island, struggling to maintain their cultural life. A boatload of 600 Jews from Bratislava and Prague fleeing the Nazis reached Rhodes in 1939. There they were fed and quartered by the local community, and provided with fresh water for their onward journey to Palestine. But as the boat sailed out it caught fire, and the refugees were eventually washed up on the island of Samos. They returned to Rhodes, where the local Jews helped them to buy another old boat, and this time they made their way safely to Palestine. The refugees survived, but the Rhodians who helped them escape were to perish a few years later.
On July 23rd, 1944, 1,673 members of the Jewish community were rounded up in Rhodes and assembled in the square in front of the old Admiralty Building and the former palace of the Latin archbishops. From there they were shipped to Piraeus and on by train to Auschwitz. The community that had survived the Crusades and the Inquisition and prospered under both Ottomans and Italians was decimated: only 151 survived.
Today, the synagogue is used for services only when visitors or former residents and their families visit Rhodes for Friday night prayer services, High Holidays such as Passover, Pentecost and Yom Kippur, and special occasions. Memorials inside recall the victims of the Holocaust.
Lucia was among the survivors, and tells their story in her fluent Ladino, Italian, Greek and Hebrew. The prayer desk was donated in memory of Regine and Semah Franco, their families and their children, who died during the deportation and in Auschwitz. Money donated by Rhodian Jews in Israel and the US has helped to pay for the recent redecoration of the interior. Under the guidance of Aron Hasson, a Los Angeles lawyer whose four grandparents were born in Rhodes, the graves in the old cemetery outside the city walls, many dating back to the 16th cenutry, have been restored, and a new museum has been opened in what was once the women’s prayer room.
The museum exhibits illustrate daily life for the community throughout the first half of the century, from old men wearing the traditional fez and rabbis in turbans during the Ottoman period to a little boy from the Angel family wearing a yellow star in the 1940s.
The city square where the Nazis rounded up the Jews of Rhodes has been renamed Plateia Martyron Evreon, the Square of the Hebrew Martyrs, and the Sea Horse Fountain was erected in memory of those who died in Auschwitz.
Last week, we found nine Israeli tourists in the synagogue, one short of the quorum of 10 Jewish men for a service. Eventually, a New Yorker in the courtyard outside realised the problem, and provided the one man needed to save the day, although he could only stand in silence and knew none of the prayers. As a family, we sat at the back of the synagogue and watched as they held the first service for months. A calm descended over the Holy Congregation of Plentiful Peace, but it may be months before the synagogue hosts another service, for the Holocaust destroyed a unique and beautiful part of European culture.
This news feature was first published in ‘The Irish Times’ on Friday 25 June 1999
Letter
Patrick Comerford
The elegant Seahorse Fountain in the old walled city of Rhodes provides refreshing relief for tourists in the blistering summer heat. Few if any notice Lucia Soulam as she trudges each day from the fountain through the narrow street of Pindarou and up the alley-ways of Dosiadou and Simiou.
As Lucia opens the tall brown doors leading into a cobbled courtyard, the only hint that this building is worth visiting is a small, fading, typed notice to say it is open to visitors daily between 10 a.m. and 5 p.m. Through the thick layers of heavy brown paint, it is difficult to make out the traces of two raised Stars of David. These alone indicate that this is the oldest surviving synagogue in Greece, and the last remaining synagogue in “La Judeira,” the old Jewish quarter in the south-east corner of the walled city.
There have been Jews in Rhodes since at least the time of Herod the Great. After the Spanish Inquisition, an influx of Sephardic refugees from Spain and Portugal saw a growth in the Jewish population and a new input into Jewish culture in the Aegean. The Jews of Rhodes were doctors and merchants, printers and bankers, craftsmen and traders. Unlike the Greek Christians of Rhodes, they were permitted by the Ottoman Turks to live within the walls of the crusader city.
