Daily prayer in the Kingdom Season: 17, Monday 17 November 2025

The window depicting Christ the healer in the Chapel of Saint John’s Hospital, Lichfield (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

We are in the Kingdom Season, the time between All Saints and Advent, and this week began with the Second Sunday before Advent. The calendar of the Church of England in Common Worship today remembers Saint Hugh (1200), Bishop of Lincoln.

Before the day begins, before breakfast, I am taking some quiet time this morning to give thanks, and for reflection, prayer and reading in these ways:

1, today’s Gospel reading;

2, a short reflection;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;

4, the Collects and Post-Communion prayer of the day.

The healing of the blind man depicted in a fresco in Analipsi Church in Georgioupoli, Crete … those looking on can hardly believe what they see (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Luke 18: 35-43 (NRSVA):

35 As he approached Jericho, a blind man was sitting by the roadside begging. 36 When he heard a crowd going by, he asked what was happening. 37 They told him, ‘Jesus of Nazareth is passing by.’ 38 Then he shouted, ‘Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!’ 39 Those who were in front sternly ordered him to be quiet; but he shouted even more loudly, ‘Son of David, have mercy on me!’ 40 Jesus stood still and ordered the man to be brought to him; and when he came near, he asked him, 41 ‘What do you want me to do for you?’ He said, ‘Lord, let me see again.’ 42 Jesus said to him, ‘Receive your sight; your faith has saved you.’ 43 Immediately he regained his sight and followed him, glorifying God; and all the people, when they saw it, praised God.

What does the blind man at the roadside near Jericho see that the 12 have passed by? … one of the sculptures by Bettina Seitz at the homefarm and courtyards in Markree Castle, Co Sligo (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Reflections:

The story of a blind man or blind men at the gate of Jericho is told in all three Synoptic Gospels (see: Matthew 20: 29-34, Mark 10: 46-52 and Luke 18: 35-43).

In Saint Matthew’s account, there are two, unnamed blind men sitting by the roadside outside Jericho. In Saint Luke’s version, the blind man is sitting by the roadside begging as Christ approaches Jericho. In all three accounts, the location of Jericho is important. It claims to be the oldest inhabited and the oldest walled city in the world.

The Battle of Jericho is the first battle in the conquest of Canaan in the Book of Joshua. The walls of Jericho fall after Joshua’s Israelite army marches around the city blowing their trumpets (Joshua 6: 1-27).

In later times, Jericho was a private estate of Alexander the Great and then a garden city in the royal estates of the Hasmoneans, the priestly ruling dynasty. Mark Anthony gave Jericho to Cleopatra as a gift, but Herod leased it back again and the Herodians had their winter palace here, with their winter gardens.

By the time of Christ, Jericho is an important commercial city, a crossroads, the winter resort for Jerusalem’s aristocracy and the ruling priestly class. Which explains why, in the parable of the Good Samaritan earlier in this Gospel, a priest and a Levite were regular passers-by on the road from Jericho to Jerusalem (Luke 10: 30-37).

In Saint Luke’s Gospel too, Jericho is the home of Zacchaeus, the repentant tax collector, as we hear in the Gospel reading at the Eucharist tomorrow (Luke 19: 1-10).

Christ and his disciples are now near the end of their journey from Caesarea Philippi in the north to Jerusalem: Jericho is about 25 km from Jerusalem. On their journey, the disciples have misunderstood the message of Jesus and have been blind to who he truly is. But in this Gospel reading, it is a blind man who sees who Christ truly is.

The blind man cries out to ‘Son of David, have mercy on me!’ This cry is one of the Biblical foundations of the Jesus Prayer, ‘Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, the sinner.’

Until now, the disciples have been blind to who Jesus truly is. It takes a blind man to see the truth, and he calls Jesus is ‘Son of David,’ King of the Jews, and the Messiah. In other places, Christ orders silence on the matter, but not here. His time is approaching.

The blind man gives up all he has, leaves everything behind to follow Christ.

The question Christ now puts to the blind man – ‘What do you want me to do for you?’ (verse 41) – is the same question Jesus also puts to James and John when they seek status in the kingdom: ‘What is it you want me to do for you?’ (Mark 10: 36). James and John asked to be seated at his right hand and his left hand, symbolising power and prestige (see Mark 10: 37). But this blind man is humble in his reply: ‘Lord, let me see again’ (Luke 18: 41).

Christ tells him simply that his faith ‘Receive your sight; your faith has saved you.’ He is not only cured immediately, but he follows Jesus on the way (verse 43).

‘Christ Healing the Blind’ (ca 1570) by El Greco (Domenikos Theotokopoulos) … in the Met, New York

Today’s Prayers (Monday 17 November 2025):

The theme this week (16 to 22 November) in Pray with the World Church, the prayer diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), is ‘In the Shadow of the Carneddau’ (pp 56-57). This theme was introduced yesterday with Reflections from Bishop Andrew John, who stepped down as Archbishop of Wales and Bishop of Bangor on 27 June.

The USPG Prayer Diary today invites us to pray:

Look around you. Give thanks for the wonder of the Creation and its life sustaining power.

The Collect:

O God,
who endowed your servant Hugh
with a wise and cheerful boldness
and taught him to commend to earthly rulers
the discipline of a holy life:
give us grace like him to be bold in the service of the gospel,
putting our confidence in Christ alone,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

Post-Communion Prayer:

God, shepherd of your people,
whose servant Hugh revealed the loving service of Christ
in his ministry as a pastor of your people:
by this eucharist in which we share
awaken within us the love of Christ
and keep us faithful to our Christian calling;
through him who laid down his life for us,
but is alive and reigns with you, now and for ever.

Yesterday’s Reflections

Continued Tomorrow

The blind man’s cry is one of the Biblical foundations of the Jesus Prayer, ‘Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, the sinner’ … an image from Crete (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org

Daily prayers in Advent with Leonard Cohen and USPG: (4) 6 December 2023

‘Dance me to the wedding now, dance me on and on’ (Leonard Cohen) … toasting the bride and groom at a wedding (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

We are in the countdown to Christmas in the Church since Sunday, which was Advent Sunday or the First Sunday of Advent (3 December 2023), the first day in a new Church Year.

The Church Calendar today (6 December) celebrates Saint Nicholas (ca 326), Bishop of Myra, the role model for the real Santa Claus.

Before this day begins, I am taking time early this morning for prayer and reflection.

Throughout Advent this year, my reflections each day include a poem or song by Leonard Cohen. My Advent reflections are following this pattern:

1, A reflection on a poem or song by Leonard Cohen;

2, the Gospel reading of the day in the Church of England lectionary;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary.

‘Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin’ (Leonard Cohen) … violins in a the window of a music shop in Cambridge (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The Songs and Poems of Leonard Cohen: 4, ‘Dance Me to the End of Love’:

I have said with humour and full sincerity that when my coffin is being taken into the church at my funeral (later than sooner, I hope), that I want to hear Leonard Cohen’s ‘If it be your will’ … and when my coffin is being carried out I want to hear his ‘Dance me to the end of love’ (1984). It was also one of the songs Charlotte and I chose for our wedding last month.

Leonard Cohen’s poetry and songs were marked by the scars of the Holocaust and reflected with intensity the spirituality of Central European Jewish spirituality. The rhythms of his music and his imagery also drew on the time he spent over many years in Greece.

