Poems for Holy Week 2021: 6, Katharine Tynan, ‘All in an April Evening’

‘Behold the Lamb of God that taketh away the sins of the world’ … the Byzantine-style crucifix by Laurence King (1907-1981) in the crypt of Saint Mary le Bow on Cheapside in London (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

Friday 2 April 2021

Good Friday, The Three Hours, 12 noon to 3 p.m.

Reading: John 18: 28 to 19: 16a.

Our second poem for these ‘Three Hours’ on Good Friday is ‘All in an April Evening,’ by the Dublin-born poet Katharine Tynan (1859-1931), or Katharine Tynan Hinkinson.

Her nephews included the comedian Dave Allen (born David Tynan O’Mahony) and his brother Peter Tynan O’Mahony, one of the journalists who recruited me to the staff of The Irish Times in the mid-1970s.

Despite its opening line, the title of this poem is taken from the last stanza, drawing attention to the real subject matter, which is not the beauty of pastoral scenes in the countryside at Spring time, but the Crucifixion and death of Christ on the evening of Good Friday.

TS Eliot opens ‘The Waste Land’ with the words:

April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.

But Katherine Tynan has a very different impression of April days. Her poem became popular and well-known after it was set to music by Sir Hugh Roberton (1874-1952), who gave it a tender and light but reverent setting for two-part chorus and piano accompaniment. Based on a wonderful poem by Katharine Tynan, this memorable song is steeped with pastoral imagery and natural energy.

During Lent, as we move on from the lambing season, it has been a pleasure to watch the lambs in the fields growing, yet still dependent on their mothers for guidance, protection and safety. The lambs in the fields are a reminder that God’s Creation is at its best and most beautiful when it is nurtured in unconditional love.

Now, on Good Friday, we face one of the ironies or paradoxes of our faith, in which the Good Shepherd becomes the Lamb of God.

Throughout the Liturgy we refer to Christ as the Lamb of God – in the Gloria, when we say: ‘Lord God, Lamb of God, you take away the sin of the world.’ Prayer 2 in Holy Communion 2 in The Book of Common Prayer refers to Christ at Passiontide, Holy Week and Easter Week as ‘the true passover Lamb.’ In Agnus Dei, we proclaim: ‘Jesus Christ is the Lamb of God, who has taken away the sins of the world. Happy are those who are called to his supper.’

The Lamb of God is the title given to Christ at his Baptism in the Jordan by Saint John the Baptist, declaring: ‘Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!’ (John 1: 29), and exclaiming: ‘Look, here is the Lamb of God!’ (John 1: 36). Christ is the True Lamb who takes the place of the sacrificial Paschal Lamb of the Passover (see Mark 14: 12).

In the Prophetic literature, the word ‘Lamb’ means both servant and lamb. Christ is the Suffering Servant who is spoken of by the Prophets, and who sacrifices himself for his brothers and sisters.

To understand this a little more we read Isaiah where the Prophet speaks of the Suffering Servant:

He was despised and rejected by others;
a man of suffering and acquainted with infirmity;
and as one from whom others hide their faces
he was despised, and we held him of no account.

Surely he has borne our infirmities
and carried our diseases;
yet we accounted him stricken,
struck down by God, and afflicted. (Isaiah 53: 3-4)

In the Acts of the Apostles, the Apostle Philip explains this passage about the Suffering Servant to the Ethiopian courtier: ‘Like a sheep he was led to the slaughter, and like a lamb silent before its shearer, so he does not open his mouth. In his humiliation justice was denied him. Who can describe his generation? For his life is taken away from the earth’ (Acts 8: 32-33).

The Lamb that was slain in order that we may enter more deeply into the Mystery of Christ’s saving act of Redemption, and we still meet him in the Eucharist, in the Word proclaimed, and in service to one another and to the world.

‘All in the April morning, / April airs were abroad; / The sheep with their little lambs / Pass’d me by on the road’ … sheep grazing with their lambs on the Curragh, Co Kildare (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

All in an April Evening, by Katharine Tynan

All in the April morning,
April airs were abroad;
The sheep with their little lambs
Pass’d me by on the road.

The sheep with their little lambs
Pass’d me by on the road;
All in an April evening
I thought on the Lamb of God.

The lambs were weary, and crying
With a weak human cry,
I thought on the Lamb of God
Going meekly to die.

Up in the blue, blue mountains
Dewy pastures are sweet:
Rest for the little bodies,
Rest for the little feet.

But for the Lamb of God
Up on the hill-top green,
Only a cross of shame
Two stark crosses between.

All in the April evening,
April airs were abroad;
I saw the sheep with their lambs,
And thought on the Lamb of God.

‘Standing near the cross of Jesus were his mother, and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene’ (John 19: 5) … ‘Crucifixion with figures’ (1952-1958) by Graham Sutherland (1903-1980), chalk, ink and wash, in a recent exhibition in Lichfield Cathedral (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

John 18: 28 to 19: 16a (NRSVA):

28 Then they took Jesus from Caiaphas to Pilate’s headquarters. It was early in the morning. They themselves did not enter the headquarters, so as to avoid ritual defilement and to be able to eat the Passover. 29 So Pilate went out to them and said, ‘What accusation do you bring against this man?’ 30 They answered, ‘If this man were not a criminal, we would not have handed him over to you.’ 31 Pilate said to them, ‘Take him yourselves and judge him according to your law.’ The Jews replied, ‘We are not permitted to put anyone to death.’ 32 (This was to fulfil what Jesus had said when he indicated the kind of death he was to die.)

33 Then Pilate entered the headquarters again, summoned Jesus, and asked him, ‘Are you the King of the Jews?’ 34 Jesus answered, ‘Do you ask this on your own, or did others tell you about me?’ 35 Pilate replied, ‘I am not a Jew, am I? Your own nation and the chief priests have handed you over to me. What have you done?’ 36 Jesus answered, ‘My kingdom is not from this world. If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews. But as it is, my kingdom is not from here.’ 37 Pilate asked him, ‘So you are a king?’ Jesus answered, ‘You say that I am a king. For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.’ 38 Pilate asked him, ‘What is truth?’

After he had said this, he went out to the Jews again and told them, ‘I find no case against him. 39 But you have a custom that I release someone for you at the Passover. Do you want me to release for you the King of the Jews?’ 40 They shouted in reply, ‘Not this man, but Barabbas!’ Now Barabbas was a bandit.

1 Then Pilate took Jesus and had him flogged. 2 And the soldiers wove a crown of thorns and put it on his head, and they dressed him in a purple robe. 3 They kept coming up to him, saying, ‘Hail, King of the Jews!’ and striking him on the face. 4 Pilate went out again and said to them, ‘Look, I am bringing him out to you to let you know that I find no case against him.’ 5 So Jesus came out, wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe. Pilate said to them, ‘Here is the man!’ 6 When the chief priests and the police saw him, they shouted, ‘Crucify him! Crucify him!’ Pilate said to them, ‘Take him yourselves and crucify him; I find no case against him.’ 7 The Jews answered him, ‘We have a law, and according to that law he ought to die because he has claimed to be the Son of God.’

8 Now when Pilate heard this, he was more afraid than ever. 9 He entered his headquarters again and asked Jesus, ‘Where are you from?’ But Jesus gave him no answer. 10 Pilate therefore said to him, ‘Do you refuse to speak to me? Do you not know that I have power to release you, and power to crucify you?’ 11 Jesus answered him, ‘You would have no power over me unless it had been given you from above; therefore the one who handed me over to you is guilty of a greater sin.’ 12 From then on Pilate tried to release him, but the Jews cried out, ‘If you release this man, you are no friend of the emperor. Everyone who claims to be a king sets himself against the emperor.’

13 When Pilate heard these words, he brought Jesus outside and sat on the judge’s bench at a place called The Stone Pavement, or in Hebrew Gabbatha. 14 Now it was the day of Preparation for the Passover; and it was about noon. He said to the Jews, ‘Here is your King!’ 15 They cried out, ‘Away with him! Away with him! Crucify him!’ Pilate asked them, ‘Shall I crucify your King?’ The chief priests answered, ‘We have no king but the emperor.’ 16a Then he handed him over to them to be crucified.

Collect of the Word:

Merciful God,
who gave your Son to suffer the shame of the cross:
save us from hardness of heart,
that, seeing him who died for us,
we may repent, confess our sin,
and receive your overflowing love,
in Jesus Christ our Lord.

