Praying at Christmas through poems and with USPG: 30 December 2022

Cloister Court in Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, in the snow … Clement Paman was a student here in the 1620s and 1630s (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

Christmas is not a season of 12 days, despite the popular Christmas song. Christmas is a 40-day season that lasts from Christmas Day (25 December) to Candlemas or the Feast of the Presentation (2 February).

Throughout the 40 days of this Christmas Season, I am reflecting in these ways:

1, Reflecting on a seasonal or appropriate poem;

2, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary, ‘Pray with the World Church.’

This second last day of the year, 30 December, has no other name, number or commemoration in the calendar, apart from being the ‘sixth day of Christmas’ when my true love sent to me ‘six geese a-laying.’

But even by today, most people fail to get that far in this Christmas song, if they ever remembered that many lines.

And so, for my Christmas poem this morning I have chosen ‘On Christmas Day to My Heart,’ a poem written around 1660 or 1661 by Clement Paman (ca 1612-1664) and was first published in Dublin in 1663. Paman and his poetry are largely forgotten today – forgotten more than today’s ‘six geese a-laying’ may be. But I have chosen him because of his links with the Caroline Divines, with the Church of Ireland and with Sidney Sussex, College, Cambridge, where I have stayed regularly over the years.

This poem is difficult, almost turgid, to read today, with a now-awkward reference to stretching tight by turning a screw, especially to increase the tension or pitch of a musical instrument by winding up the screws or keys:

Today,
Then, screw thee high,
My heart, up to
The angels’ cry;
Sing ‘glory’, do

The reference is so awkward that it needed a footnotes in the programme for the Service of Nine Lessons and Carols at King’s College, Cambridge, in 1999. Yet this poem also contains these memorably beautiful lines:

Today,
A shed that’s thatched
(Yet straws can sing)
Holds God.

As a poet, Paman is sometimes associated with the ‘Cavalier Poets,’ who include Ben Jonson, Robert Herrick and Thomas Carew, and he has been described as ‘perhaps the most talented poet of the 17th century never to have had a poem published over his name.’

The Pamans appear to have been well-off, untitled Suffolk gentry, and Clement Paman was born in Chevington, Suffolk, in 1610 or 1611. His name is sometimes spelled Payman in Church of Ireland records. The Paman family is listed in the parish registers of Chevington, and his father, Robert Paman, probably lived at Dunstall Green in Dalham. He may have been related to the physicist, Henry Paman of Saint John’s College, who was at Cambridge at the same time.

Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, in the snow ... here Clement Paman was a student of Samuel Ward (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Clement Paman was educated at Lavenham School and Bury School. At the age of 16, he was admitted on 16 February 1628 to Sidney Sussex College, which at first had been a Puritan foundation. Earlier students at Sidney Sussex included Oliver Cromwell, who left in 1617 without taking a degree, and Edward Montagu, 2nd Earl of Manchester, who graduated in 1622 and who was a key commander of the Parliamentary forces in the English Civil War.

But Paman was not unusual among Sidney Sussex students for his political and religious views: John Bramhall, who had been there ahead of Cromwell, became the Archbishop of Armagh at the Caroline Restoration.

At Sidney Sussex, Paman was a student of Samuel Ward (1572-1643), Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity at Cambridge. Ward began life as a moderate Calvinist, but as a loyal Anglican he suffered persecution during the Civil War. When Ward died after being imprisoned in Saint John’s College, he was buried in the chapel in Sidney Sussex.

Paman obtained his BA in 1632, his MA in 1635 and later became a Doctor of Divinity at Cambridge University, and received the degree DD ad eundem at Trinity College Dublin in 1661. One of his earliest works is a tribute written after the death of a young Irish poet who was his contemporary in Cambridge: ‘Poem on the Death of Edward King.’ King, who was also the subject of John Milton’s ‘Lycidas,’ was born in Ireland in 1612, and was admitted to Christ’s College, Cambridge, in 1626. Four years later, he was elected a fellow in 1632, and he intended to proceed to ordination. But his career was cut short by the tragedy that inspired Paman’s and Milton’s poems. In 1637, he set out for Ireland to visit his family, but on 10 August the ship struck a rock off the Welsh coast, and King was drowned.

Some sources say Paman first came to Ireland along with John Bramhall as the chaplain to the Lord Deputy, Thomas Wentworth, 1st Earl of Strafford. But this detail is confusing as Strafford was Lord Deputy from 1632 to 1639, while Paman was still in Cambridge.

But Paman seems to have arrived in Ireland by 1640 at the latest, for David Crookes, in his Clergy of Kilmore, Elphin and Ardagh identiifes Clement Paman with Cleremont Panham, who was Rector of Saint John’s, Sligo, in 1640. However, this rectory was lost in a subsequent dispute, and he returned to England.