I love the Greek chords I hear in ‘Dance me to the end of love.’ But, more importantly, I am moved by the spirituality in this song that speaks tenderly, lyrically and poetically about a love that is eternal, that goes beyond human love, that transcends human suffering and that is consumed in the Love of God.

The song was first performed by Leonard Cohen on his 1984 album Various Positions. Although on first hearing, this song sounds like a love song, perhaps about a newly-married couple dancing at their wedding. But ‘Dance Me to the End Of Love’ is about the horrors of the Holocaust.

In an interview, Leonard Cohen said the song recalls how in Auschwitz and other death camps, ‘a string quartet was pressed into performance while this horror was going on, those were the people whose fate was this horror also. And they would be playing classical music while their fellow prisoners were being killed and burnt.’

The members of the string quartet were going to be killed afterwards in the crematorium but were allowed to play music. This playing of music is joy and happiness to the members of the quartet, the last piece of love and joy they will experience before their own end.

The words ‘Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin’ refer to the string quartet’s instruments that are going to be burned in crematorium.

The words ‘Let me feel you moving like they do in Babylon’ compares the sufferings of the exiled Jewish people on Babylon with the sufferings of the Holocaust, and the words of the Psalmist ‘How shall we sign the Lord’s song in a strange land?’ (Psalm 137: 4).

When the Jewish Czech composer Viktor Ullmann was deported to the concentration camp in Theresienstadt in 1942, he decided to remain active musically. There he became a piano accompanist, organised concerts, wrote critiques of musical events, and composed, as part of a cultural circle that included Karel Ančerl, Rafael Schachter, Gideon Klein, Hans Krása, and other prominent musicians there. He wrote: ‘By no means did we sit weeping on the banks of the waters of Babylon. Our endeavour with respect to arts was commensurate with our will to live.’

On 16 October 1944, he was deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau, and there he was killed in the gas chambers two days later on 18 October 1944.

In his interview, Leonard Cohen spoke of the music and the words ‘Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin … meaning the beauty there of being the consummation of life, the end of this existence and of the passionate element in that consummation.’

But he conceded that ‘it is the same language that we use for surrender to the beloved, so that the song – it’s not important that anybody knows the genesis of it, because if the language comes from that passionate resource, it will be able to embrace all passionate activity.’

However, The Irish Times once said: ‘When Leonard Cohen takes to the stage, it’s no less than a cultural event of Biblical dimensions.’

When I listen to this song as a prayer, then the song too talks about being ‘gathered safely in’ and talks to me of being able to trust in the love of God despite the greatest horrors that can be faced in life. While our knowledge of this love is limited by our capacity to imagine it, it has, in fact, no limits at all:

Oh let me see your beauty when the witnesses are gone …
Raise a tent of shelter now, though every thread is torn
Dance me to the end of love
Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin
Dance me through the panic ’til I’m gathered safely in.

And when I am dying, I hope no matter how and when that happens (hopefully many, many and many more years from now), I hope I am consumed in the love of God, and that the dance goes on.

Leonard Cohen was a generous artist, generous in his tributes to his musicians on stage and generous to his audiences, staying on stage for four or five hours at each concert. ‘May there be abundant peace from heaven, and life, for us.’

Leonard Cohen, Dance Me To The End Of Love:

Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin
Dance me through the panic ’til I’m gathered safely in
Lift me like an olive branch and be my homeward dove
Dance me to the end of love
Dance me to the end of love
Oh let me see your beauty when the witnesses are gone
Let me feel you moving like they do in Babylon
Show me slowly what I only know the limits of
Dance me to the end of love
Dance me to the end of love

Dance me to the wedding now, dance me on and on
Dance me very tenderly and dance me very long
We’re both of us beneath our love, we’re both of us above
Dance me to the end of love
Dance me to the end of love

Dance me to the children who are asking to be born
Dance me through the curtains that our kisses have outworn
Raise a tent of shelter now, though every thread is torn
Dance me to the end of love

Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin
Dance me through the panic ’til I’m gathered safely in
Touch me with your naked hand or touch me with your glove
Dance me to the end of love
Dance me to the end of love
Dance me to the end of love

‘Dance me to the end of love’ … Leonard Cohen on stage at Lissadell House, Co Sligo, in 2010 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Matthew 15: 29-37 (NRSVA):

29 After Jesus had left that place, he passed along the Sea of Galilee, and he went up the mountain, where he sat down. 30 Great crowds came to him, bringing with them the lame, the maimed, the blind, the mute, and many others. They put them at his feet, and he cured them, 31 so that the crowd was amazed when they saw the mute speaking, the maimed whole, the lame walking, and the blind seeing. And they praised the God of Israel.

32 Then Jesus called his disciples to him and said, ‘I have compassion for the crowd, because they have been with me now for three days and have nothing to eat; and I do not want to send them away hungry, for they might faint on the way.’ 33 The disciples said to him, ‘Where are we to get enough bread in the desert to feed so great a crowd?’ 34 Jesus asked them, ‘How many loaves have you?’ They said, ‘Seven, and a few small fish.’ 35 Then ordering the crowd to sit down on the ground, 36 he took the seven loaves and the fish; and after giving thanks he broke them and gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds. 37 And all of them ate and were filled; and they took up the broken pieces left over, seven baskets full.

‘Where are we to get enough bread in the desert to feed so great a crowd?’ (Matthew 15: 33) … bread in the window of Hindley’s Bakery in Lichfield (Photograph: Parick Comerford, 2023)

Today’s Prayers (Wednesday 6 December 2023):

The theme this week in the new edition of ‘Pray With the World Church,’ the Prayer Diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), is ‘The Hope of Advent.’ This theme was introduced on Sunday.

The USPG Prayer Diary today (6 December 2023, Saint Nicholas of Myra) invites us to pray in these words:

We pray for the work of our Anglican partner churches across the world – for the hope that they can bring to individuals and communities.

An icon of Saint Nicholas, the role model for Santa Claus, in a mosaic in the Monastery of Saint John the Baptist, Tolleshunt Knights … his feast day is 6 November (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The Collect:

Almighty Father, lover of souls,
who chose your servant Nicholas
to be a bishop in the Church,
that he might give freely out of the treasures of your grace:
make us mindful of the needs of others
and, as we have received, so teach us also to give;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The Post-Communion Prayer:

God, shepherd of your people,
whose servant Nicholas revealed the loving service of Christ
in his ministry as a pastor of your people:
by this eucharist in which we share
awaken within us the love of Christ
and keep us faithful to our Christian calling;
through him who laid down his life for us,
but is alive and reigns with you, now and for ever.

Yesterday’s Reflection

Continued Tomorrow



‘Dance Me to the End of Love’ … Leonard Cohen

Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995, National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org

Praying in Advent with USPG: 26, Thursday 24 December 2020

‘To give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death …’ (see Luke 1: 79) … the choirstalls in the private chapel at Markree Castle, Co Sligo (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

Throughout Advent and Christmas this year, I am using the Prayer Diary of the Anglican Mission Agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel) for my morning reflections each day, and the Advent and Christmas Devotional Calendar produced at Lichfield Cathedral for my prayers and reflections each evening.