Antoinette Fleming’s Dancers (1988) in the Katharine Tynan Memorial Plot in Tallaght (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Continued this afternoon

This afternoon’s first poem



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

Material from the Book of Common Prayer is copyright © 2004, Representative Body of the Church of Ireland.

Saint Mary’s Askeaton: priests and people, a journey through time

Saint Mary’s Church, Askeaton … if only these walls could talk? (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

Patrick Comerford

Askeaton Civic Trust

Askeaton Tourist Office, Askeaton, Co Limerick

7:30 p.m., 19 February 2020

Introduction:

I imagine that as many of us pass by some of the older buildings in Askeaton, we find ourselves saying things like, ‘If only these walls could talk …’

The banks, the old RIC barracks, the library, the schools, many of the houses … and the two churches.

Perhaps you have said that about Saint Mary’s Church, the Church of Ireland parish church beside Colaiste Mhuire. Some of you may have been inside the church, some may have family members who are buried in the churchyard.

The interesting graves and burials in the churchyard include the Famine rector, George Maxwell, and his family; the interesting Sheehy family, with a coroner, bank manager and solicitor, and a flight-lieutenant who was killed in action in World War II; the poet Aubrey de Vere (1814-1902), the Famine Grave, and the graves of interesting families, including the Wybrants, Champagne, Fosberry, Langford, Griffin, Hunt and O’Grady families.

The grave of the poet Aubrey de Vere (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

But how many of you know anything about the priests and parishioners in this church over the centuries?

It is an important part of the town, and their stories are part of the story of continuity in this community.

This evening I want to say something about these priests and people.

These are stories that take us from the tea plantations in Darjeeling to Bloemfontien in South Africa, from the Bahama Islands to Sorrento, to Finland and to Venice, at least twice, to Japan, Pakistan and Australia, to Zambia, Uganda and Lesotho in Africa, to Canada and to many parts of the United States.

These include priests who got in trouble with archbishops who made life difficult for them; and vicars who make life difficult for their parishioners and their neighbours with their own bigotry. There are rectors who stay with their people through the horrors of the Famine and who saw three children die later of diphtheria.

There are priests who are here part-time, who are here for a short time and some who may have been here for far too long time. Before the Reformation, some of the vicars were not even ordained, and one was ordained when he was only 20, after he had received a Papal dispensation – because he was the son of an Augustinian friar.

There was one whose family owned the ruins of Mellifont Abbey, and another who had an indirect link to Catherine Parr, the last of Henry VIII’s six wives, who married one of the richest banking heiresses on these islands and whose son managed to resurrect for himself an old peerage title that everyone thought had died out centuries before, and so got himself a seat in the House of Lords.

From the 17th century, most were educated at Trinity College Dublin, but there is a sprinkling of clergy who were educated at Oxford and Cambridge.

The east end of the mediaeval church, behind the present church and the tower Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

Saint Mary’s Church:

But first let me say a little about Saint Mary’s Church itself.

The present church was built in 1827, but beside it stand the ruins of an earlier, mediaeval church, and on the south-east corner of the church is an unusual tower, associated in local legend with the Knights Templar.

The first recorded priest in the parish is Thomas de Cardiff in 1237, which means he was here before the tower and first recorded church on the site were built.

The church and tower are said to have been built in 1291 or 1298, which means they predate both the Desmond Castle, which was built in the 15th century on the site of an earlier ruined castle, and the Franciscan Abbey, which was founded in 1389 or 1420.

But if there was a priest here 60 years before the tower and that first recorded church, we can presume there was an earlier, perhaps even a pre-Norman church on the site. It is a raised site, a mount high above the flood plains of the River Deel, which indicates this may have been an early site of worship.

The church is said to have been built in 1291. In the Papal tax of 1306, the rectory of Ynsjskyfty is valued at 16 marks and the vicarage at 6 marks.

The tower is about six metres high with a base batter, built on a square plan at the base, but halfway up it becomes an octagonal tower, and the tower has a crenellated top. There is a similar ruined tower by the ruins of a former Augustinian Priory in Knocktopher, Co Kilkenny.

The adjoining mediaeval church is in a very ruined state, and only one window remains in the gable end. The church stands at about four metres in height, and is butted up against the present parish church, built in 1827.

The tower is said to have been built by the Knights Templar (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

In his Topographical Dictionary of Ireland Samuel Lewis said in 1837 that the Knights Templars originally founded this church in 1298. However, this may not be wholly true, and Lewis mistakenly ascribes many early churches in Ireland to the Knights Templars.

The Knights Templar were one of the orders founded during the Crusades by warrior monks took monastic oaths to protect the Holy Land and pilgrims. Similar orders include the Knights Hospitaller, also known as the Knights of Saint John or the Knights of Rhodes or the Knights of Malta, as well as the Teutonic Order and the Order of Saint Lazarus.

The Knights Templar, or the ‘Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Jesus Christ and the Temple of Solomon,’ were formed in 1118 in Jerusalem. They later adopted the Cistercian rule and formally received Papal recognition from Pope Innocent II in 1130. The Templars spread throughout Christendom, with strongholds and estates in most parts of Europe and the in the Holy Land.

The story that there was ever a Templar Commandery here in Askeaton was first challenged by TJ Westropp in a paper in the Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquities in Ireland. Indeed, another local tradition claims that the church is one of three churches that were built by three sisters. However, the legend does not give the name of any saint or founder who is associated with the parish.

Whoever founded the church or built the tower, for centuries this tower also served as the bell tower of the mediaeval church. The bell-cote still has the bell in its place, and a bell rope still hangs from the bell into the tower.

A new church was built in 1827 and was consecrated on 23 August 1840.

The present Saint Mary’s Church was built in 1827-1840 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Rectors, Vicars and priests in charge:

1237: (Canon) Thomas de Cardiff:

An English canon, he was Vicar of Iniskefty or Askeaton 1237. He was probably the same as Thomas de Kerdif, Prebendary of Saint Munchin’s ca 1230 and Chancellor of Limerick ca 1223-1250.

1396: Richard Burchs:

He was the Vicar of Kilscannel a year or more by 1396 without being ordained priest, and was deposed. He was then Vicar of Iniskefty (Askeaton) for year without being ordained priest and the Calendar of Papal Letters show his appointment as Vicar was decreed void in 1396.

1418: Dermit MacGillapadrug:

He was born ca1399, a clerk or priest of Killaloe, ‘noble in his 20th year,’ when he received a dispensation for ordination, needed because he was the son of priest, an Augustinian friar, and an unmarried woman. He became Rector of Ynys Keptyng (Askeaton) in December 1418.

– 1426: Edmund Micadam:

He was Vicar of Askeaton until 1426, when he resigned.

– 1426: Gillabertus Ykatyl:

He was Vicar of Askeaton a year in 1426 without being ordained priest

1427: James Oleayn:

He too had a dispensation for ordination being ‘illegitimate.’ A priest of Killaloe, he became Vicar of Inyskefyiny (Askeaton) when Edmund Micadam resigned and when Gillabertus Ykatyl’s appointment was annulled. He was presented to the parish by John Kyndton, Rector of Ballingarry.

There is then a gap through the years, including the Tudor Reformation, until the reign of Edward VI, when we find:

1552: Nicholas Brenan:
1552: Peter Downdown:
1552: Moroghe McCredan
1552: Donagh O’Madagan
1552: John O’Madagan

These five clerks or priests, possibly Vicars Choral in Saint Mary’s Cathedral, Limerick, are noted in Atheskethin (Askeaton) on 11 February 1552, during the reign of Edward VI.

The vicars choral of Saint Mary’s Cathedral, Limerick, may have served the parish of Askeaton during the Reformation period (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

1586-1615: Maurice ‘Oge’ MacPerson:

He was Vicar of Askeaton from 1586 to 1615, and possibly until ca 1617.

He was an Irish-speaker, and it is said that Sir Francis Berkeley, who was granted Askeaton Castle in 1610 after the Desmond Wars, used to employ Irish-speaking ministers, which is said to have made his tenants, whom he brought to church, very attentive.

1617-ca 1633: (Canon) Edward Holcombe (Halcomb):

Vicar of Askeaton and Lismakeery 1617-ca 1633; pres by Crown to Prebend of Saint Munchin’s 28 July 1618. Possibly the same as Edmund Halcomb, minister of Aste (Askeaton). He was still alive in 1637, when he is named as overseer of the will of John Maunsell. He may have been the father of Canon Edward Holcombe, ordained and appointed Prebendary of Croagh in 1626.