John Cleveland’s epitaph on the death of the Earl of Strafford, ‘Here lies Wise and Valiant Dust’ (1647), has recently been ascribed to Paman:

Here lies wise and valiant dust
Huddled up ’twixt fit and just,
Strafford, who was hurried hence
’Twixt treason and convenience.
He spent his time here in a mist,
A Papist, yet a Calvinist;
His Prince’s nearest joy and grief,
He had, yet wanted all relief;
The prop and ruin of the state;
The people’s violent love and hate;
One in extremes loved and abhorred.
Riddles lie here, or in a word –
Here lies blood; and let it lie
Speechless still and never cry.

From 1648 to 1653, Paman was Vicar of Thatcham in Berkshire, in the Diocese of Oxford. During that time, he wrote of how he was inspired by Edward Benlowes’s poetic masterpiece Theophila, or Love’s Sacrifice, a Divine Poem (1652): ‘All my pleasure is, yt I have obeyed you, & somewhat rays’d my owne heart wth these imaginations.’

In 1653, Paman’s right to his Berkshire vicarage was disputed. He lost the living, and remained without a church appointment until the end of the Cromwellian era and his return to Ireland in 1661.

Following the end of the Civil War and the Caroline Restoration, Paman was appointed Prebendary of Monmohenock in Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin, in 1661, and he was Dean of Saint Mary’s Cathedral, Elphin, in Co Roscommon, and Vicar of Saint John’s, Sligo, from 1661, and Vicar of Castledermot, Co Kildare, in the Diocese of Glendalough, from 1662 until his death in 1664.

During his time as Dean of Elphin, the cathedral – which had been destroyed during the rebellion of 1641 – was rebuilt by Bishop John Parker (1661-1667), and in the following century the poet Oliver Goldsmith (1728-1774) attended the school attached to the cathedral.

After his death, a memorial to him was erected in the chapel of Sidney Sussex College, although I have failed to find it over the years.

The chapel and Chapel Court in Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, in the snow (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Peter Davidson, in his introduction to Poetry and Revolution, describes Paman as a ‘moderate Protestant.’ However, in Christian Humanism and the Puritan Social Order, Margo Todd calls him an ‘ultra-royalist cleric.’ She says his writings on Christian charity are liberal for their time, and cites his idea that alms should be given ‘even to the loose and impious.’

While he was Dean of Elphin, Paman published Poems by Several Hands in Dublin in 1663. However, only three of his poems were published in the 17th century and the majority of his poems remained in manuscript collections in the Bodleian Library in Oxford.

His poems are mainly of a devotional nature. Perhaps the best-known is ‘On Christmas Day to My Heart,’ a poem written ca 1660. His other poems include ‘Good Friday,’ ‘On Christmas Day 1661,’ and ‘On his death.’ He also wrote a lengthy tribute to the dramatist and poet Ben Jonson (1572-1637). Peter Davidson notes that Paman’s style is complex, ‘abounding in extended metaphors’ and more ‘overly Baroque’ than some of his contemporaries, being a development of the ‘epigrammatic style of Jonson.’

King’s College, Cambridge ... ‘On Christmas Day to My Heart’ was included in the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols on Christmas Eve 1999 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

This morning’s poem, ‘On Christmas Day to My Heart,’ was included in the Oxford Book of Christian Verse (1940) and in Norman Ault’s collection, A Treasury of Unfamiliar Lyrics (1938). But until the 1990s, Paman remained unknown except among scholars interested in the manuscript collections of 17th century poetry.

There was a renewed interest in his work with the publication of the anthology, Poetry and Revolution: An Anthology of British and Irish Verse (1998). A year later, ‘On Christmas Day to My Heart’ was set to music by Richard Rodney Bennett for the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols in the Chapel of King’s College, Cambridge in 1999.

On Christmas Day to My Heart by Clement Paman

Today,/ A shed that’s thatched/ (Yet straws can sing)/ Holds God … the altarpiece by the Venetian painter Giovanni Pittoni in the chapel of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today,
Hark! Heaven sings;
Stretch, tune, my heart!
(For hearts have strings
May bear their part)
And though thy lute were bruised i’ the fall,
Bruised hearts may reach an humble pastoral.

Today,
Shepherds rejoice,
And angels do
No more: thy voice
Can reach that too:
Bring them at least thy pipe along,
And mingle consort with the angels’ song.

Today,
A shed that’s thatched
(Yet straws can sing)
Holds God; God matched
With beasts; beasts bring
Their song their way: for shame then raise
Thy notes! lambs bleat, and oxen bellow praise.

Today,
God honoured man
Not angels: yet
They sing; and can
Raised man forget?
Praise is our debt to-day, now shall
Angels (man’s not so poor) discharge it all?

Today,
Then, screw thee high,
My heart, up to
The angels’ cry;
Sing ‘glory’, do:
What if thy strings all crack and fly?
On such a ground, music ’twill be to die.