I am one of the contributors to the current USPG Diary, Pray with the World Church, introducing the theme of peace and trust next week.

Later this evening, as Advent turns to Christmas, I had hoped to preside at the Christmas Eucharist in Saint Brendan’s Church, Kilnaughtin (Tarbert), Co Kerry (6 p.m.) and in Castletown Church, Co Limerick (8 p.m.). But, on the advice of the Bishop, because of the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic, all public Christmas services have been cancelled throughout the Diocese of Limerick and Killaloe.

Before what should be a busy day starts, I am taking a little time this morning for my own personal prayer, to be still, to reflect and for Scripture reading.

The theme of the USPG Prayer Diary this week (20 to 26 December 2020) is ‘Christmas in the Holy Land.’ This week’s theme is introduced by the Very Revd Canon Richard Sewell, Dean of Saint George’s College, Jerusalem.

Thursday 24 December 2020 (Christmas Eve):

Let us pray for safety on the road for all those who are travelling to be with their loved ones for Christmas.

The Collect of the Day (Christmas Eve):

Almighty God,
you make us glad with the yearly remembrance
of the birth of your Son Jesus Christ:
Grant that, as we joyfully receive him as our redeemer,
we may with sure confidence behold him
when he shall come to be our judge;
who is alive and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The Post-Communion Prayer:

God for whom we wait,
you feed us with the bread of eternal life:
Keep us watchful, that we may be ready
to stand before the Son of Man, Jesus Christ our Lord.

Luke 1: 67-79 (NRSVA):


67 Then his father Zechariah was filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke this prophecy:

68 ‘Blessed be the Lord God of Israel,
for he has looked favourably on his people and redeemed them.
69 He has raised up a mighty saviour for us
in the house of his servant David,
70 as he spoke through the mouth of his holy prophets from of old,
71 that we would be saved from our enemies and from the hand of all who hate us.
72 Thus he has shown the mercy promised to our ancestors,
and has remembered his holy covenant,
73 the oath that he swore to our ancestor Abraham,
to grant us 74 that we, being rescued from the hands of our enemies,
might serve him without fear, 75 in holiness and righteousness
before him all our days.
76 And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High;
for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways,
77 to give knowledge of salvation to his people
by the forgiveness of their sins.
78 By the tender mercy of our God,
the dawn from on high will break upon us,
79 to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death,
to guide our feet into the way of peace.’

Continued tomorrow

Yesterday’s morning reflection

Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995, National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org

The colourful Polish painter who wanted to be a count in Ireland

Constance Markievicz … her husband claimed he was a Polish count (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

I should be in Warsaw today [27 May 2020] on the second full day or a three or four-day city break. But for the second time in just over two years, I have been forced to abandon plans to visit the Polish capital.

The package to Warsaw, with Ryanair flights and Airbnb accommodation, was a Christmas present, and I was due to fly out on Monday and return tomorrow. But the travel restrictions introduced in response to the Covid-19 pandemic have cancelled all these arrangements.

So, despite having read the guidebooks and planned the sites I was going to visit – including the former Warsaw ghetto, the synagogues and the museums – I am still in Askeaton, Co Limerick. And I am still wondering about Ireland’s most famous Polish ‘in-law’: Casimir Dunin Markievicz, the husband of the suffragist and revolutionary Constance Gore-Booth.

Casimir Joseph Dunin Markievicz (1874-1932), who styled himself Count Markievicz, was a playwright, painter and theatre director. He died in Warsaw on 2 December 1932. But was he really Polish? And, was he ever a count?

The Markievicz family held land in Malopolska Province, now in Ukraine. Casimir was born on 15 March 1874 and grew up on the family farm near the small town of Zywotow. He went to the secondary school or state gymnasium in the Black Sea port of Kherson, where a quarter of the population was Yiddish-speaking Jews, and a quarter to one-third of emigrants with the name Markievicz from these parts of Poland and Ukraine were Jewish.

Casimir Markievicz studied law at the University of Kyiv (Kiev), before moving in 1895 to Paris, where he studied at the École des Beaux-Arts. There he met and married Jadwiga Splawa-Neyman, and they were the parents of two sons, Stanislas and Ryszard. But the marriage did not last, and Jadwiga returned to Ukraine, where she and Ryszard died in 1899.

That year, Casimir met Constance Gore-Booth in Paris, where the two mixed in student society and Bohemian circles. Constance was born in London in 1868, the eldest child of Sir Henry Gore-Booth (1843-1900) of Lissadell House, Co Sligo, and his wife, the former Georgina Hill. She wanted to study art and persuaded her parents to send her to the Slade School of Art in London in 1893. From there she moved to Paris, where she and the recently-widowed Casimir Dunin Markievicz met at a student ball in 1899.

Eight months after her father’s death, the couple married in Saint Marylebone Church, London, on 29 September 1900 – he was 26 and she was 30; he gave his name as Casimir Joseph Dunin de Markiewicz, and described himself and his father as Polish nobles, but while he dressed in formal court uniform he did not use the title count. The wedding was conducted by the Revd Frederick Sheridan Le Fanu.

Her brother, Sir Josslyn Gore-Booth (1869-1944), asked the British ambassador in Russia, Sir Charles Scott, to look into background of his future brother-in-law, the soi-disant count. The ambassador reported back that Casimir had taken the title of count ‘without right’ and that ‘Poland never had a count of that name.’ The police report wondered whether the Markievicz family, who were landowners, had bought the title at the Vatican or in the Habsburg empire.

Their daughter Maeve was born the following year, when the father’s name at the baptism is given as Cassimir de Markie. But Constance had a strained relationship with her daughter, and when the couple returned to Paris in 1902, their daughter was left in the care of her grandmother, Lady Gore-Booth, at Lissadell House.

When they returned to Ireland, the couple lived at a house on Leinster Road, Rathmines, bought by Lady Gore-Booth, and they were part of the literary circle in Dublin that included WB Yeats, Lady Gregory and the Abbey Theatre. According to his biographer Patrick Quigley, in The Polish Irishman: The Life and Times of Count Casimir Markievicz, the high point of Casimir’s career as a public painter in Ireland came in 1905 when he was commissioned to paint the investiture of the Earl of Mayo as a Knight of the Order Saint Patrick, a major work that captured 68 members of the Irish aristocracy at the ceremony.

He formed his own theatre company, the Independent Dramatic Company, in 1910, which staged plays written by Casimir and starring Constance. But the marriage did not last long. Markievicz left Dublin in 1913, perhaps unenamoured with his wife’s fast-developing political radicalisation, and returned to live in what is present-day Ukraine. A year later, he was one of the many Poles living in the Russian Empire who joined the Tsar’s army at the outbreak of World War I. He never returned to live in Ireland, although he continued to write to his wife in Dublin.

Constance Markievicz was elected to the House of Commons in 1918 and to the Dail for Fianna Fail in 1926. Meanwhile, Casimir Markievicz had moved to Warsaw, where he continued to write and paint. When she was taken to hospital in 1927, he rushed from Warsaw to be by her bedside, painting her picture on her deathbed.

Casimir survived Constance by five years, but he lived with constant ill health and financial difficulties. He lived out his last years in Warsaw, sending freelance contributions to London magazines and newspapers, writing a screenplay for a Polish film that had limited success, and painting portraits and landscapes.