1633: Thomas Burtt (Birt):

He became Vicar of Askeaton and Lismakeery on 7 December 1633.

1640-ca 1663: Richard Jermyn:

He was educated at Oxford, and was ordained deacon (1621) and priest (1622) on Cork. He served in parishes in the dioceses of Cork and Cloyne in Co Cork before he Vicar of Askeaton on 4 March 1640. He may have remained in the parish throughout the Cromwellian wars, and was possibly here until ca 1663.

1663-ca 1668: Richard (Robert) Harlowyn:

He became Rector of Lismacderry (Lismakeery) and Vicar of Askeaton and Dromdelly (Dromdeely) on 12 February 1663. He was possibly here until 1668.

1668-1689: (Canon) Henry Royse:

Prebendary of Ardcanny (Limerick), 1661-1669; Rector of Kilcornan, Kildimo and Ardcanny, Limerick, 1663-1689; Rector of Lismakeery and Askeaton, 1668-1689. Died 1689. He was probably the father of the Revd Henry Royse, Rector of Kilcornan, 1689-1739.

1689-1731: (Canon) Solomon Delane (Delany):

Born in 1653 or 1654, he was Prebendary of Kilpeacon (Limerick), 1687-1692; Prebendary of Ardcanny (Limerick), Rector of Askeaton and Lismaleery and Vicar of Kildimo, 1689-1731; Rector of Tipperary (Cashel) and Prebendary of Lattin (Emly), 1691-1731; Vicar of Dromdeely (Limerick) ca 1693-1714. He died in 1731.

He married Anne Baldwin of Dublin in 1691.

1731-1734: Thomas Collis:

He was born at Lisodoge, Co Kerry, and a grandson of Canon Benjamin Cross, Precentor of Cloyne. He was Vicar of Kinnard and Minard, Co Kerry, 1728; Vicar of Askeaton, Lismakeery and Dromdeely, 1731-1734; Vicar of Dingle, 1734-1765; Rector of Ballynacourty and Stradbally, Vicar of Kilflyn and Kilshinane, 1747-1765; Vicar of Dunquin, Dunurlin, Garfinagh, Kilquane and Ventry, 1757.

He married Avis Blennerhassett, and they were the parents of 12 children, many dying in childhood.

1734-1747: (Canon) Henry Collis:

He also born in Co Kerry. He was Vicar of Askeaton and Dromdeely and Rector of Lismakeery (Limerick), 1734-1747; Prebendary of Effin, 1741-1747; Curate, Shanagolden, 1744-ca1757. Precentor of Limerick, 1747-1786. He seems to have died in 1786.

1747-1790: William Sprigg (Sprigge):

He was a son of Canon Nathaniel Sprigge, Rector of Newcastle. He Vicar of Askeaton and Dromdeely (Tomdeely) and Rector of Lismakeery, 1747-1790. He died in October 1790.

The Wybrants and Champagne monument in Saint Mary’s Church (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

1790-1824: Gustavus Wybrants:

He was born in 1758 in Dublin, the fifth son of Stephen Wybrants, son of the Revd Peter Wybrants, grandson of Peter Wybrants, Mayor of Dublin 1658. Joseph Peter Wybrants came to Dublin from Antwerp in 1622.

He was Vicar of Askeaton and Rector and Vicar of Lismakeery, 1790-1824. He was also Vicar of Castlelyons, Co Cork (Diocese of Cloyne), where he had a curate, but he lived in Askeaton.

In 1797 he married Mary, widow of the Revd Arthur Champagne, and daughter of the Revd Philip Homan. They were the parents of two sons and five daughters. Their children and grandchildren married into the Middleton, Herbert, Nash, Powell, Fosbery, Hobart and Dawson families.

Gustavus Wybrants died at Milltown House, Co Limerick, on 23 March 1824; Mary Wybrants died 24 January 1845 at the home of her son, the Revd Arthur Champagne Wybrants.

Ballindeel House, Askeaton … designed by James Pain and built as the rectory for Richard Murray (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

1824-1829: (Very Revd Dr) Richard Murray:

He born in Dungannon, Co Tyrone, in 1776/1777, the son of the Revd William Murray, headmaster of Royal School Dungannon. He went to his father’s school and then to TCD (BA, MA, BD, DD).

He was a curate in the Diocese of Armagh for 17 years, from 1802 to 1819. In 1809, the Archbishop of Armagh, William Stuart, refused him the papers known as bene decessit to move to the Diocese of Ardagh. When Murray took the Primate to court, the archbishop claimed Murray had not conformed to canon law in the Church of Ireland, and the King’s Bench ruled it could not compel the archbishop to issue the papers.

Eventually, Murray was Vicar of Askeaton and Rector of Lismakeery (1824-1829).

Ballindeel House, a detached, three-bay, two-storey over basement former glebe house, was built as the Rectory for Murray in 1827. The former rectory was designed by the architect James Pain (1779-1877). The present church seems to have been built at the same time (1827), although it was not consecrated until 23 August 1840.

Murray was the secretary of the West Limerick Bible Society, and while he was in Askeaton he was involved in what became known as the ‘Second Reformation.’ He stirred up considerable religious controversy because of his aggressive attempts to proselytise Roman Catholics and his polemical and his bruising debates, laced with claim and counter-claim, with his Roman Catholic counterpart, Archdeacon Michael Fitzgerald.

However, Murray’s parishioners were not happy with his approach and his attitude, and saw him as a disruptive intruder. Behind the scenes, moves were to find an alternative appointment for Murray. This became a reality in 1829, the year Catholic Emancipation was passed, when the Lord Lieutenant, the Duke of Northumberland, offered him the post of Dean of Ardagh in Co Longford.

Saint Patrick’s Church of Ireland parish church in Ardagh, Co Longford, was built as a cathedral in 1810-1812 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

Later, in evidence to a Commission of Inquiry in 1837, Murray claimed his converts in Askeaton had numbered between 160 and 170 adults, as well as about 300 young people and children. In his evidence, he also expressed his disappointment with the Protestants in the Askeaton area for their lack of zeal in following his own example in proselytising.

Murray remained a member of the militant Protestant Association and was the author of several books, including tracts attacking the Roman Catholic Church such as Outlines of the history of the Catholic Church in Ireland (1840) Ireland and Her Church (1845).

He was Dean and Rector of Ardagh (1829-1854) and Vicar-General of Ardagh. However, the post of Dean of Ardagh was largely nominal after 1839, when the dioceses of Kilmore and Ardagh were united.

Murray married Mary Miller of Moneymore, Co Derry, in 1813. He died in Exmouth, Devon, on 26 July 1854, aged 77.

Sir William Taylor Money died of cholera in Venice in 1834 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

1830-ca 1833: James Drummond Money:

Murray’s more amendable successor as Vicar of Askeaton was the Revd James Drummond Money, who was vicar in 1830-1833.

Money was born in Bombay on 26 April 1805, a son of Sir William Taylor Money (1769-1834), MP (1816-1826), and a director of the East India Company, who died of cholera in Venice in 1834.

Money was presented as Vicar of Askeaton by Sir Matthew Blakiston (1783-1862).

Money married twice, and both wives have interesting stories. In 1832, he married Charlotte, daughter of Canon Gerard Thomas Noel (1782-1851), Vicar of Romsey Abbey, Hampshire, an evangelical hymnwriter. Her mother, Charlotte Sophia, was a daughter of Sir Lucius O’Brien. They had nine children, and she died in 1848.

By then, they had returned to England, and he was later Vicar of Sternfield in the Diocese of St Edmundsbury.

Money’s second wife Clara Maria Money-Coutts, originally Clara Maria Burdett, was a daughter of the banker Sir Francis Burdett (1770-1844) and a sister of the Victorian philanthropist Angela Burdett-Coutts, who eventually inherited the Coutts banking fortune.

Francis Money-Coutts … a poet and writer, who inherited an obscure title and a banking fortune

James and Clara were the parents of Francis Burdett Thomas Nevill Money-Coutts (1852-1923). He was educated at Eton and Cambridge, became both a barrister and solicitor, but spent most of his life as a poet and writer.