Looking into the ruins of Elphin Cathedral ruins from the ruins of the tower (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

USPG Prayer Diary:

The theme in the USPG Prayer Diary this week is the USPG Christmas Appeal: Journey to Freedom. The Journey to Freedom campaign supports the anti-human trafficking programme of the Diocese of Durgapur in North India.

The USPG Prayer Diary invites us to pray today in these words:

Let us pray for those involved in rescue missions to find the missing. May they be sustained by courage and resolve to restore freedom to those captured and detained.

Yesterday’s reflection

Continued tomorrow

Bicycles in the snow at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

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)

Sligo’s Cathedral: the only Romanesque Revival cathedral built in Ireland

Inside the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception on Temple Street, Sligo (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

Patrick Comerford

I was at a family wedding last weekend in Sligo in the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception on Temple Street, the cathedral of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Elphin. The cathedral and its tower dominate the skyline of Sligo, and the chimes of its bells peal out over the city, with Ben Bulben in the background.

The Diocese of Elphin is said to date from the fourth century. According to tradition, Ono son of Oengus offered a house to Saint Patrick ca 450, who renamed it Ail Fionn (‘Rock of the Clear Spring’) and placed his disciple, Saint Assicus, in charge.

However, if a monastery survived at Elphin, it was not until the 12th century that Elphin was established as a diocese of East Connacht.

The Roman Catholic Diocese of Elphin did not have a cathedral until the mid-19th century, but Saint John’s, a small parish church near the site of the Cheshire Home, had served as the pro-cathedral from 1827.

Bishop Laurence Gillooly (1819-1895) was appointed co-adjutor bishop in 1856 and succeeded George Browne as Bishop of Elphin in 1858. Sligo was then a growing, thriving town, and Bishop Gillooly became the inspiring figure in planning and building a new cathedral there.

Laurence Gillooly was born near Roscommon, studied in Paris and was ordained a Vincentian priest in 1847. In 1859, a year after becoming diocesan bishop, he secured a renewable lease from Sir Gilbert King of two adjacent properties close to the Lungy, and beside Saint John’s Church which would become the Church of Ireland cathedral in 1961. One of these properties, known as the Bowling Green, became the site of the new Roman Catholic cathedral.

The Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception was designed by the English-born architect George Goldie (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

The cathedral was designed by the English-born architect George Goldie (1828-1887), who also designed Saint Saviour’s Dominican Church, Waterford (1876-1877). Goldie also remodelled the interior and exterior of Saint Saviour’s, the Dominican church in Limerick, and designed the High Altar and reredos in the Redemptorist Church at Mount Saint Alphonsus in Limerick.

Goldie was born in York, the grandson of the architect Joseph Bonomi the Elder. He was educated at Saint Cuthbert’s College, Ushaw, in Durham, and trained as an architect with John Grey Weightman and Matthew Ellison Hadfield of Sheffield, in 1845-1850, and then worked with them as a partner.

Goldie was joined in his architectural partnership in 1880 by his son Edward Goldie (1856-1921), whose work includes Hawkesyard Priory in Armitage, near Rugeley and six miles north-west of Lichfield, built for the Dominicans in 1896-1914, and which I knew in my late teens and early 20s.

Inside the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, looking west (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

The cathedral was built in a Norman style, and it is the only Romanesque Revival cathedral among the cathedrals of the 19th and 20th centuries in Ireland, built at a time when the fashion was for Gothic cathedrals and churches.

The main contractor was Joseph Clarence of Ballisodare, and Bishop Gillooly took complete charge of the building project when work began in 1869. The cathedral is built of cut limestone and is modelled on a Norman-Romano-Byzantine style.

Goldie designed this cathedral in the form of a basilica. Contemporaries called his design ‘Norman,’ but it is in a round-arched style that includes elements of English, German and Irish Romanesque.

The tympanum over the west door of the cathedral (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

The cathedral has a square, pyramid-capped tower, that reaches a height of 70 metres, and supporting turrets at the west end. The tower incorporates the main entrance to the building. The tympanum over the main door has a series of scriptural figures sculpted in alto rellevo.

The three-faced clock tower, designed by Gillet & Bland of London in 1877, is one of the finest examples in Ireland of a 19th-century turret clock, and the carillon comprises nine bells. The largest bell weighs 1,456 kg and is dedicated to Our Lady. All the bells are beautifully decorated with the harp and shamrock and the chimes are a familiar sound to everyone in Sligo.

The arches are supported by 18 massive stone pillars of finely chiselled limestone (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

The cruciform cathedral is 69 metres long, 20 metres wide at the nave and aisles, 35 metres wide at the transepts, and 19 metres high to the apex of the nave roof.

This is a very spacious cathedral with a clerestory or side gallery on the both sides, a triforium, and a choir loft.