Some of his paintings are in Dublin, some are in the National Museum in Kraków. He died in Warsaw on 2 December 1932, and was buried in an unmarked grave in Nowe, a small town 80 km south of Gdansk.

Casimir used the style and title of count in Paris and in Dublin. But was he ever a real count? Did Constance pretend he was a Ukrainian count to win approval for her marriage from her widowed mother and her brother who had succeeded to the family title?

Despite her revolutionary politics, she liked to be known as Countess Markievicz or Madame Markievicz. But, historically, there were no men in Polish or Ukrainian history with the title Count Markievicz. Eamon de Valera was discreet enough to refer to this founding member of Fianna Fai, as ‘Madame Markievicz.’ He extended similar courtesies to ‘Madame’ Maud Gonne and to ‘Madame’ Charlotte Despard, neither of whom claimed to be a countess.

Poland was notable throughout its history for not granting titles of nobility. There are no counts, barons or nobles with the name Markievicz in the standard lists of Polish counts of the Holy Roman Empire, Polish nobility, Prussian and Austrian nobility in Poland and Ukraine, Russian noble families or Russian nobility of Polish descent, nor did Casimir ever apply for a licence or permission to use the title in Ireland, Britain or France.

The closest he ever got to being a count is through his descent from the Dunin or Duninowie family, also known as Łabędzie. But this was a Polish knightly family of możnowładcy or magnates in mediaeval Poland. One line of descent, the Dunin-Borkowski family, were recognised as counts in Austrian Poland, but this was not the Markiewicz family.

Donal Nevin, in his biography James Connolly, a full life (2005) concludes:

In fact he was not a Count. At least his son, Stanislas, emphatically denied that his father was a Count. Before he left Ireland moved to London, later to America, in the 1930s Stanislas left a sealed letter with John McCann which was not to be opened until after his death. Stanislas died in San Diego in October 1971. The sealed letter read: ‘Dear John, My father was not a Count – Yours – Stasco.’

The colourful Polish count who swept Constance Gore-Booth off her feet at a ball in Paris may have been a romantic rather than a fraud. He was never a count and is virtually forgotten as an artist.

Strolling around the grounds of Lissadell House, Constance Gore-Booth’s ancestral home in Co Sligo, before Leonard Cohen’s concert in 2010 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The meditative sculptures by Bettina Seitz in the gardens at Markree Castle

The sculptures by Bettina Seitz at Markree Castle are worth searching for (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

Patrick Comerford

Hidden away from many of the guests at weddings at Markree Castle in Co Sligo, the sculptures by Bettina Seitz are worth searching out in the gardens and courtyards at the home farm courtyard and walled garden at this charming wedding venue.

Bettina Seitz has worked from her studio in Sligo since 1993. Stylising the human form, her sculptures in bronze or stone composite often possess an ethereal and meditative quality.

Bettina Seitz was born in Germany in 1963. She has studied sculpture in Nürtingen, Germany, and Turin, Italy. She has also worked with the Sligo ceramicist Michael Kennedy, and is now based in Sligo.

Aspects of nature and emotion inform her investigation into shape and line, particularly those of the female body. She excels in the stylisation of the female form into flowing and voluptuous curves.

She works mainly in bronze and ceramic sculptures designed for private gardens and public spaces. She has exhibited her work regularly in Ireland and Europe and has worked on many private and public commissions, including portrait commissions.

She has exhibited in many countries, including Ireland, Britain, the US, Germany, France and Italy, and she has worked on many private and public commissions in Ireland and abroad.

Her work can be found in many private and public collections, including the Boyle Civic Collection, the McCann Fitzgerald Collection in Dublin, the Chinthurst Sculpture Garden in Surrey, and collections in Saudi Arabia, Britain, the US, Germany, France, Portugal, Spain, Italy and South Africa.

Her commissioned work in Co Sligo includes sculptures at Nazareth House Nursing Home, Sligo, and commission for the Homefarm at Markree Castle in 2002 and 2005.

She also designed the Volta Award for the Jameson Dublin International Film Festival in 2007.

Her sculptural practice is concerned with our connection to the other – from how we relate as human beings to each other, to how we relate to the ‘Other’ in the sense of our interconnection with everything and other dimensions.

In her work, Bettina Seitz explores the experience of being, that is aware of and must confront issues such as personhood, mortality and the dilemma or paradox of living in relationships with other humans, while being alone with oneself.

Using a wide range of techniques and materials, including resin, concrete, aluminium and bronze, she strives to evoke a sense of stillness and lightness in her sculpture installations of highly stylised, often life-size human forms.

Her work ‘Ghosts’ – a series of site responsive, life-size sculptures – reflects on our connection to the past and the disempowerment of women in Irish society and recent history.

Using various techniques, including casting over life models, modelling, reinforcing and assembling in Jesmonite acrylic resin, fabric and glass fibre, ‘Ghosts’ ran as a pilot project in December 2016 with temporary installations in public buildings, including The Model, Sligo Courthouse and Sligo Cathedral.

The sculptures by Bettina Seitz at the homefarm and courtyards in Markree Castle were commissioned in 2002 and 2005 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

Saint Mary’s Cathedral, Elphin: abandoned after a storm in 1957

Saint Mary’s Cathedral was the cathedral of the Church of Ireland Diocese of Elphin until it was abandoned in 1957 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

Patrick Comerford

The two cathedrals in Sligo – Roman Catholic and Church of Ireland – serve the dioceses of Elphin. So, it seemed appropriate on my way back from Sligo earlier this week after a family wedding at the weekend that I should stop in the small village of Elphin and visit the ruins of the former cathedral in the small south Co Roscommon village.

Elphin is 18 km from Boyle, 29 km from Roscommon and 14 km from Carrick-on-Shannon. But Elphin (Ail Fionn, ‘the stone of the clear water’) is a quiet place, on no main routes, set in some rolling pastureland.

Tradition says that the site of the former cathedral in Elphin dates back to a monastic house founded by Saint Patrick ca 435-450. Ono son of Oengus gave Elphin to Saint Patrick and Oisin is said to have been baptised near the town.

Saint Patrick is said to have placed his disciple Saint Assicus in charge of Elphin. A pre-historic standing stone and Saint Patrick’s Well are both situated within the Fair Green which forms part of the entrance to the cathedral site.

A standing stone and Saint Patrick’s Well at the entrance to the cathedral site (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

Saint Assicus is said to have been succeeded by his nephew, Bite (Baethus), but there is no further record of the monastery until the 12th century. The Diocese of Elphin was established at the Synod of Rath Breasail in 1111, when the see for east Connacht was moved from Roscommon to Elphin and Domnall mac Flannacáin Ua Dubthaig become the first Bishop of Elphin.

Máel Ísu Ua Connachtáin was present at the Synod of Kells in 1152 as Bishop of Elphin.

The first cathedral was dedicated to Beatae Mariae Virgini (the Blessed Virgin Mary or Saint Mary the Virgin). It is referred to in 1235, when it was destroyed by fire. It was restored and rebuilt ca 1240.