For over 200 years, 12 successive generations of the Israel family provided the Chief Rabbis of Rhodes. In the 19th century, four of the five banks on the island were in Jewish hands, and the first department store in Rhodes was owned by a Jewish family.
When the Jewish community in Rhodes was at its height in the 1920s, there were 4,000 or more Jews living on the island. Today, sadly, there are only 35, in seven families; the number of adult male Jews is so small that it is increasingly difficult to find the quorum of 10 men needed to form a congregation for services on a Friday night or Saturday morning. The Holocaust virtually destroyed one of the oldest Jewish communities in the eastern Mediterranean.
The Kahal Shalom is the last remaining synagogue in a city that once had six. The floor inside and the courtyards outside are decorated with the graceful black and white pebble mosaic patterns or kochlaki, which are distinctive throughout the Dodecanese. A plaque in the courtyard on the east side bears the date Kislev 5338 in the Jewish calendar, showing Kahal Shalom (“the Holy Congregation of Plentiful Peace”) dates back to the year 1577.
But more immediate history and its horrors are recalled on a plaque in the west-side courtyard: it lists the names of 100 families who were wiped out in the Holocaust.
As the Italians – who captured the Dodecanese from the Ottomans in 1912 – passed increasingly repressive measures in the 1930s, the Jews of Rhodes began to leave in large numbers. By the end of the 1930s, there were still 2,000 or more on the island, struggling to maintain their cultural life. A boatload of 600 Jews from Bratislava and Prague fleeing the Nazis reached Rhodes in 1939. There they were fed and quartered by the local community, and provided with fresh water for their onward journey to Palestine. But as the boat sailed out it caught fire, and the refugees were eventually washed up on the island of Samos. They returned to Rhodes, where the local Jews helped them to buy another old boat, and this time they made their way safely to Palestine. The refugees survived, but the Rhodians who helped them escape were to perish a few years later.
On July 23rd, 1944, 1,673 members of the Jewish community were rounded up in Rhodes and assembled in the square in front of the old Admiralty Building and the former palace of the Latin archbishops. From there they were shipped to Piraeus and on by train to Auschwitz. The community that had survived the Crusades and the Inquisition and prospered under both Ottomans and Italians was decimated: only 151 survived.
Today, the synagogue is used for services only when visitors or former residents and their families visit Rhodes for Friday night prayer services, High Holidays such as Passover, Pentecost and Yom Kippur, and special occasions. Memorials inside recall the victims of the Holocaust.
Lucia was among the survivors, and tells their story in her fluent Ladino, Italian, Greek and Hebrew. The prayer desk was donated in memory of Regine and Semah Franco, their families and their children, who died during the deportation and in Auschwitz. Money donated by Rhodian Jews in Israel and the US has helped to pay for the recent redecoration of the interior. Under the guidance of Aron Hasson, a Los Angeles lawyer whose four grandparents were born in Rhodes, the graves in the old cemetery outside the city walls, many dating back to the 16th cenutry, have been restored, and a new museum has been opened in what was once the women’s prayer room.
The museum exhibits illustrate daily life for the community throughout the first half of the century, from old men wearing the traditional fez and rabbis in turbans during the Ottoman period to a little boy from the Angel family wearing a yellow star in the 1940s.
The city square where the Nazis rounded up the Jews of Rhodes has been renamed Plateia Martyron Evreon, the Square of the Hebrew Martyrs, and the Sea Horse Fountain was erected in memory of those who died in Auschwitz.
Last week, we found nine Israeli tourists in the synagogue, one short of the quorum of 10 Jewish men for a service. Eventually, a New Yorker in the courtyard outside realised the problem, and provided the one man needed to save the day, although he could only stand in silence and knew none of the prayers. As a family, we sat at the back of the synagogue and watched as they held the first service for months. A calm descended over the Holy Congregation of Plentiful Peace, but it may be months before the synagogue hosts another service, for the Holocaust destroyed a unique and beautiful part of European culture.
This news feature was first published in ‘The Irish Times’ on Friday 25 June 1999
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