The arches, supported by 18 massive stone pillars of finely chiselled limestone, connect the nave and the aisles, and the aisles continue to form an ambulatory around the apse.

The original High Altar and its brass baldachino have been preserved (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

The original high altar was considered one of the finest in Ireland, surmounted by a brass baldachino and reached by six marble steps. The tabernacle was flanked by two carved panels depicting the sacrifices of Abraham and Melchizedek.

The baldachino and high altar recall, in beaten brass, the artisanship of Asicus, the first Abbot-Bishop of Elphin and Patron of the Diocese.

The Bishop’s Chair or cathedra has a prominent place in the sanctuary set against a double pilaster, with the corresponding pilaster on the opposite side displaying the diocesan coat of arms in marble.

The two side altars in the transepts are dedicated to the Sacred Heart and to Saint Joseph.

The baptistry in the apse was originally intended as a mortuary chapel (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

The baptistry in the apse was originally intended as a mortuary chapel, but was never used for this purpose and was converted into a baptistry in 1975.

Bishop Laurence Gillooly (1895), Bishop John Clancy (1912) and Bishop Bernard Coyne (1926) were buried in the crypt beneath the baptistry.

One of the attractions of the cathedral is the stained-glass windows by Loblin of Tours in France. Gillooly’s choice of Loblin instead of the popular Meyer of Munich was probably influenced by his education in Paris.

A carved wooden statue of Saint Assicus, the legendary founder of the Diocese of Elphin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

A carved wooden statue of Saint Assicus, the legendary founder of the Diocese of Elphin, was found in an antique shop in London and presented to the cathedral in 1962.

The cathedral was solemnly opened on 26 July 1874 by Cardinal Paul Cullen of Dublin, was consecrated on 1 July 1897 and dedicated to the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

The cathedral might have been dedicated to Saint Assicus or Saint Patrick, who associated with the stories of the foundation of the Diocese of Elphin, or to Saint John, continuing the name of the old pro-cathedral. But the cathedral in Elphin was dedicated to Saint Mary the Virgin, and Gillooly, who had been a vocal defender of Papal Infallibility at Vatican I, was strongly influenced by French devotions to the Immaculate Conception.

Since it was built, the cathedral has undergone extensive renovations on two occasions. The most recent remodelling of the sanctuary in 1974-1975, to meet the needs of post-Vatican II liturgy. This is the work of the architects William H Byrne & Son and Patrick Rooney & Associates, and included extending the sanctuary at the level of the high altar.

A new altar, occupying a central position on a raised dais, is of cut limestone and complimented by a matching ambo and presider’s chair. The original high altar has been preserved, along with its brass baldachino.

The cathedral was reconsecrated on 7 December 1975 and solemnly opened the following day.

The present Bishop of Elphin is the Most Reverend Kevin Doran, who was appointed in 2014.

The cathedral was reconsecrated and reopened in December 1975 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

Finding theological and political significance in the garden roses

A budding red rose in the back garden this morning (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)

Patrick Comerford

“If any one of them can explain it,” said Alice, “I’ll give him sixpence. I don’t believe there’s an atom of meaning in it.”

I am smothered with hay fever for the last few days, aggravated by time spent in Christ Church Cathedral during the Dublin Garden Festival last weekend and time spent in the last few days in the gardens at home and at work, enjoying the summer sunshine and the roses.

I was reminded this morning, as I talked about the roses, that this year marks the 150th anniversary of the most famous book about roses and gardens. After a couple of alternative titles for Lewis Carroll’s story were rejected – including Alice Among the Fairies and Alice’s Golden Hour - his first Alice book book was published by Macmillan on 26 November 1865 as Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

The entire print run sold out quickly and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland became an overnight publishing sensation, among both children and adults. The book’s first avid readers included Queen Victoria and Oscar Wilde.

It was quickly followed by Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There in 1871. It has never been out of print since then and has been translated into at least 176 languages.

Lewis Carroll is the pen-name chosen by the Revd Charles Lutwidge Dodgson: Lewis was the anglicised form of Ludovicus, the Latin for Lutwidge, his middle name, while Carroll is an Irish surname similar to Carolus, the Latin form of his first name Charles.

In this anniversary year, it should not be forgotten that Charles Dodgson had strong Irish family connections, and that he came from a clerical family rooted in the Church of Ireland family and with Tractarian sympathies.

Lewis Carroll, or the Revd Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (1832-1898) was the great-grandson of Charles Dodgson (1722-1795), who was nominated Bishop of Ossory 250 years ago in succession to Richard Pococke. He was consecrated in Saint Werburgh’s Church, Dublin, on 11 August 1765 by William Carmichael, Archbishop of Dublin.