Inside the ruins of Saint Mary’s Cathedral, Elphin looking east (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

Some mediaeval Bishops of Elphin found it difficult to assert their authority. Máel Sechlainn Ó Conchobair, also known as Milo O’Connor was Archdeacon of Clonmacnoise when he was elected Bishop of Elphin by the majority of the Chapter of Elphin in 1260. He received possession of the diocese on 8 November 1260, and was consecrated bishop later that month. But he was opposed by Tomas mac Fergail Mac Diarmata until he died in office on 9 January 1262.

Tomas mac Fergail Mac Diarmata, a Cistercian monk also known as Thomas Mac Ferrall McDermott, had been elected bishop before 26 January 1260 by the Dean of Elphin and other members of the cathedral chapter, but was not able to take possession of the see. He successfully appealed to the Pope, but did not take possession until Bishop Máel Sechlainn Ó Conchobair died in 1262. He died in office in 1265.

Thomas Barrett, Archdeacon of Annaghdown, became Bishop of Elphin in 1372. He was deprived by the Antipope, Pope Clement VII, in 1383, in favour of Seoán Ó Mocháin, but to no effect, and Barrett continued in office until he died in 1404.

Robert Fosten became bishop in 1418, but spent most of his time in England acting as a suffragan bishop in Durham.

Inside the ruins of Saint Mary’s Cathedral, Elphin, looking west (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

In 1433, Pope Eugene IV ‘granted certain privileges to contributors for the repair and fabric of the Cathedral Church of Elphin, dedicated to St Mary the Virgin, which had been greatly deformed by fire.’

Georgios Vranas, who became Bishop of Elphin in 1499, may be one of the few Greek-born bishops to serve the Church in Ireland. He was also known as Georgius de Brana, George Braua, or an-t-easbog Gréagach. He was from Athens and was a member of the famous Byzantine House of Vranas. He was translated from Dromore to Elphin in 1499, had resigned by 1507, and died in 1529.

Christopher Fisher was Prebendary of Husthwaite, York, at the same time as he was Bishop of Elphin (1507-1511). His successor, Thomas Walsh, also held both these offices at the same time (1511-1524). John Maxey was Bishop of Elphin (1525-1536) at the same time as he was a suffragan bishop in the Diocese of York (1525), Abbot of Welbeck (1520-1536), Prebendary of Ampleforth, York (1528-1536), and Abbot of Titchfield (1535-1536).

Elphin Cathedral was rebuilt by Bishop John Parker (1661-1667) after the Caroline Restoration (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

The first post-Reformation Bishops of Elphin were Conach O’Shiel (1541-1551), Roland de Burgo (1551-1580), Thomas Chester (1580-1583) and John Lynch (1583-1611).

Elphin Cathedral was partially damaged in the 1641 rebellion, but was rebuilt by Bishop John Parker (1661-1667) after the Caroline Restoration.

Elphin Grammar School was founded later in the late 17th century by Bishop John Hodson (1667-1686). The pupils included the writer Oliver Goldsmith (1728-1774), whose grandfather was a cousin of Edward Goldsmith, Dean of Elphin (1700-1722); and Sir William Wilde (1815-1876), father of Oscar Wilde.

The cathedral was substantially rebuilt in 1728, when the Bishop of Elphin was Theophilus Bolton (1724-1730), later Archbishop of Cashel and founder of the Bolton Library.

A new palace for the Church of Ireland bishops was built north of this site in 1749. The plan of a central block and flanking pavilions plan was very common in Irish country houses of the period.

Most of the cathedral roof had fallen in by 1757 and the walls were in a dangerous state. A thorough rebuilding was carried out in 1757-1758, when the tower was added. But it remained a modest building, no bigger than a small parish church, with a tall square clock tower at the west end.

Looking into the cathedral ruins from the ruins of the tower (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

When Dean Jonathan Swift visited Elphin briefly, he wrote about the town and cathedral:

Low church, high steeple,
Dirty town, proud people.

Later Bishops of Elphin included Edward Synge (1740-1762), William Gore (1762-1772), later Bishop of Limerick, and Charles Dodgson (1775-1795), grandfather of Lewis Carrol (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson), author of Alice in Wonderland.

While John Powell Leslie was Bishop of Elphin of Kilmore (1819-1841), Elphin was united with Kilmore and Ardagh, and he died in office as Bishop of Kilmore, Elphin and Ardagh in 1854.

The apse was added to Elphin Cathedral in 1872 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

The final addition to the cathedral was a short apse of Caen stone, built in 1872. The cathedral was an oblong building, about 24.3 metres long, excluding the apse, and 8.5 metres wide. The bishops’ throne and chapter stalls were at the east end of the nave, there was a pulpit on the north side, a reading desk on the south side, a lectern and font.

Later, Elphin was the home town of the songwriter William Percy French (1854-1920). He is said to have written his first lines about a scene he witnessed when he was six-year-old. He saw a mouse come down a bell rope in the cathedral, and wrote:

The mouse for want of stairs,
ran down the rope to say his prayers.

The main block of the bishop’s house was destroyed by fire early in the 20th Century and was later demolished. The ruins of the pavilions survive together with the curtain walls that linked them to the main house.

The supposed site of the bishop’s throne in the cathedral ruins (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

Saint Mary’s continued in use as a cathedral until it was severely damaged in a storm on 4 February 1957. When the diocesan synod met in Longford a few months later on 11 July, it decided to abandon the cathedral and to move the seat of the Diocese of Elphin and Ardagh to Sligo.

The decision was ratified by the General Synod in 1958, and Elphin Cathedral was formally deconsecrated on 17 November 1958. Saint John’s Church, Sligo, formally became the Cathedral of Saint Mary the Virgin and Saint John the Baptist, serving the Diocese of Elphin and Ardagh, on 25 October 1961.

The cathedral ruins were mainly demolished in 1964, and many of the stones were used in building a new school in the village. The ruins were partly rebuilt and restored in 1982 and custody was transferred from the Church of Ireland to Roscommon County Council in 1985. It has since come into the custody of the Elphin Heritage Society.

Elphin in winter sunshine (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

Saint John’s, Sligo: from mediaeval parish church to cathedral

The Cathedral of Saint Mary the Virgin and Saint John the Baptist … the Church of Ireland Cathedral in Sligo since 1961 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

Patrick Comerford

Saint John the Baptist Cathedral, Sligo, or more properly the Cathedral of Saint Mary the Virgin and Saint John the Baptist, is also known as Sligo Cathedral and is one of two cathedral churches in the Church of Ireland Diocese of Kilmore, Elphin and Ardagh – the other cathedral in the diocese is Saint Fethlimidh’s Cathedral in Kilmore, Co Cavan.

I visited the cathedral last weekend while I was attending a family wedding in the neighbouring Roman Catholic Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception.

Saint John’s Cathedral on John Street is almost certainly built on the site of a mediaeval hospital and parish church, founded in the 13th or early 14th century and dedicated to the Holy Trinity. Some of this 13th century work is likely to be incorporated in the west tower of the present cathedral.

A royal visitation of Sligo in the early 17th century reported the church was ‘recently repaired.’ However, during the armed conflicts later that century, the church was used as the military headquarters of insurgent forces.

Richard Cassels rebuilt Saint John’s Church in the 1730s (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

When the German-born architect Richard Cassel (1690-1751), came to Sligo in 1730 to design Hazelwood House for Colonel Owen Wynne, he was also commissioned by the new Rector of Sligo, the Revd Eubele Ormsby, to rebuild Saint John’s Church.