In 1913, by a genealogical sleight of hand, he became the 5th Baron Latymer through his mother’s family, when the title was called out of abeyance, although everyone thought the title had died out 336 year earlier at the death in 1577 of John Nevill, stepson of Catherine Parr, the sixth wife of Henry VIII. Now the son of a Vicar of Askeaton had a seat in the House of Lords.

The gate lodge at Townley Hall, Drogheda … the family home of the Townley Balfour family (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

1833-1837: Willoughby William Townley Balfour:

Willoughby Townley Balfour was born in 1801 at Townley Hall, Drogheda, the second son of Blayney Townley Balfour, of Townley Hall, MP for Belturbet, and Lady Frances Cole, daughter of the Earl of Enniskillen. The ruins of Mellifont Abbey had been owned by this family for generations.

He was Vicar of Askeaton (1833-1837), and later became Rector of Aston Flamville cum Burbage in Leicestershire (1837-1878).

Why did someone like this move from Askeaton to a rural parish in England, and remain there for half a century? The patron of the living was the Earl de Grey and the Countess de Grey was his aunt, formerly Lady Henrietta Cole, a sister of his mother. Lord de Grey was also Lord Lieutenant of Ireland 1841-1844.

Willoughby Balfour died on 29 June 1888, Fairy Hill, Rostrevor, Co Down.

Sorrento … Willoughby Townley Balfour’s nephew, Bishop Francis Richard Townley Balfour, was born here in 1846 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

His brother, Blayney Townley Balfour, was Governor of the Bahama Islands, and retired to Sorrento.

His nephew, Bishop Francis Richard Townley Balfour (1846-1924), was born in Sorrento on 21 June 1846. Like his uncle Willoughby, he went to Harrow, where his contemporaries included a future Archbishop of Canterbury, Randall Thomas Davidson (1848-1903), a future secretary of the Anglican mission agency, the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (SPG, now USPG), Bishop Henry Hutchinson Montgomery (1847-1932) from Co Donegal, the slum priest Father Robert Dolling (1851-1902) from Co Down, and a much younger Bishop Charles Gore (1853-1932), whose parents were from Ireland.

Francis Balfour went on to Trinity College Cambridge, and trained for ordination at Cuddesdon College, Oxford. He moved to Southern Africa as a missionary with the Anglican mission agency SPG (now USPG) in 1875. When ill-health forced him to return home in 1900-1901, he acted as an honorary curate in All Saints’ Parish in Raheny, Dublin.

When Balfour returned to South Africa, he became the Archdeacon of Bloemfontein (1901-1906) and then Archdeacon of Basutoland (1908-1922). When he was consecrated in Cape Town as an Assistant Bishop for the Diocese of Bloemfontein in 1911, he was effectively the first Anglican Bishop of Lesotho.

He was proud of his Irish identity and heritage, and there is a wonderful photograph of him from 1914 in a mitre and cope decorated in shamrocks and ‘Celtic’ designs.

When Bishop Balfour retired in 1923, he returned to Ireland, but died shortly afterwards in Shankill, Co Dublin, on 3 February 1924. He is buried in the grounds of Mellifont Abbey, Co Louth.

Mellifont Abbey … burial place of the Balfour family of Towenley Hall (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

1838-1870: George Maxwell:

George Maxwell (1809-1870) is a real hero among the Vicars and Rectors of Askeaton. He spent all his ministry in this parish, first as curate to Balfour from 1832 or 1833, and then as Vicar Askeaton (1838-1870). While he was here he was also curate of Dromdeely (1862-1869).

He married Margaret Anne Hewson of Ennismore, Listowel, Co Kerry, who had deep family roots in this parish. These links continued when his son, John Francis Maxwell, married Laura, daughter of Edward Hewson of Askeaton.

The new church built in 1827 was consecrated on 23 August 1840.

During the Great Famine, George Maxwell worked tirelessly and ceaselessly in the parish.

He died 8 January 1870.

The grave of the Maxwell family in Saint Mary’s Churchyard, Askeaton (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

1871-1874: (Canon) Edmund Lombard Swan Eves:

Maxwell’s successor was his son-in-law and former curate, Edumnd Eve (1840-1930), who was born in Carlow 1840.

He was ordained to be curate in Askeaton (1864-1865), and then worked as a curate and then rector in parishes in the Dioceses of Leighlin and Rochester, before returning to Askeaton as Rector (1871-1874).

Later he was the Rector of Maryborough (Portaoise), 1874-1916, and Prebendary of Tecolme.

He married Caroline Maxwell, daughter of the Revd George Maxwell. Three of their children, Anne, George and Catherine, died of diphtheria in 1880. Canon Eves died on 14 July 1930, aged 90. A surviving son, the Revd Herbert Lombard Eves (1881-1953) was a priest in parishes in Ireland and England.

1875-1884: James Ashe Sullivan:

He was a grandson of Canon William Ashe, Prebendary of Croagh. He was educated at TCD, but trained for ordination at Wells Theological College.

He was ordained in Armagh, but spent many years as an SPG missionary in Melbourne, Australia (1850-1854 and 1857-1862), and worked in parishes throughout Ireland and England before coming to Askeaton at the age of 60 in 1875.

He retired in 1884, and died in St Albans, Hertfordshire, on 22 July 1888.

1885-1896: (Canon, later Archdeacon) William Malcolm Foley:

William Foley (1854-1944), was a son of the Revd Peter Foley.

He was deputy secretary of the Irish Society 1883-1885, before becoming Rector of Askeaton (1885-1896). He later returned to this area as Rector of Tralee (1907-1922), when he was a canon in Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin, and Archdeacon of Ardfert. He later moved to parishes in Co Louth.

Two of his sons were ordained, while another son, Lieutenant Thomas Foley, was killed at the Battle of the Somme in 1916.

Archdeacon Foley died on 19 October 1944.

1896-1915: (Canon) Samuel John Hackett:

Canon Samuel Hackett worked in the dioceses of Down, Connor and Dromore before becoming Rector of Askeaton (1896-1915) and Prebendary of Dysart (1911-1915).

He died unmarried at the Rectory in Askeaton on 10 October 1915. The Irish Ecclesiastical Gazette, later the Church of Ireland Gazette, described him as ‘a scholar, a gentleman, and an ideal clergyman.’

1915-1929: (Canon) Thomas Francis (Frank) Abbott:

Canon Abbott was a Vicar-Choral and Succentor of Limerick Cathedral, and a cathedral curate, before becoming Rector of Askeaton (1915-1929. He was also Prebendary of Ardcanny (1913-1919) and Treasurer of Limerick (1919-1940). He returned from Askeaton to Limerick as Rector of Saint Michael’s (1929-1940). He retired in 1940 and died on 8 May 1946.

1929-1963: (Canon) Frederick Alexander Howard White:

At an early stage, White was a curate in Rathkeale (1919-1924). He was Rector of Askeaton, Shanagolden and Loughill (1929-1963), Rural Dean of Askeaton (1940-1963) and Precentor of Limerick (1951-1963).

He retired in 1963 and died on 29 September 1965.

1964-1966: (Canon) Christopher Bruce Warren:

Dublin-born Christopher Warren trained as a teacher and was a curate in Waterford Cathedral (1962-1964) before becoming Rector of Askeaton and Foynes (1964-1966).

He married Karuna from Finland in 1973, and they later moved to Finland, where he was chaplain of the Anglican Church in Helsinki (1988-1994). He returned briefly to Co Galway, but retired to Finland in 1996, and died in 2002.

The grave of Canon George McCann in Castletown churchyard (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017)

1966-1973: (Canon) George McCann:

A noted Irish-language scholar, he was born Lurgan, Co Armagh. He was Rector of Dingle and Ventry (1944-1954) and Rector of Kilcornan and Ardcanny (1954-1973). When Askeaton parish became vacant in 1966, Canon McCann was appointed priest-in-charge of Askeaton (1966-1973). He was also Prebendary of Donoughmore (1961-1973). He retired in 1973, and died in February 1974 at the Rectory in Kilcornan. He is buried in Kilcornan.

The grave of Canon Daniel Hevenor in Castletown churchyard (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017)

1974-1977: (Canon) Daniel Miner Stearns Hevenor:

His grandparents were born in Kilcornan Parish and emigrated to the US during the Great Famine.

He was a priest in Olympia, Washington, and an honorary canon of Olympia. He was then curate-in-charge of Askeaton, Foynes and Kilcornan (1974-1977). He returned to the US in 1977 and died there.