Ten years later, he moved from Kilkenny when he became Bishop of Elphin on 12 April 1775. King George III congratulated him on this promotion, saying that he ought indeed to be thankful to have got away from a palace where the stabling was so bad. He died in Dublin on 21 January 1795 and was buried at Saint Bride’s Church.

Lewis Carroll’s father, the Ven Charles Dodgson (1800-1861), was a Vicar in Cheshire and Yorkshire before becoming Archdeacon of Richmond. In the great theological debates in the 19th century, Archdeacon Dodgson was a High Church Anglican, inclining to Anglo-Catholicism. He was a college friend of Edward Bouverie Pusey, and an admirer of John Henry Newman. A supporter of the Oxford Movement and the Tractarians, he contributed the volume on Tertullian to Pusey’s series, Library of the Fathers, and in all wrote 24 books on theology.

His son, Charles Dodgson, was regarded as “stiffly conservative” in in his theological views at Oxford, his diary is interspersed with private prayers, and when asked about his beliefs in 1897 said he was a member of the Church of England, adding: “I owe all to him who loved me, and died on the Cross of Calvary.”

Christ Church College, Oxford ... as a Fellow, Charles Dodgson was ordained a deacon on 22 December 1861 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

As a Fellow of Christ Church, Oxford, he was ordained a deacon on 22 December 1861. But a year later, when the time came to be ordained priest, he appealed to the Dean of Christ Church, Henry Liddell (1811-1898) for permission not to proceed. This was against college rules and Dodgson faced expulsion. However, Liddell changed his mind overnight and allowed Dodgson to remain without becoming a priest.

Why did Dodgson decide against ordination to the priesthood? Some suggestions say his speech impediment explains his reluctance, as he had a difficulty in reading lessons and prayers and in preaching in his own words.

Certainly, Dodgson remained active in ministry: he preached regularly and was a friend and admirer of the theologian FD Maurice.

Whatever the reason, his stammer, which was so marked that he often stumbled over his own name, was an inspiration for the Do-Do in Alice, and Alice herself was Liddell’s own daughter, Alice Liddell (1852-1934).

Lewis Carroll’s Alice stories begin on 4 July 1862 and were first published 150 years ago in 1865

Lewis Carroll’s Alice stories begin on 4 July 1862, in a journey on a rowing boat on the River Isis from Folly Bridge, Oxford, to Godstow for a picnic outing. Since then, 4 July has been marked as Alice Day.

Alice Pleasance Liddell, who was then 10, asked Charles Dodgson to entertain her and her sisters, Edith (then 8) and Lorina (13), with a story. As the Revd Robinson Duckworth rowed, Dodgson entertained the girls with stories of a girl, named Alice and her adventures after she fell into a rabbit-hole.

The fictional Alice has earned a place in literary history that can be compared with that of Dante’s Beatrice, famous for being a muse, a receptacle for the male imagination.

But for the past 150 years, critics and analysts have argued with one another about whether the Alice stories are about sex, drugs, politics, racism, the class system or psychiatric care, or all of these in various combinations, or merely an in-house commentary on the internal politics of Oxbridge college life.

Are they the most popular fairy tales in the English language?

Or are they social satire?

Francine F Abeles’s edition of Dodgson’s political pamphlets presents a man who was fundamentally concerned with fairness. Summoning his mathematical abilities to issues related to electoral politics, he simultaneously made important contributions both to political science with his proposals for proportional representation and to mathematics with ideas that we now know as game theory.

From 1881 to 1885, he engaged with important political debates of the day, including the extension of the voting franchise, the redistribution of seats in the House of Commons, and proportional representation to ensure consensus and minority representation.

In a letter to The Spectator in 1875, he warned that secular education would inculcate attitudes that led students to tolerate oppression, injustice and slavery. He also protested against the abuse of animals, the existence of slavery, the mistreatment of factory workers, and the degradation of women.

He looks at reality through the eyes of a child, for whom adults are cruel, childlike, irresponsible, impulsive, and self-indulgent. Through Alice’s eyes, he sees these characteristics in authority figures and in royalty. And so he questions the authority of adults and of royalty and mocks the commonly-held prejudices of his day.

Alice could be read as a political allegory or satire, with Wonderland a symbolic England, ruled tyrannically by the Queen of Hearts, who represents Queen Victoria.

White roses on the lawns in the Church of Ireland Theological Institute this afternoon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)

In an article in Punch in 1928, CW Giles suggests Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass provide a commentary on the War of the Roses (1455-1485), in which the House of York, symbolised by the White Rose, and the House of Lancaster, with the emblem of the Red Rose, fought for the English throne and political power.

The Queen of Hearts – the Red Queen of Through the Looking Glass who demands red roses – is the Lancastrian Queen Margaret. She is the wife of Henry VI, the ineffectual Red King, and demands the execution of the captive Duke of York, the knave in Wonderland: “Off with the crown, and, with the crown, his head.” And again: “Off with his head and set it on York gates.”