Cassels was considered one of the greatest archiects working in Ireland at the time. He was responsible for designing of many prestigious buildings in Ireland at the time, including Leinster House, Dublin; the Dining Hall in Trinity College, Dublin; Powerscourt House, Co Wicklow; Russborough House, near Blessington, Co Wicklow; Carton House, Co Kildare; Westport House, Co Mayo; and the Rotunda Hospital, Dublin. But he designed only three churches in Ireland: Knockbreda Parish Church, Belfast, the now-demolished old Parish Church of Castlebar, Co Mayo, and Saint John’s Church, Sligo.

The mediaeval church in Sligo was demolished, and in his designs for a new Saint John’s Church Cassel was greatly influenced by the basilica pattern in early Roman architecture.

Saint John’s Church was remodelled in a Gothic style in the 19th century (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

In subsequent building modifications in 1812 and 1883, the external appearance was substantially altered. The original Romanesque windows, with their round arches, were replaced, battlements and small towers were added, and the chancel was extended.

Some of the former Romanesque windows may still be seen in the west tower, but the church looks more like a fantasy Gothic castle.

The grave of William and Elizabeth Pollexfen, grandparents of William Butler Yeats, in Saint John’s Church churchyard (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

This was the parish church attended by William and Elizabeth Pollexfen, grandparents of the poet William Butler Yeats (1865-1939) and the painter Jack B Yeats (1871-1957). William Pollexfen was a well-known shipowner who also ran mills in Sligo and Ballisodare, and the family lived nearby in Merville.

William Pollexfen was originally from Devon and he married Elizabeth Middleton of Rosses Point in Saint John’s Church, Sligo, on 4 May 1837. Their eldest daughter, Susan Mary, married John Butler Yeats, father of the poet and the painter, in Saint John’s Church on 19 September 1863.

Saint Mary’s Cathedral in the village of Elphin, south Co Roscommon, suffered severe storm damage in February 1957. A bill passed in the General Synod in 1958 moved the seat of Dioceses of Elphin and Ardagh to Saint John’s Church, Sligo, and the wrecked cathedral in Elphin was abandoned by the Church of Ireland in 1961.

Saint John’s Church, Sligo, became the Cathedral of Saint Mary the Virgin and Saint John the Baptist on 25 October 1961. The former choir stalls were removed to make way for a new bishop’s throne and chapter stalls, the only indication of the building’s status as a cathedral.

An exhibition board outlining the history of the connection between Saint John’s and Bram Stoker’s mother, Charlotte Thornley, and her family, was unveiled in the cathedral by Dacre Stoker, the great-nephew of Bram Stoker, last month [23 October].

In deference to tradition, the dean is not known as the Dean of Sligo, but is still styled ‘Dean of Elphin and Ardagh.’ The Very Revd Arfon Williams has been the Dean of Elphin and Ardagh and Rector of Sligo since 2004. The other churches in the Sligo group of parishes are Saint Anne’s, Strandhill, and Rosses Point, Co Sligo.

Saint John’s Cathedral seen from the grounds of its neighbour, the Roman Catholic Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

A weekend at a family wedding in Markree Castle

Markree Castle, near Collooney, Co Sligo … this was once the coldest place in Ireland (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

Patrick Comerford

I have been staying at Markree Castle, near Collooney, Co Sligo, taking part in a family wedding in Sligo Cathedral.

Markree Castle is a small family-run hotel, owned by the Corscadden family who also own Cabra Castle Hotel, Co Cavan, Ballyseede Castle Hotel, Co Kerry, and Bellingham Castle, Co Louth.

The hymn-writer Cecil Frances Alexander (1818-1895) is said to have written the hymn All Things Bright and Beautiful while she was a guest of the Cooper family here in 1848.

But, in the midst of all that is beautiful, this may also be the coldest place in Ireland too. The temperature rose above 9°C this afternoon, but it had been hovering around 3°C here this weekend, and it has been even colder here in the past: Ireland’s lowest officially recognised air temperature, −19.1°C (−2.4°F), was recorded at Markree Castle on 16 January 1881.

Markree Castle, Co Sligo … Cecil Francis Alexander is said to have written ‘All Things Bright and Beautiful here in 1848’ (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

During the 1830s, the observatory on the grounds of the castle had the largest refracting telescope in the world. What is known today as the asteroid 9 Metis was discovered in the 1840s by the staff at the Coopers family’s observatory.

The Royal Astronomical Society reported in 1851, ‘The Observatory of Mr Cooper of Markree Castle – undoubtedly the most richly furnished private observatory known – is worked with great activity by Mr Cooper himself and by his very able assistant, Mr Andrew Graham.’

The staircase leading into Markree Castle (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

Markree Castle, which is partially moated by the River Unshin, is the ancestral seat of the Cooper family. But before that, this was once a fortified castle that belonged to the McDonagh Clan, and it guarded the ford across the River Unsin.

The castle, as we see it today, dates from 1802 with exterior changes by the architect Francis Johnston. Some later changes, mainly to the interior, were made in in the late 1860s and in the 1890s.

Edward Cooper was a cornet or junior officer in a Cromwell’s army in a Cromwellian regiment of horse commanded by his cousin, Colonel Coote. Later, Cooper was allotted the 14th-century Markree Castle and the surrounding lands and moved in here in 1663.

Edward Cooper married Marie Rua O’Brien, widow of Conor O’Brien, who was killed at Limerick during the Cromwellian wars. Later they went to live with her two sons at Dromoland Castle, Co Clare. One son, Donough, inherited Dromoland Castle, while Edward Cooper’s son, Arthur Cooper, inherited Markree Castle.

James II is said to have stayed at Markree Castle (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

During the Williamite wars at the end of the 17th century, the Cooper family fled Markree Castle while it was occupied by the army of James II. They returned to live at Markree Castle after William III’s victory at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690, and continued to live here until very recently.

Over the generations, the Coopers intermarried with other prominent local families, including the Cootes, Wynnes and Synges, and by the 1720s, Joshua Cooper (1694-1757) was one of the largest landowners in Co Sligo, with over 40,000 acres.

Edward Synge Cooper (1762-1830), MP for Sligo (1806-1830), married Ann, daughter of Henry Vansittart (1732-1770), Governor of Bengal. Their eldest son, Colonel Edward Joshua Cooper (1798-1863), MP for Sligo (1830-1841, 1857-1859), set up Markree Observatory in the castle grounds in 1830, and for a time Cooper’s telescope was the largest in the world.

The observatory remained active until the death of Colonel Edward Henry Cooper (1827-1902), MP for Sligo (1865-1868).

Markree Castle has been home to generations of the Cooper family (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

The castle was inherited by his son, Major Bryan Ricco Cooper (1884-1930), who was born in Simla in India. He was briefly a Unionist MP for South Country Dublin (1910), and was involved in the Gallipoli landings during World War I.

During the Irish Civil War in the 1920s, Markree Castle was again occupied briefly by the Irish Free State army.