1978-1980: John Luttrell Haworth:

He was business in Cork before he was ordained in 1967 at the age of 39. He held a number of positions, including Team Vicar of Tralee (1971-1972), before becoming Bishop’s Curate of Askeaton, Foynes and Kilcornan (1978-1980). He was Rector of Fermoy when he retired in 1996. He died in 2004.

John McKay was later the Anglican chaplain in Venice (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

1982-1985: John Andrew McKay:

He worked in parishes in London and Southwark before returning to Ireland as Rector of Rathkeale, Askeaton, Foynes and Kilcornan (1982-1985). He was the Vicar of Saint Bartholomew’s, Dublin (1985-2000), Chaplain of Venice and Trieste (2000-2003), and chaplain, Saint John, Sandymount (2005-2006). He died on 29 July 2010.

1986-1989: (Canon) Patrick Leo Towers:

He was ordained in Japan in the 1970s while he was working there as a teacher. He moved to England in 1981, where he was a school chaplain. He was Rector of Rathkeale with Askeaton and Kilcornan (1986-1989). Later, he worked in Nenagh and Galway. He was Prebendary of Saint Munchin’s and Tulloh (1997-2000) and Provost of Tuam (2000-2008). He is now retired.

1990-1992: Kevin Samuel Dunn:

He studied theology in Canada and was ordained in the US. He was a priest in the Episcopal Church until 1990, before coming to Ireland as Rector of Rathkeale, Askeaton and Kilcornan in 1990. He moved to California in 1992.

1992-1996: Ronald Gaven Graham:

He moved from England to Ireland, and was ordained while he was working in Shannon and Limerick. He was NSM curate in Adare and Diocesan Information Officer before becoming Curate-in-Charge, Rathkeale, Askeaton and Kilcornan (1992-1996). He later moved to Wexford.

1996-2000: Sidney Eric Mourant:

He was born in Darjeeling in India in 1939, and studied theology in England. He was a CMS mission partner and lectured at theological colleges in Uganda (1975-1977) and Pakistan (1978-1981) and then at the Church Army College in London (1981-1988).

He was ordained in 1989, and was a curate in Cheshire and a Vicar in Douglas in the Isle of Man before being appointed Rector of Rathkeale, Askeaton and Kilcornan (1996-2000). He then moved to Nenagh, Co Tipperary. He retired in 2004, and lives in Co Armagh.

2001-2003: Iain John Edward Knox:

He worked in Northern parishes before moving to Clonmel in 1980-1996. He was priest-in-charge, Rathkeale, Askeaton and Kilcornan (2001-2003). He retired in 2003, and died in Cashel in 2012, where he is buried.

2003-2008: William Miller Romer:

Bill Romer was a school chaplain, teacher and assistant headmaster, and a priest in parishes throughout the US from 1960 to 2003, before moving to Ireland as the NSM priest-in-charge of Rathkeale, Askeaton and Kilcornan (2003-2008). Bill and Molly returned to the Diocese of New Hampshire in 2008 and retired in 2010.

2009-2016: (Revd Dr) Keith Brouneton de Salve Scott:

He was the Rector of Ardclinis, Tickmacrevan, Layde and Cushendun for about 14 years before going to Zambia for the first time as a CMS mission partner. He was the curate-in-charge, Rathkeale, Askeaton and Kilcornan from 2009 and returned to Zambia as a CMS mission partner in 2016.

2017-2022: (Canon) Patrick Comerford:

Retired 31 March 2022.

Inside the ruins of the east end of the earlier church (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

Curates:

1714: (Canon) Simon Warner

1785: Alexander Hunter, died in Limerick, 1793

1795: Joseph Jones, later Vicar Choral, Limerick (1799), Vicar of Crecoragh (1803-1843), Rector of Brosna (1805-1843), died 1843

ca 1828: John C Miller

1833: George Maxwell, later Rector of Askeaton

1834: Nicholas Wilkinson

1836-1837: (Archdeacon) Edward Henry Brien (1812-1891), later Precentor of Waterford (1854) and Archdeacon of Emly (1858-1879)

1838: Nicholas Columbine Martin (1812-1888), died in Saint Clement’s Parsonage, Selkirk, Manitoba, Canada

1842: Frederick James Clark

1852-1854: Andrew Peard Nash (1825-1872)

– 1858: Bennet Dugdale Hastings McAdam

1860: J Watson

1860-1864: Richard Edward Fletcher (1836-1900)

1864-1866: Edmond Lombard Swan Eves, later Rector of Askeaton (1871-1874)

1866-1867: John Ormsby Stenson (1810-1870), the father of the Revd John William Stenson, SPG missionary in Southern Africa, including Bloemfontein and Kimberley; SPG Deputy Secretary, 1888-1890 and 1902-1905.

1867-1883: William Henry Darell Lodge (1841-1883), died while he was curate of Askeaton

1919-1921: (Canon) John Robert Campion (1893-1951), Curate of Shanagolden and Limerick, 1919-1921. His son, Revd Brian Hadden Campion, emigrated to Canada and is the father of Canon Peter Campion, chaplain of the King’s Hospital, Dublin, and Precentor of Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin.

In the 20th century, Askeaton has been united with Shanagolden and Loughgill, 1920-1961; Rathronan 1953; Kilcornan 1966; Rathkeale 1982; and Foynes.

Appendix 1: List of Rectors, Vicars and Priests in Charge, Askeaton:

1237: (Canon) Thomas de Cardiff

1396: Richard Burchs

1418: Dermit MacGillapadrug

– 1426: Edmund Micadam

– 1426: Gillabertus Ykatyl

1427: James Oleayn

1552: Nicholas Brenan; Peter Downdown; Moroghe McCredan; Donagh O’Madagan; John O’Madagan

1586-1617: Maurice ‘Oge’ MacPerson

1617-ca 1633: (Canon) Edward Holcombe (Halcomb)

1633: Thomas Burtt (Birt)

1640-ca 1663: Richard Jermyn

1663-ca 1668: Richard (Robert) Harlowyn

1668-1689: (Canon) Henry Royse

1689-1731: (Canon) Solomon Delane (Delany)

1731-1734: Thomas Collis

1734-1747: (Canon) Henry Collis

1747-1790: William Sprigg (Sprigge)

1790-1824: Gustavus Wybrants

1824-1829: (Very Revd Dr) Richard Murray

1830-1833: James Drummond Money

1833-1837: Willoughby William Townley Balfour

1838-1870: George Maxwell:

1871-1874: (Canon) Edmund Lombard Swan Eves

1875-1884: James Ashe Sullivan

1885-1896: (Canon, later Archdeacon) William Malcolm Foley

1896-1915: (Canon) Samuel John Hackett

1915-1929: (Canon) Thomas Francis (Frank) Abbott

1929-1963: (Canon) Frederick Alexander Howard White

1964-1966: (Canon) Christopher Bruce Warren

1966-1973: (Canon) George McCann

1974-1977: (Canon) Daniel Miner Stearns Hevenor

1978-1980: John Luttrell Haworth

1982-1985: John Andrew McKay

1986-1989: (Canon) Patrick Leo Towers:

1990-1992: Kevin Samuel Dunn

1992-1996: Ronald Gaven Graham

1996-2000: Sidney Eric Mourant

2001-2003: Iain John Edward Knox

2003-2008: William Miller Romer

2009-2016: Keith Brouneton de Salve Scott

2017- : (Canon) Patrick Comerford

Curates:

1714: (Canon) Simon Warner
1785: Alexander Hunter
1795: Joseph Jones
ca 1828: John C Miller
1833: George Maxwell, later Rector of Askeaton
1834: Nicholas Wilkinson
1836-1837: (Archdeacon) Edward Henry Brien
1838: Nicholas Columbine Martin
1842: Frederick James Clark
1852-1854: Andrew Peard Nash (1825-1872)
– 1858: Bennet Dugdale Hastings McAdam
1860: J. Watson
1860-1864: Richard Edward Fletcher (1836-1900)
1864-1866: Edmond Lombard Swan Eves, later Rector of Askeaton (1871-1874)
1866-1867: John Omsby Stenson.
1867-1883: William Henry Darell Lodge (1841-1883)
1919-1921: (Canon) John Robert Campion (1893-1951)

The Famine Grave in Saint Mary’s churchyard, Askeaton (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

Updated: 9 March 2023

Trying to choose appropriate hymns for Remembrance Sunday

The ruins of Mount Trenchard Church … the churchyard is the burial place of generation of the Spring Rice family (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017)

The hymns for the Remembrance Sunday commemorations in Castletown and Rathkeale yesterday [12 November 2017]. ‘They included Abide with me by Henry Francis Lyte; Guide me, O thou great Jehovah, by William Williams; Be still, my soul, to a well-known tune by Sibelius; and Lord for the years by Timothy Dudley-Smith.