He identifies the Duchess of Wonderland with Eleanor, Duchess of Gloucester, Queen Margaret’s mutual enemy. Shakespeare tells how the Queen boxed her ears, whereupon the Duchess vowed: “She shall not strike Dame Eleanor unavenged.”

The sequel is in Wonderland on the croquet-ground, where Alice asks the White Rabbit, “Where’s the Duchess?”

“Hush! Hush!” said the Rabbit in a low hurried tone ... “She’s under a sentence of execution.”

“What for?” said Alice.

“She boxed the Queen’s ears,” the Rabbit began ...

The Duchess doses the baby with pepper and then chastises him for sneezing. For Giles, the baby is Richard of Gloucester, who eventually takes the throne as Richard III.

The baby is transformed into a pig, and Richard III’s emblem is a boar – which also gives us the York ham.

If Richard III is the baby, then the White King is his elder brother, Edward IV. The King’s messengers, Hatta and Haigha – the Mad Hatter and the March Hare in Wonderland – are of course of the White Rose faction: the Hatter is Warwick the Kingmaker and the March Hare symbolises the Yorkist claim to the throne based on the descent from Mortimer, Earl of March, heir to Richard II.

The fall of Humpty Dumpty, attended by the army of the White King, may refer to Richard III, who is portrayed in history and by Shakespeare as being hump-backed, and who was defeated at Bosworth Field in 1485. He was reburied in Leicester Cathedral earlier this year.

In Through the Looking-Glass, Humpty Dumpty discusses semantics and pragmatics with Alice:

“I don’t know what you mean by ‘glory’,” Alice said.

Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. “Of course you don’t – till I tell you. I meant ‘there’s a nice knock-down argument for you!’”

“But ‘glory’ doesn’t mean ‘a nice knock-down argument’,” Alice objected.

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.”

“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”

“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master – that’s all.”

Alice was too much puzzled to say anything, so after a minute Humpty Dumpty began again. “They’ve a temper, some of them – particularly verbs, they’re the proudest – adjectives you can do anything with, but not verbs – however, I can manage the whole lot! Impenetrability! That’s what I say!”

But perhaps these tales should be read as commentaries on British politics at the time and on the failings of the British justice system of the day, with the willingness of politicians to change colours whimsically.

We see the violence built into the Victorian justice system displayed by the aristocracy of Wonderland, the Duchess and the Queen, and the mangling of justice in the trial:

“No, no!” said the Queen. “Sentence first – verdict afterwards.”

“Stuff and nonsense!” said Alice loudly. “The idea of having the sentence first!”

“Hold your tongue!” said the Queen, turning purple.

“I won’t!” said Alice.

The royal gardeners paint white roses red in order to appease the Queen and to avoid decapitation. The Hatter is imprisoned before his trial “and of course the crime comes last of all,” says the Queen.

Painting the white roses red may suggest that people have to hide what they truly are in order to avoid loss or gain political advantage and promotion hastily.

Alice also provides hints of Charles Dodgson’s sympathies with the Tractarians and John Henry Newman.

At one point, the knight raises his hands in excitement, instantly rolls out of the saddle, and falls headlong into a deep ditch.

“Alice ran to the side of the ditch to look for him. She was rather startled by the fall, as for some time he had kept on very well, and she was afraid that he really was hurt this time. However, though she could see nothing but the soles of his feet, she was much relieved to hear that he was talking on in his usual tone.”

In The Idea of a University (1852), Newman suggests that the quintessential Victorian gentleman should “submit to pain because it is inevitable, to bereavement because it is irreparable, and to death because it is his destiny.”

When Alice meets the White Knight on the seventh square, he tries to hold himself in Newman’s resigned, complacent dignity and also as a romantic representation of a chivalric hero. However, his complete lack of riding ability and amusing, failed inventions render his attempts at maintaining a gentlemanly air ludicrous to Alice. This general incompetence makes Alice accept his romantic representation of chivalry as satiric.

Even the White Knight recognises that his life of chivalry is a lonely isolated one, as he comments on what he interprets as Alice’s sadness at their departure. He tries to comfort her with a song, which he says is “very, very beautiful” and very sad.

Alice recalls “the mild blue eyes and kindly smile of the Knight – the setting sun gleaming through his hair, and shining on his armour in a blaze of light that quite dazzled her.”

The episode may be a commentary on Newman’s departure from the Church of England for Roman Catholicism, his subsequent isolation from his former colleagues and friends in Oxford and how he bore this, and on Newman’s hymns, especially Lead kindly light, first published in 1834, which ends with the lines:

and with the morn those angel faces smile,
which I have loved long since, and lost awhile..

However, in a recent issue of Prospect magazine, Professor Richard Jenkyns of Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, said Alice in Wonderland is “probably the most purely child-centred book ever written.” He argued that its only purpose “is to give pleasure.”

