07 November 2020

Did the man in the wedding
painting in White’s café in
Wexford have three legs?

‘The Peasant Wedding’ (1567) by Pieter Bruegel the Elder … were there three legs on that man in the print in the café in White’s Hotel?

Patrick Comerford

I was writing earlier this week (5 November 2020) about how I have found the records of my great-uncle, John Lynders, my grandmother’s elder brother, and how he lived in Wexford about a century ago.

That search and discovery were prompted two months ago during a return visit to Wexford two months ago (2-3 September 2020), when I walked back along Main Street, using as my guidebook Nicky Rossiter’s book, Main Street, Heart of Wexford (Stroud: History Press, 2018).

Nicky’s book has prompted brought back many memories, including his shared memories of White’s Hotel in the 1960s, which are equally true for the 1970s.

He writes (page 59) of a time when ‘a night out meant a trip to White’s Barn ... Back in those days White’s was the epitome of cool. It was also a one-stop entertainment shop. There was the Shelmalier Bar for a cosy drink at an open fire – it later became the library and is now destined for refurbishment.’

He continues: ‘We usually repaired to [the] Main Street door and the fantastic coffee shop. Once more the open fire was a feature with the enigmatic painting above. Did that guy have three legs?’

He goes on to recall: ‘How that coffee shop survived is a mystery. It was always packed but how we could make that coffee or coke last. Margaret must have had the patience of Job to put up with us.’

I too sang in the bar and in the café I knew how to make that coffee last too, and I too asked, ‘Did that guy have three legs?’

The coffee shop was next door to the YMCA, which served as the parish hall, and where I was on the committee and organised poetry readings and folk evenings – an early star attraction was Billy Roche.

Back in the coffee shop in White’s, the large image over the open fire that caused us to tease one another to Margaret’s delight was a print of ‘The Peasant Wedding,’ a 1567 painting by the Dutch and Flemish Renaissance painter and printmaker Pieter Bruegel the Elder (ca 1525/1530-1569), and one of his many paintings depicting peasant life.

A copy hung over the open fire in White’s coffee shop, but the original is now in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. Pieter Bruegel the Elder enjoyed painting peasants and different aspects of their lives in so many of his paintings that he has been called Peasant-Bruegel. But he was an intellectual, and many of his paintings have a symbolic meaning as well as a moral aspect.

Pieter Bruegel was the most significant artist of Dutch and Flemish Renaissance painting and a pioneer in making both landscapes and peasant life his focus in large paintings. He was one of the first generation of artists to grow up when religious subjects had ceased to be the natural subject matter of painting.

After his training and travelling to Italy, he returned in 1555 to settle in Antwerp. He is sometimes referred to as ‘Peasant Bruegel,’ to distinguish him from the many later painters in his family, including his son Pieter Brueghel the Younger (1564-1638).

In ‘The Peasant Wedding,’ the Bride is in front of the green textile wall-hanging, with a paper-crown hung above her head. She is also wearing a crown on her head, and she is sitting passively, not participating in the eating or drinking taking place around her.

The Bridegroom is not seen at of the wedding feast, although he may be the man pouring out beer, or serving the food. Others argue that the groom is the man in the centre of the painting, wearing a dark coat and seen in profile, or the ill-bred son of a wealthy couple, seen against the far wall, to the right of the bride, eating with a spoon. Another theory suggests the groom is the young man wearing a red cap, who is serving his guests the food, handing out plates to his guests.

The feast is in a barn in summertime. Two sheaves of grain with a rake recall the work involved in harvesting and the hard life of peasants. Other features in the scene include two pipers, a boy with breeches in the foreground licking a plate, and a wealthy man at the far right feeding a dog by putting bread on a bench.

The plates are carried on a door off its hinges – and, yes, art historians agree that there is a mysterious extra foot under the load of dishes being carried by the two men in the right foreground.