One hymn that was not included was I Vow to Thee, My Country, based on a poem by Cecil Spring Rice, who had deep family roots in this group of parishes. The hymn is not in the Church of Ireland’s Church Hymnal, although it was sung last night on Songs of Praise from Saint Macartin’s Cathedral, Enniskillen.

During the BBC broadcast, I noticed a number of colleagues and former students, including the Dean, Very Revd Kenny Hall, the Cathedral curate, the Revd Chris Mac Bruithin, and the Revd Jim Caldwell, now an army chaplain.

The words of the hymn I Vow to Thee, My Country find their origins in a poem written around 1908-1912 by the diplomat Sir Cecil Spring Rice, and this poem became a hymn in 1921 when his words were adapted and set to music by Gustav Holst.

Sir Cecil Arthur Spring Rice (1859-1918), best-known as the author of this hymn, was educated at Eton and Balliol College, Oxford. But, while he was born in London and brought up in England, throughout his life he maintained his strong family links with Ireland.

He was born into a well-known Co Limerick family. He father was the diplomat Charles William Thomas Spring Rice. His grandfather was the Whig politician and former cabinet minister Thomas Spring Rice, 1st Baron Monteagle of Brandon, who lived at Mount Trenchard, near Foynes, Co Limerick, and who is commemorated in landmark public monument in the People’s Park, Limerick. The hymn-writer was also a great-grandson of Edmund Pery, 1st Earl of Limerick.

One of his closest political friends was the Irish nationalist John Dillon. His unwavering sense of duty as a diplomat came despite the very public espousal of nationalist causes by his first cousin and her involvement in the Howth gunrunning.

Spring Rice got to know Theodore Roosevelt on a trans-Atlantic crossing from New York in 1886. The two men quickly became close friends so that later Spring Rice was Roosevelt’s best man when he married Edith Carow, and Roosevelt in turn was the godfather of Spring Rice’s son in 1908.

Because Spring Rice was a supporter of the Liberal Party and known for his sympathies with the Irish Home Rule movement, he was sacked from the Foreign Office in 1886 when the Conservatives came to power and moved to the diplomatic service.

In 1908, he was posted to the British embassy in Stockholm, and in 1912 he was appointed the British Ambassador in Washington. In 1916, he constantly sought a reprieve for Sir Roger Casement, citing the danger of protests from Irish Americans, but he also advised political and religious leaders of Casement’s sexuality and the existence of the ‘Black Diaries.’

His first cousin, Mary Ellen Spring Rice (1880-1924), who was born in London and brought up at Mount Trenchard, hosted many nationalist and Irish language meetings at her home outside Foynes, and was a close friend of Douglas Hyde. In 1913-1914, she was actively involved in the Howth gun-running, and was a member of the crew of the Asgard.

In Washington, Cecil Spring Rice influenced President Woodrow Wilson and his administration to abandon neutrality 100 years ago and to enter World War I against Germany. However, soon after the US entered the war, he was abruptly recalled to London in January 1918, following a disagreement with Lord Northcliffe, the head of the British war mission to America. On his way back, he died on 14 February 1918 while he was staying with his wife’s cousin in Ottawa. He was buried there in Beechwood Cemetery.

Spring Rice was to be offered a peerage upon his return to London, but he died before the honour could be proposed. Later, the British government publicly recognised his extraordinary contribution to the war effort, including his success in getting the US to join the Allies in World War I.

Cecil Spring Rice originally titled his poem Urbs Dei (‘The City of God’) or The Two Fatherlands. In this poem, he describes how a Christian owes loyalties to both the homeland and the heavenly kingdom.

As he was leaving the US in January 1918, he rewrote and renamed Urbs Dei, significantly altering the first verse to concentrate on the themes of love and sacrifice rather than ‘the noise of battle’ and ‘the thunder of her guns.’ This gives the poem a more sombre tone in view of the dreadful loss of life suffered in World War I.

According to his granddaughter, the rewritten verse of 1918 was never intended to appear alongside the first verse of the original poem, but was to replace it. The text of the original poem was sent by Spring Rice to William Jennings Bryan in a letter shortly before his death in February 1918.

The poem was set to music by Gustav Holst (1874-1934), using a tune adapted from the section Jupiter in his suite The Planets to fit the words of the poem. It was performed as a unison song with orchestra in the early 1920s, and it was finally published as a hymn in Songs of Praise in 1926.

The version in that edition of Songs of Praise consists only of the two verses in the 1918 version:

I vow to thee, my country, all earthly things above,
Entire and whole and perfect, the service of my love;
The love that asks no question, the love that stands the test,
That lays upon the altar the dearest and the best;
The love that never falters, the love that pays the price,
The love that makes undaunted the final sacrifice.

And there’s another country, I’ve heard of long ago,
Most dear to them that love her, most great to them that know;
We may not count her armies, we may not see her King;
Her fortress is a faithful heart, her pride is suffering;
And soul by soul and silently her shining bounds increase,
And her ways are ways of gentleness, and all her paths are peace.

The king in the second verse is God; the final line of the second verse is based on Proverbs 3: 17, ‘Her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace,’ in which the feminine pronoun refers to Wisdom.

The original first verse of Spring Rice’s poem Urbs Dei, which was never set to music, reads:

I heard my country calling, away across the sea,
Across the waste of waters, she calls and calls to me.
Her sword is girded at her side, her helmet on her head,
And around her feet are lying the dying and the dead;
I hear the noise of battle, the thunder of her guns;
I haste to thee, my mother, a son among thy sons.

The tune was then called Thaxted, after the Essex village near Saffron Walden where Holst lived for many years and was the church organist. At the time (1910-1942), the Vicar of Thaxted was Conrad Noel (1869-1942), a friend of Vaughan Williams’s collaborator, Canon Percy Dearmer. Conrad Noel was known as the ‘Red Vicar’ because of his active Christian Socialism, and in Saint John’s Church in Thaxted he hung the red flag and the flag of Sinn Féin alongside the flag of Saint George.

The editor of the 1926 edition of Songs of Praise was Holst’s close friend Ralph Vaughan Williams, and this friendship may have provided the stimulus for Holst’s co-operation in producing the hymn.

From 1926 on, the hymn was a common feature at Remembrance Day services and ceremonies. It was sung at the funeral of Sir Winston Churchill in 1965. Princess Diana requested it at her wedding in 1981, and it was sung at her funeral in 1997. It was also sung at Margaret Thatcher’s funeral in 2013.

However, there are divided opinion about the suitability of this hymn. The General Synod of the Church of Ireland decided against including it in the Church Hymnal (5th edition) in 2000.

In August 2004, Bishop Stephen Lowe of Hulme criticised the hymn in Crux, the Manchester diocesan newspaper, calling it ‘heretical.’ The Guardian reported him saying he would not sing the hymn or lead a service that included it, ‘despite the good tune.’

In the diocesan newsletter, Bishop Lowe expressed unease about growing English nationalism, which he said was stoked by football fervour, and ‘a wish for a white-dominated simple world of Englishness.’ He urged clergy to think ‘long and hard’ about singing the hymn because its lyrics proclaimed love for country ‘which asks no question.’

According to a report in the Daily Telegraph, Bishop Lowe claimed the rise in English nationalism had parallels ‘with the rise of Nazism.’ Later, however, he told Sky News that he had misreported when the Telegraph said he had called for the hymn to be banned.

Writing in Crux, he said ‘I will not sing [it] ... I think it is heretical, because a Christian’s ultimate responsibility is to God as revealed by Jesus and the Holy Spirit. And this is where my unease is focused.’ Bishop Lowe said at the time that he was ‘very uneasy’ about growing nationalism at the time of a ‘vicious anti-European campaign,’ the rise of Ukip, and xenophobic attitudes towards other countries in the British tabloid press.

Some years later, the Revd Gordon Giles suggested the lyrics could be rewritten because they seem obscene to many. Writing in the Church Times, he said that ‘in post-colonial Britain’ the words come ‘across as patronising and unjust. Associating duty to King and Empire with a divine call to kill people and surrender one’s own life is a theologically inept reading of Jesus’ teaching.’