Brian Cooper returned to live at Markree Castle, and was one of the few former Westminster MPs to be elected to Dáil Éireann. He was an Independent and later a Cumann na nGaedheal (Fine Gael) TD for South Country Dublin (1923-1930). He sold most of the 30,000-acre estate surrounding Markree Castle, but lived on at the castle with his family until he died in 1930.

Markreee Castle fell on hard times after World War II (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

After World War II, Markree Castle fell on hard times and stood empty and derelict for many years. It featured on the front cover of The Vanishing Country Houses of Ireland in 1988, illustrating the sad state of decay of many great houses at the time.

Charles Cooper transformed his ancestral castle into a hotel in 1989. The castle’s restoration was featured in a television documentary, and the renewed facilities included a hotel and restaurant.

Markree Castle was run as a hotel by Charles and Mary Cooper, the tenth generation of the family to live here. After four centuries, the castle finally changed hands in 2015 when it was sold for an undisclosed sum after being on the market with an asking price of €3.12 million. The hotel is now run by the Corscadden family.

The Markree Castle we see today was built in 1802 over the raised basement stone of the former Cooper family mansion known until then as Mercury, and contains parts of the earlier houses.

The castle today dates mainly from the 19th century (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

The castle is an imposing and impressive example of the Gothic Revival style. It is a 12-bay, three-storey country house, built in stone, with a raised basement. It was designed by Francis Johnston (1760-1825) ca 1802-1805 for Joshua Edward Cooper, incorporating parts of the earlier houses and tower houses on the site.

Francis Goodwin (1784-1835) designed the Gothic gate lodge in 1832.

The castle was extensively enlarged, remodelled and rebuilt from 1866 by the Edinburgh-born architect James Maitland Wardrop (1824-1884) for Colonel Edward Henry Cooper.

Inside the Cooper family chapel in Markreee Castle (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

Wardrop’s additions in the late 1860s and early 1870s include the Gothic Revival porte-cochere, the battlemented and machicolated square tower with a two-storey, square profile oriel window, the chapel on the north front, and the two-storey, canted bay window on the west front. The ornamental doorway at the garden front was added in 1896.

The porte-cochére was a fashionable architectural statement at the time. In 1876, Lady Beaumont added one to Drishane Castle at Millstreet, Co Cork, where it is a fine example of theatrical architecture, and there are similar features at Farmeligh House in Dublin, Muckross House in Killarney, and Cahermoyle House in Co Limerick.

The main roof is hidden from view behind a battlemented parapet wall, dressed limestone diagonally-set, corbelled chimney stacks, cast-iron down pipes, and octagonal turrets.

The Cooper family private chapel in Markree Castle (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

The entrance contains a monumental staircase that leads to a wonderful hall, from where a second staircase in carved wood leads to the 30 guest rooms. A large stained glass window on the staircase fancifully traces the Cooper family tree from Victorian times back to the reign of King John.

Inside, the castle is opulently decorated in decorated in a florid, classical style, and the castle retains much of its original or early fabric, including fine-stained glass windows. The dining room, where we had dinner last night, is decorated in Louis Philippe-style stucco plasterwork.

The 300-acre estate surrounding the castle is home to an array of wild life including red squirrels, otters, and kingfishers.

A stained-glass window on the staircase fancifully traces the Cooper family tree (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

Markree Castle in the sunshine this afternoon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

Jack Yeats and Paul Henry brought together in Hunt Museum exhibition

‘Keel, Achill’ (ca 1910-1919) by Paul Henry, on loan from the Ulster Museum (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017)

Patrick Comerford

I have not been back to Achill Island yet this year. But I was transported back to Achill through the paintings of Paul Henry during the weekend when I visited the summer exhibition at the Hunt Museum in Limerick of paintings by Jack B Yeats and Paul Henry, two of Ireland’s most important 20th century artists.

The exhibition, ‘Jack B Yeats and Paul Henry: Contrasting Visions of Ireland,’ features 50 works, bringing together paintings drawn from private and public collections.

Many of these works are normally not available for public viewing. They include works on loan from the European Investment Bank Collection in Luxembourg and other paintings have been borrowed from private collections.

The former Abbot of Glenstal Abbey, Father Mark Patrick Hederman, launched the exhibition earlier this summer. Speaking in the Hunt Museum, he said this unique exhibition encourages ‘visitors to see Ireland through the eyes of two very different artists working before, during and after the establishment of the Irish Free State.’

The two artists were contemporaries and had much in common. Both were born in the 1870s, and they died within two years of each other in the 1950s after long and prolific careers. Both had family links with the west of Ireland, both began their working lives in London, both married fellow artists, and both returned to Ireland in 1910.

Ten years later, they collaborated in setting up the Society of Dublin Painters in 1920. Each separately discovered and recreated the West of Ireland in ways that captivated the imagination of critics and the Irish public.

Their paintings provided the new Irish Free State with a distinctive and positive image of its people and its land, offering insights into the ‘soul’ of Ireland through its traditions, its landscapes and streetscapes and the ways of life of the Irish people.

Yet, their paintings differ profoundly in style and scope, and demonstrate the diverse ways in which the creative mind responds to its environment, transforming sensations, memories and experiences in their different visions.

‘From Portacloy to Rathlin O’Beirne’ (1932) by Jack B Yeats, oil on canvas, in a private collection (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017)

John (Jack) Butler Yeats (1871-1957) was a brother of the poet William Butler Yeats and was immensely prolific and innovative in his style and technique. He was born in London and his early style was that of an illustrator – he created the first cartoon strip for Sherlock Holmes and the works of Arthur Conan Doyle. He began to work regularly in oils in 1906, and he moved to Ireland permanently in 1910.

His early pictures are simple lyrical depictions of landscapes and figures, mainly from the west of Ireland, especially in his boyhood home in Co Sligo.

He responded to the distinctive nature of the West of Ireland, especially in his beloved Sligo and in Irish mythology, and to the practices and traditions of its people. He also celebrates the city life of the new Ireland, the Irish love of sport, and social events at the heart of rural Ireland.

Yeats also holds the distinction of winning the Irish Free State’s first medal at the Olympic Games. At the 1924 Summer Olympics in Paris, his painting The Liffey Swim won a silver medal in the arts and culture segment.

Paul Henry (1876-1958) was born in Belfast, and lived and worked on Achill Island for a decade, from 1910 to 1919. His works are incredibly atmospheric and evocative, and he continued to produce Achill landscapes in later life. He portrays traditional habits and ways of life, as well as the unmistakable landscape features of the West of Ireland. An immensely popular artist, his work has influenced many peoples’ perceptions of the uniqueness of Ireland.

● The exhibition opened on 2 June and continues until the end of next month [Saturday 30 September 2017].

The Jack B Yeats and Paul Henry exhibition continues at the Hunt Museum until 30 September (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017)

‘Cast a cold Eye / On Life, on Death’ … no matter who is buried in my grave

The house at 10 Ashfield Terrace (now 418 Harold’s Cross Road), Dublin, where WB Yeats lived during some of his schooldays (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

Today marks the 150th anniversary of the birth of the poet William Butler Yeats, who was born in Sandymount Avenue, Co Dublin, on 13 June 1865.

He was a driving force behind the Irish Literary Revival, one of the founders of the Abbey Theatre, and the first writer to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Much is being written, said and performed to mark this anniversary, and it is interesting to note how a Dublin-born poet is being presented as a son of Sligo. His mother was from Sligo, but the myth that he was from Sligo has been helped this year by the visit of Prince Charles to the grave of Yeats in Drumcliffe churchyard.