Christmas Poems (16): On Christmas Day to My Heart by Clement Paman

Snow in Cloister Court, Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge ... Clement Paman was a student here in the 1620s and 1630s

Patrick Comerford

This second last day of the year, 30 December, has no other name, number or commemoration in the calendar, apart from being the “sixth day of Christmas” when my true love sent to me “six geese a-laying.” But even by today, most people fail to get that far in this Christmas song, if they ever remembered that many lines.

And so, for my Christmas poem this morning I have chosen ‘On Christmas Day to My Heart,’ a poem written around 1660 or 1661 by Clement Paman (ca 1612-1664) and was first published in Dublin in 1663. Paman and his poetry are largely forgotten today – forgotten more than today’s ‘six geese a-laying’ may be. But I have chosen him because of his links with the Caroline Divines, with the Church of Ireland and with Sidney Sussex, College, Cambridge, where I have stayed regularly during the last four years.

This poem is difficult, almost turgid, to read today, with a now-awkward reference to stretching tight by turning a screw, especially to increase the tension or pitch of a musical instrument by winding up the screws or keys:

Today,
Then, screw thee high,
My heart, up to
The angels’ cry;
Sing ‘glory’, do

The reference is so awkward that it needed a footnotes in the programme for the Service of Nine Lessons and Carols at King’s College, Cambridge, in 1999. Yet this poem also contains these memorably beautiful lines:

Today,
A shed that’s thatched
(Yet straws can sing)
Holds God.

As a poet, Paman is sometimes associated with the “Cavalier Poets,” who include Ben Jonson, Robert Herrick and Thomas Carew, and he has been described as “perhaps the most talented poet of the 17th century never to have had a poem published over his name.”

The Pamans appear to have been well-off, untitled Suffolk gentry, and Clement Paman was born in Chevington, Suffolk, in 1610 or 1611. His name is sometimes spelled Payman in Church of Ireland records. The Paman family is listed in the parish registers of Chevington, and his father, Robert Paman, probably lived at Dunstall Green in Dalham. He may have been related to the physicist, Henry Paman of Saint John’s College, who was at Cambridge at the same time.

Snow in Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge ... here Clement Paman was a student of Samuel Ward

Clement Paman was educated at Lavenham School and Bury School. Atv the age of 16, he was admitted on 16 February 1628 to Sidney Sussex College, which at first had been a Puritan foundation. Earlier students at Sidney Sussex included Oliver Cromwell, who left in 1617 without taking a degree, and Edward Montagu, 2nd Earl of Manchester, who graduated in 1622 and who was a key commander of the Parliamentary forces in the English Civil War.

But Paman was not unusual among Sidney Sussex students for his political and religious views: John Bramhall, who had been there ahead of Cromwell, became the Archbishop of Armagh at the Caroline Restoration.

At Sidney Sussex, Paman was a student of Samuel Ward (1572-1643), Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity at Cambridge. Ward began life as a moderate Calvinist, but as a loyal Anglican he suffered persecution during the Civil War. When Ward died after being imprisoned in Saint John’s College, he was buried in the chapel in Sidney Sussex.

Paman obtained his BA in 1632, his MA in 1635 and later became a Doctor of Divinity at Cambridge University, and received the degree DD ad eundem at Trinity College Dublin in 1661. One of his earliest works is a tribute written after the death of a young Irish poet who was his contemporary in Cambridge: ‘Poem on the Death of Edward King.’ King, who was also the subject of John Milton’s ‘Lycidas,’ was born in Ireland in 1612, and was admitted to Christ’s College, Cambridge, in 1626. Four years later, he was elected a fellow in 1632, and he intended to proceed to ordination. But his career was cut short by the tragedy that inspired Paman’s and Milton’s poems. In 1637, he set out for Ireland to visit his family, but on 10 August the ship struck a rock off the Welsh coast, and King was drowned.

Some sources say Paman first came to Ireland along with John Bramhall as the chaplain to the Lord Deputy, Thomas Wentworth, 1st Earl of Strafford. But this detail is confusing as Strafford was Lord Deputy from 1632 to 1639, while Paman was still in Cambridge.

But Paman seems to have arrived in Ireland by 1640 at the latest, for David Crookes, in his Clergy of Kilmore, Elphin and Ardagh identiifes Clement Paman with Cleremont Panham, who was Rector of Saint John’s, Sligo, in 1640. However, this rectory was lost in a subsequent dispute, and he returned to England.

John Cleveland’s epitaph on the death of the Earl of Strafford, ‘Here lies Wise and Valiant Dust’ (1647), has recently been ascribed to Paman:

Here lies wise and valiant dust
Huddled up ’twixt fit and just,
Strafford, who was hurried hence
’Twixt treason and convenience.
He spent his time here in a mist,
A Papist, yet a Calvinist;
His Prince’s nearest joy and grief,
He had, yet wanted all relief;
The prop and ruin of the state;
The people’s violent love and hate;
One in extremes loved and abhorred.
Riddles lie here, or in a word –
Here lies blood; and let it lie
Speechless still and never cry.