He asked at the time: ‘Should we, undaunted, make the sacrifice of our sons and daughters, laying their lives on the altar in wars that we might struggle to call as holy or just? These are real questions for those who go, or see their loved ones go, to fight in arenas of conflict today.’

With Colonel Edward Buckingham on Remembrance Sunday in Holy Trinity Church, Rathkeale

‘Nothing changes the relief at being’ in Paris. It’s ‘like coming out of gaol in April’

A corner of Bray that is forever Paris (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

The Republic of Ireland plays its first match in the UEFA European championship tonight [13 June] against Sweden at 5 p.m. in the Stade de France, the French national stadium in the commune of Saint-Denis, just north of Paris.

Over the weekend, Paris has become home to thousands of Irish fans, who have done a better job of making Parish their home than the English fans have managed in Marseilles.

But for centuries, Paris has been welcoming to Irish saints and scholars, refugees and writers, poets and priests, spies and politicians, journalists and revolutionaries, as well as football players and fans and fans alike.

Whether or not Ireland achieves a miracle in Paris tonight, I am reminded that it is a miracle of modern literary achievement that James Joyce had Ulysses published in Paris. When the American Sylvia Beach of Shakespeare and Co, 7 Rue d’Odeon, published the book, she was also willing to take on all the financial and legal risks.

Oscar Wilde (1854- 1900) first visited Paris in the summer of 1874, in the company of his mother, Speranza.

In his final days, after his public humiliation, Wilde found refuge in Paris and under the assumed name of Sebastian Melmoth he stayed in Room 16 at the Hôtel d’Alsace from July 1900 until his death on 30 November 1900.

His funeral Mass was said by Father Cuthbert Dunne, a Passionist priest, in the Church of Saint-Germain-des-Près on 3 December 1900, with 56 people present. Wilde received a pauper’s burial at Bagneux cemetery but his body was later moved to a grave Père Lachaise.

WB Yeats (1865-1939) first visited Paris in February 1894, and admitted to his friend John Millington Synge that forgot where he was supposed to be.

Yeats returned to Paris in December 1896, and stayed at the Hôtel Corneille, which was beloved by Irish writers in Paris, and where Yeats and Synge became close friends.

On New Year’s Day 1897, Synge accompanied Maud Gonne to the inaugural meeting of the Association irlandaise in rue des Martyrs, and Yeats later had to counter rumours in Irish circles in Paris that Maud was an English spy.

Yeats stayed in Paris again in April 1898, and from late January to mid-February 1899. This was not a happy visit, for Maud Gonne turned down his proposal of marriage. He wrote to Lady Gregory: “I have had a black, depressing time here.”

Yeats did not visit Paris again for almost a decade, once again in romantic pursuit of Maude Gonne in June 1908. He came again to Paris in early December 1908, when he stayed for a month, and in April 1911 with Lady Gregory.

After he visited Paris in May 1914, Yeats returned to London, and stayed with Maud Gonne at her home. He passed through Paris several times after World War I, but by then Maud Gonne had left Paris. He would move to the south of France, and died in Menton in 1939.

James Joyce (1882-1941) first arrived in Paris on 10 December 1902 to study medicine. He returned home for Christmas, but was back in Paris in January, staying at the Hôtel Corneille. The playwright John Millington Synge, who was living in Paris at the same time, noted Joyce’s “rather indolent” and hungry existence. About the same time, Joyce wrote: “Paris amuses me very much, but I quite understand why there is no poetry in French literature, for to create poetry out of French life is impossible.”

Joyce left Paris again in 1903 and visited Paris briefly again with Nora Barnacle on his way to Zurich in October 1904. He was next in Paris in July 1920. His biographer, Richard Ellman, says: “He came to Paris to stay a week and remained for 20 years.”

By some counts Joyce changed address 19 times during this stay in Paris, from 1920 to 1939, and moved around thanks to the generosity of a rich English widow, Harriet Shaw Weaver.

Joyce and TS Eliot first met at the Hotel de l’Elysee in Paris on 15 August 1920. They dined in Joyce’s favourite restaurant, and Joyce extended his hospitality several times. Their friendship blossomed after ‘The Waste Land’ and Ulysses were published around the same time in 1922.

In 1923, when Eliot reviewed Ulysses, he said: “It is a book to which we are all indebted and from which none of us can escape.” It marked a major shift in literature, he said. “It is, I seriously believe, a step toward making the modern world possible for art.”

Eliot would look to Joyce for support when he separated from his wife, and Eliot continued to visit Joyce whenever he was in Paris. In his Dublin lectures in 1936, Eliot said Joyce “seems to me the most universal, the most Irish and the most Catholic writer in English of his generation … What is most truly Irish … is most truly Catholic.”

Later, Edna O’Brien would recall that the first book she ever bought was Introducing James Joyce by TS Eliot. She once said that Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man made her realise that she wanted to spend her own life writing. So, we cannot yet estimate the impact on modern Irish literature of the friendship between Eliot and Joyce.

Memories of Beckett near his old school … a corner of Enniskillen that is forever Paris (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

In 1928, at the age of 22, Samuel Beckett (1906-1989) arrived in Paris to take up a position at the prestigious Ecole Normale Supérieure, and stayed there until September 1930. He was lodged in a room on the first floor of the ENS overlooking the rue d’Ulm, looking out over “the bare tree, dripping; then, behind, smoke from the janitor’s chimney-pot, rising stiff like a pine of ashes; then, beyond, beyond the world, pouring a little light up the gully of the street that westers to the Luxembourg ...”

Beckett was soon drinking heavily, especially in the Cochon de Lait in the rue de Corneille, where he spent much of the prize money he received in 1930 for his long poem, ‘Whoroscope.’

In July 1931, like Joyce, Synge and Yeats before him, Beckett was to stay at the Hôtel Corneille, also in rue de Corneille. There he was introduced to Joyce by Thomas MacGreevy, and Beckett became a frequent visitor to Joyce’s flat at Square Robiac until May 1930, when he was blamed for upsetting Joyce’s schizophrenic daughter, Lucia.

Beckett later stayed at the Trianon Palace Hotel at on rue de Vaugirard, around the corner from the rue de Corneille, but felt forced to leave in May 1932 during a campaign to expel foreigners without residence permits.

Although Beckett moved back to Dublin, he returned to Paris once more in 1937, and remained for most of the next 52 years. “Nothing changes the relief at being back here,” he wrote after arriving in Paris. “Like coming out of gaol in April.”

When Beckett was almost stabbed to death by a pimp in January 1938, James Joyce found him a private room at the Broussais hospital and paid for it. While he was recovering, Beckett was visited by Suzanne Deschevaux-Dumnesil, who became his constant companion until his death.

They both joined the French resistance network and after World War II moved to Ussy-sur-Marne, east of Paris, where he wrote much of his work.

Beckett and Suzanne Deschevaux-Dumnesil eventually married in 1961, and they found an apartment on the Boulevard Saint-Jacques.

In the early 1960s, Beckett, Peter Lennon, John Montague and other friends were regulars at the Falstaff on the rue de Montparnasse or at the Rosebud around the corner on the rue Delambre.

Beckett was admitted to the Tiers Temps nursing home in 1988 and died there in December 1989, five months after Suzanne.

Wilde and Beckett both went to school in Portora, Beckett was a cricket player and a boxer, and both Beckett and Joyce were great rugby fans. Joyce’s love of rugby began on the 14 April 1923, when he watched a tie between Ireland and France. I do not know whether they were soccer fans, but in Ulysses we read that “Cissy Caffrey whistled, imitating the boys in the football field to show what a great person she was.” Meanwhile, let’s home that the fans who have arrived for a few weeks in Paris don’t stay there for 20 years.

Chez Max at No 1 Palace Street near Dublin Castle … a corner of Dublin that is forever Paris (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Recalling World War I and the greatest deployment of armed forces in Irish history

The Redmond Memorial in the centre of Wexford Town ... World War I began as Ireland was divided by the Home Rule crisis (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

Later this month, commemorations begin to mark the centenary of World War I, which started on 28 July 1914. Over four years, more than nine million combatants were killed in the ‘Great War,’ making it one of the deadliest conflicts in history.

The commemorations are never likely to descend into a glorification of war. Instead, they are likely to focus on the horrors of war, its impact on the lives of many millions of people, and a legacy that includes major changes that reshaped the political map of Europe.