The myth was also recycled by Leonard Cohen at a concert in Lissadell House in July 2010. It was a night of poetry and music beneath the slops of Ben Bulben and Cohen was visiting the house where Yeats stayed when he visited the Gore-Booth sisters, the young Eva and the future Countess Constance Markievicz.

To applause, he quoted those lines from Yeats about the sisters:

The light of evening, Lissadell
Great windows open to the south
Two girls in silk kimonos, both
Beautiful, one a gazelle ...

In the grounds of Lissadell House at the Leonard Cohen concert five years ago (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Perhaps Yeats would have enjoyed this too as someone who worked and reworked Irish myths and legends in his poetry.

When the future poet was only a child of two, the Yeats family moved to England in 1867 and in 1877 he was sent to the Godolphin School in Hammersmith, where he spent almost four years.

Although family holidays were spent at his mother’s family home in Sligo, he was born in Dublin and spent most of his childhood years in London.

When the family returned to Dublin in 1880, and they lived in Howth, first at Balscadden Cottage and then at Island View, Howth, before moving in 1883 to 10 Ashfield Terrace, now 418 Harold’s Cross Road.

Later my father grew up around the corner in Ashdale Park. But Yeats was ashamed of his family’s home between Terenure and Harold’s Cross, describing it in 1914 as “a villa where the red bricks were made pretentious and vulgar with streaks of grey slate.” Perhaps this explains why he fostered the myth that he was from Sligo and not from Dublin – or from London.

In Dublin, Yeats was sent to the High School, then on Harcourt Street. Despite some misconceptions, he was never a student at Trinity College Dublin – from 1884 to 1886, he was a student at the Metropolitan School of Art, now the National College of Art and Design (NCAD).

No 5 Woburn Walk ... the Bloomsbury home of WB Yeats in London from 1895 to 1919 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

After seven years, the family returned to London in 1887. Two years later, in 1889, he met Maud Gonne, who was English-born without any Irish ancestry. In 1891, he visited Gonne in Ireland, where she rejected his proposal of marriage. He would propose to her three more times – in 1899, 1900 and 1901, but she rejected him each time in 1903 married Major John MacBride.

The rise of violent nationalism caused Yeats to reassess his own nationalism, and in Easter, 1916 he wrote:

All changed, changed utterly
A terrible beauty is born

John MacBride had been executed for his role in the Easter Rising, and Yeats made one last proposal to Maud Gonne in mid-1916. Then in 1917, he proposed to her 21-year-old daughter, Iseult Gonne. Later that year he proposed to 25-year-old Georgie Hyde-Lees, and they were married on 20 October 1917.

The world was so changed and transformed WB Yeats could open his poem The Second Coming with these lines about Europe in the aftermath of World War I:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

At first, TS Eliot expressed distaste for Yeats, and even mocked Yeats’s membership of the Theosophical Society. Later, following his attendance at the first performance of Yeats’s one-act play, At the Hawk’s Well, and after the publication of ‘The Wild Swans at Coole’ in 1919, Eliot softened his opinion of Yeats’s poetry.

Yeats distanced himself from the passionate intensity of politics in Ireland until 1922, when he was appointed Senator in the new parliament of the Irish Free State, and was re-appointed for a second term in 1925.

Meanwhile, in December 1923, he received the Nobel Prize for Literature.

In one speech in the Senate, referring to the Church of Ireland, he said: “It is one of the glories of the Church in which I was born that we have put our Bishops in their place in discussions requiring legislation.”

When the Irish Free State was poised to outlaw divorce in 1925, Yeats delivered his famous speech in the new Senate:

I think it is tragic that within three years of this country gaining its independence we should be discussing a measure which a minority of this nation considers to be grossly oppressive. I am proud to consider myself a typical man of that minority. We against whom you have done this thing, are no petty people. We are one of the great stocks of Europe. We are the people of Burke; we are the people of Grattan; we are the people of Swift, the people of Emmet, the people of Parnell. We have created the most of the modern literature of this country. We have created the best of its political intelligence. Yet I do not altogether regret what has happened. I shall be able to find out, if not I, my children will be able to find out whether we have lost our stamina or not. You have defined our position and have given us a popular following. If we have not lost our stamina then your victory will be brief, and your defeat final, and when it comes this nation may be transformed.

It was not until 1935, in the Criterion, that TS Eliot publicly praised Yeats, when he called him “the greatest poet of his time.” Eliot continued to praise Yeats, although in a lecture in Dublin in 1936 he regretted that Yeats “came to poetry from a Protestant background.”

But there was a nasty streak in Yeats too, and it should not be forgotten. His friendship with Ezra Pound introduced him to Benito Mussolini, whom he admired, and at one time he wrote three marching songs for Eoin O’Duffy’s fascist Blueshirts.

Yeats died in France at the Hôtel Idéal Séjour, in Menton, on 28 January 1939, and was buried in the hilltop cemetery at Roquebrune-Cap-Martin. After the death of Yeats, Eliot was invited to give the first annual Yeats lecture to the Friends of the Irish Academy in 1940.

Yeats had frequently spoken about his death with his wife George, who said he told her: “If I die bury me up there and then in a year’s time when the newspapers have forgotten me, dig me up and plant me in Sligo.”

In 1948, what was said to be the body of Yeats was moved in a coffin to Ireland on the naval corvette LÉ Macha. The operation was overseen by Maud Gonne’s son, Sean MacBride, who was then the Minister of External Affairs.

The coffin laid in state in Sligo Town Hall before it was given a full state funeral in Saint Columba’s Churchyard in Drumcliffe on 17 September 1948. The scene at Drumcliffe was set by Yeats himself. In his last poem, published in The Irish Times, he wrote:

Under bare Ben Bulben’s head
In Drumcliffe Churchyard Yeats is laid …

The Committal Service was taken by the Bishop of Kilmore, the Right Revd Albert Edward Hughes, who had been the chaplain to the last Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. As the words “ashes to ashes, dust to dust” were said a handful of soil was thrown on the coffin. The epitaph on the grave quotes the last lines of Under Ben Bulben:

Cast a cold Eye On Life, on Death. Horseman, pass by!

But the bones moved from Roquebrune were never identified with certainty – his body had been exhumed and transferred to a communal ossuary sometime between 1939 and 1948, before the 10-year-lease on the grave had expired, and bones from other graves were mixed together.

Some writers have identified the actual remains with those of a man Alfred George Hollis who died on the same day and was buried in the same graveyard at the same time.

But then, as Yeats himself once wrote:

Though grave-diggers’ toil is long,
Sharp their spades, their muscles strong,
They but thrust their buried men
Back in the human mind again.

WB Yeats born at No 5 Sandymount Avenue, Dublin (Photograph: Patrick Healy 2010/South Dublin County Libraries)

My favourite poem by Yeats is ‘Sailing to Byzantium’:

That is no country for old men. The young
In one another’s arms, birds in the trees
—Those dying generations—at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.

An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,
Nor is there singing school but studying
Monuments of its own magnificence;
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.

O sages standing in God’s holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre, And be the singing-masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.

Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.