From 1648 to 1653, Paman was Vicar of Thatcham in Berkshire, in the Diocese of Oxford. During that time, he wrote of how he was inspired by Edward Benlowes’s poetic masterpiece Theophila, or Love’s Sacrifice, a Divine Poem (1652): “All my pleasure is, yt I have obeyed you, & somewhat rays’d my owne heart wth these imaginations.”

In 1653, Paman’s right to his Berkshire vicarage was disputed. He lost the living, and remained without a church appointment until the end of the Cromwellian era and his return to Ireland in 1661.

The ruins of Elphin Cathedral in Co Roscommon

Following the end of the Civil War and the Caroline Restoration, Paman was appointed Prebendary of Monmohenock in Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin, in 1661, and he was Dean of Saint Mary’s Cathedral, Elphin, in Co Roscommon, and Vicar of Saint John’s, Sligo, from 1661, and Vicar of Castledermot, Co Kildare, in the Diocese of Glendalough, from 1662 until his death in 1664.

During his time as Dean of Elphin, the cathedral – which had been destroyed during the rebellion of 1641 – was rebuilt by Bishop John Parker (1661-1667), and in the following century the poet Oliver Goldsmith (1728-1774) attended the school attached to the cathedral.

After his death, a memorial to him was erected in the chapel of Sidney Sussex College, although I have failed to find it over the past four years.

The chapel and Chapel Court in Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Peter Davidson, in his introduction to Poetry and Revolution, describes Paman as a “moderate Protestant.” However, in Christian Humanism and the Puritan Social Order, Margo Todd calls him an “ultra-royalist cleric.” She says his writings on Christian charity are liberal for their time, and cites his idea that alms should be given “even to the loose and impious.”

While he was Dean of Elphin, Paman published Poems by Several Hands in Dublin in 1663. However, only three of his poems were published in the 17th century and the majority of his poems remained in manuscript collections in the Bodleian Library in Oxford.

His poems are mainly of a devotional nature. Perhaps the best-known is ‘On Christmas Day to My Heart,’ a poem written ca 1660. His other poems include ‘Good Friday,’ ‘On Christmas Day 1661,’ and ‘On his death.’ He also wrote a lengthy tribute to the dramatist and poet Ben Jonson (1572-1637). Peter Davidson notes that Paman’s style is complex, “abounding in extended metaphors” and more “overly Baroque” than some of his contemporaries, being a development of the “epigrammatic style of Jonson.”

King’s College, Cambridge ... ‘On Christmas Day to My Heart’ was included in the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols on Christmas Eve 1999 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2010)

Today’s poem, ‘On Christmas Day to My Heart,’ was included in the Oxford Book of Christian Verse (1940) and in Norman Ault’s collection, A Treasury of Unfamiliar Lyrics (1938). But until the 1990s, Paman remained unknown except among those interested in the manuscript collections of 17th century poetry.

There was a renewed interest in his work with the publication of the anthology, Poetry and Revolution: An Anthology of British and Irish Verse (1998). A year later, ‘On Christmas Day to My Heart’ was set to music by Richard Rodney Bennett for the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols in the Chapel of King’s College, Cambridge in 1999.

On Christmas Day to My Heart by Clement Paman

Today,/ A shed that’s thatched/ (Yet straws can sing)/ Holds God … the altarpiece by the Venetian painter Giovanni Pittoni in the chapel of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today,
Hark! Heaven sings;
Stretch, tune, my heart!
(For hearts have strings
May bear their part)
And though thy lute were bruised i’ the fall,
Bruised hearts may reach an humble pastoral.

Today,
Shepherds rejoice,
And angels do
No more: thy voice
Can reach that too:
Bring them at least thy pipe along,
And mingle consort with the angels’ song.

Today,
A shed that’s thatched
(Yet straws can sing)
Holds God; God matched
With beasts; beasts bring
Their song their way: for shame then raise
Thy notes! lambs bleat, and oxen bellow praise.

Today,
God honoured man
Not angels: yet
They sing; and can
Raised man forget?
Praise is our debt to-day, now shall
Angels (man’s not so poor) discharge it all?

Today,
Then, screw thee high,
My heart, up to
The angels’ cry;
Sing ‘glory’, do:
What if thy strings all crack and fly?
On such a ground, music ’twill be to die.

Tomorrow: from ‘Little Gidding’, by TS Eliot.

Canon Patrick Comerford is Lecturer in Anglicanism and Liturgy, the Church of Ireland Theological Institute, and a canon of Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin.

Revised: 19 January 2012