Some critics argue that this painting represents the Wedding of Cana in Saint John’s Gospel. Others suggest that the painting is a Christian allegory symbolising corruption, or depicts the corrupt Church, supposed to be the bride of Christ, before the groom arrives for the bride.

And that, in another way, prepares me for tomorrow morning’s Gospel reading (Matthew 25: 1-13).

The YMCA was next door to White’s coffee shop … and the venue for poetry readings and folk evenings (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

‘A rehearsal within time,
for the age beyond time …
strife, evil and oppression’

The Stadttempel synagogue in Vienna … Franz Schubert produced a setting in Hebrew of Psalm 92 for synagogue (Photograph courtesy Jews of New York)

Patrick Comerford

Following Monday night’s on the Stadttempel, the only surviving pre-war synagogue in Vienna, I have written about the synagogue and about Franz Schubert, who produced a setting in Hebrew of Psalm 92, Tov Lehodot La’Adonai or Lecha Dodi (‘It is good to give thanks to the Lord’), for the synagogue on Seitenstettengasse in Vienna.

Schubert is the only great composer before the 20th century to compose a setting in Hebrew of the liturgy for the synagogue. But it is interesting to understand when he was commissioned to produce a setting of Psalm 92.

In the Authorised Prayer Book, one of two prayerbooks that I regularly use for prayers and reflections on Friday evenings, the former Chief Rabbi, Lord (Jonathan) Sacks, describes Psalm 92 as ‘a song for the Sabbath Day.’

Lord Sacks recalls that by the 12th century, the custom existed to say Psalm 92 as a song of welcome to the Shabbat. He says this psalm was understood by the Sages as ‘a song for the time to come, for the day which will be Shabbat and rest in life everlasting.’

The Tzfat mystics, including Rabbi Isaac Luria, developed the custom of saying special psalms and songs of welcome to Shabbat, including six extra psalms (95-99 and 29), before singing Psalm 92.

Lord Sacks says Shabbat is ‘not merely a day of rest, it is a rehearsal within time, for the age beyond time when humanity, guided by the call of God, moves beyond strife, evil and oppression, to create a world of harmony, respecting the integrity of creation as God’s work, and the human person as God’s image.’

He continues: ‘At that time people looking back at history will see that though evil flourished “like grass”, it was short-lived, while the righteous grow slowly but stand tall “like the cedar of Lebanon.” Because our time perspective is short, we seem to inhabit a world n which evil prevails. Were we able to see history as a whole, we would know that good wins the final victory; in the long run justice prevails.’

Psalm 92 (NRSVA):

1 It is good to give thanks to the Lord,
to sing praises to your name, O Most High;
2 to declare your steadfast love in the morning,
and your faithfulness by night,
3 to the music of the lute and the harp,
to the melody of the lyre.
4 For you, O Lord, have made me glad by your work;
at the works of your hands I sing for joy.
5 How great are your works, O Lord!
Your thoughts are very deep!
6 The dullard cannot know,
the stupid cannot understand this:
7 though the wicked sprout like grass
and all evildoers flourish,
they are doomed to destruction for ever,
8 but you, O Lord, are on high for ever.
9 For your enemies, O Lord,
for your enemies shall perish;
all evildoers shall be scattered.

10 But you have exalted my horn like that of the wild ox;
you have poured over me fresh oil.
11 My eyes have seen the downfall of my enemies;
my ears have heard the doom of my evil assailants.

12 The righteous flourish like the palm tree,
and grow like a cedar in Lebanon.
13 They are planted in the house of the Lord;
they flourish in the courts of our God.
14 In old age they still produce fruit;
they are always green and full of sap,
15 showing that the Lord is upright;
he is my rock, and there is no unrighteousness in him.

Shabbat Shalom

‘The righteous … grow like a cedar in Lebanon’ (Psalm 92: 12) … a young girl with a violin and her friend beneath a cedar tree at Curraghchase Forest Park near Askeaton, Co Limerick (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)