The war is often been seen as a conflict between the jealous crowned heads of Europe and it brought about the downfall of many royal houses. But its impact on the lives of ordinary people must never be forgotten: more than 70 million people were mobilised in a period that lasted long after the war ended.

The immediate trigger for the war was the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, the heir to the throne of Austria, who was murdered in Sarajevo on 28 June 1914 by Gavrilo Princip, a Serb nationalist. The murder set off a diplomatic crisis when Austria delivered the “July Ultimatum” to Serbia. On 28 July 1914, Austria invaded Serbia, and Germany declared war on Tsarist Russia on 1 August, invaded France on 2 August, and neutral Belgium on 3 August. On 4 August, Britain declared war on Germany. In November, the Ottoman Empire joined the war; Italy and Bulgaria went to war in 1915, Romania in 1916, and the US in 1917. The last country to enter the war was Romania – albeit for the second time – on 10 November 1918, one day before the war ended.

War and the Home Rule crisis

In a speech at Woodenbridge, Co Wicklow, John Redmond called on the Irish Volunteers to enlist in Irish regiments (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Ireland was involved throughout the war as part of the United Kingdom. The war began as Ireland was embroiled in a major political crisis over Home Rule, but the crisis was temporarily defused when nationalist and unionist leaders alike initially supported Britain’s war efforts.

The Unionist leader, Edward Carson, offered his immediate support. On 3 August 1914, the Wexford-born leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party, John Redmond (1856-1918), then MP for Waterford City, declared in the Commons that the government could withdraw every soldier from Ireland and yet be assured that the coast of Ireland would be defended by Ireland’s armed sons.

The first British engagement in Europe involved the 4th Royal Irish Dragoon Guards when they met a German patrol near Mons on 22 August 1914, and Corporal Edward Thomas had the distinction of firing the first British shot in Europe in the War.

World War I remembered in Enniskillen Cathedral ... this was the greatest deployment of armed manpower in Irish history (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The first major battle was the Battle of Mons. On 27 August, the 2nd Battalion Royal Munster Fusiliers formed the rearguard to cover the retreat of British forces and made an epic stand. The Irish Guards also suffered heavily at Mons, and the experience of the Munsters and the Irish Guards was typical of the first campaigns in France and Belgium.

Home Rule passed into law on 17 September, and in a speech at Woodenbridge, Co Wicklow, on 20 September, John Redmond called on the Irish Volunteers to enlist in Irish regiments. He believed Imperial Germany threatened the freedom of Europe and that it was Ireland’s duty, having achieved future self-government, “to the best of her ability to go where ever the firing line extends, in defence of right, of freedom and of religion in this war. It would be a disgrace forever to our country otherwise.”

Irish enlistment

Major William Redmond’s memorial in Wexford ... he was one of five Irish MPs who enlisted in the British army (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Redmond’s son, William Redmond, then MP for East Tyrone, enlisted, as did his brother, Major Willie Redmond, then MP for Clare East and a former MP for Wexford Borough. Four other Irish MPs enlisted: Sir John Esmonde, MP for North Tipperary; Stephen Gwynn, MP for Galway and son of the Revd John Gwynn, Regius Professor of Divinity at Trinity College Dublin; and Daniel Desmond Sheehan, MP for mid-Cork. In addition, Tom Kettle, former MP for East Tyrone, enlisted, and Redmond’s call was supported by many parliamentary leaders, including William O’Brien, Thomas O’Donnell and Joseph Devlin.

A large majority of the Irish Volunteers followed Redmond’s call. In all, 206,000 Irishmen fought in the British forces during World War I. Of these, 58,000 had already enlisted in the army or navy before the war broke out. Half of the Irishmen who enlisted in the first year were from what is now the Republic of Ireland; the other half from what is now Northern Ireland. It was the greatest deployment of armed manpower in Irish military history.

The dead of World War I remembered in panels on the south porch in Saint Canice’s Cathedral, Kilkenny (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Some of Redmond’s Volunteers enlisted in regiments in the 10th and 16th Divisions, while many members of the Ulster Volunteer Force joined regiments in the 36th (Ulster) Division. However, most Irish recruits lacked military training to become officers, and with the exception of Major-General Sir William Bernard Hickie, from Terryglass, Co Tipperary, the 16th was led by English officers.

The 10th Division was the first Irish Division to take part in the war, under the command of General Sir Bryan Mahon, from Belleville, Co Galway. This division was sent to Gallipoli and took part on 7 August 1915 in the disastrous landing at Cape Helles and the August offensive. Irish battalions suffered extremely heavy losses among the Royal Munster Fusiliers, and the Royal Dublin Fusiliers. From Suvla, the division was moved in September to Thessaloniki, where it remained for two years.

The Royal Irish Regiment recalled in a plaque in Saint Canice’s Cathedral, Kilkenny (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

In September 1917, the 10th moved to Egypt and fought in the Third Battle of Gaza, which broke Turkish resistance in southern Palestine. In 1918, the division was split between the Middle East and the Western Front.

The 16th Division spent most of World War I on the Western Front. At the 2nd Battle of Ypres in May 1915, the 2nd Royal Dublin Fusiliers were nearly wiped out as a result of a German-initiated poison gas attack. Until March 1916, the 16th was commanded by Henry Wilson, who had called them “Johnnie Redmond’s pets.” Hickie, who replaced Wilson, called them as “riff-raff Redmondites,” but was more diplomatic and tactful and later spoke with pride of his command.

In July 1916, the 16th suffered heavy casualties at the Somme. The battle began early on 1 July 1916 and the day ended with a total of 60,000 allied casualties, of whom 20,000 were killed in action. The 36th (Ulster) Division suffered 5,500 casualties and 2,000 of these were killed in action. The 1st Royal Dublin Fusiliers fought next to the 36th and counted 147 casualties – 22 killed and 64 missing in action. The 2nd Royal Dublin Fusiliers lost 14 of their 23 officers, and 311 out 480 in other ranks.

The battle continued until the following November. The former MP Tom Kettle, a barrister and Professor of Economics at UCD, was among those killed at the Somme. Irish soldiers also fought at the Somme in the Royal Irish Rifles, Royal Irish Fusiliers, Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers, Royal Irish Regiment, and four battalions of the Northumberland Fusiliers.

The pulpit in Saint Iberius’s Church, Wexford, serves as a World War I memorial (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

In 1917, the 16th fought at the Battle of Messines alongside the 36th (Ulster) Division, and at Passchendaele and Ypres. Messines saw the largest-ever concentration of Irish soldiers on a battlefield. Among those killed in the advance was John Redmond’s 56-year-old brother, Major Willie Redmond. By mid-August, the 16th counted over 4,200 casualties and the 36th had almost 3,600 casualties, or more than 50 per cent of its numbers. The losses were so heavy that when the 16th was reconstituted in England the only original battalion left was the 5th Royal Irish Fusiliers.

The 36th included three existing Irish regiments: the Royal Irish Fusiliers, the Royal Irish Rifles and the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers. The division fought on the Western Front throughout the war, and included men from all nine counties of Ulster. Apart from the Somme, the division’s other battles included Cambrai, Messines and two at Ypres (1917), Ypres (1918).

Irish regiments and VCs

Some of the names of the war dead on a memorial cross in Bray, Co Wicklow (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Irish regiments in the British army also included the Connaught Rangers, the Leinster Regiment, the Royal Dublin Fusiliers, the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers, the Royal Irish Fusiliers, the Royal Irish Regiment, the Royal Irish Rifles and the Royal Munster Fusiliers. In addition, there were Irish regiments based outside Ireland, including the Royal Irish Dragoon Guards, the King’s Royal Irish Hussars, the Queen’s Royal Irish Hussars, the Irish Guards, the Liverpool Irish, the London Irish Rifles, the Royal Irish Artillery, the Royal Irish Lancers, the Royal Irish Rangers, the Tyneside Irish Brigade, the Royal Irish Regiment and the London Irish.

The war memorial in the churchyard at Saint John the Baptist in Clontarf, Dublin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

In all, there were 37 Irish VCs in World War I. Lieutenant Maurice Dease from Coole, Co Westmeath, was the first British soldier to be awarded the VC on 23 August 1914, the first day of engagement by the British army. He was killed as he continued to operate a machine gun despite being shot four times at the Battle of Mons.

One of the last Irish VCs was Sergeant-Major Martin Doyle from New Ross, Co Wexford. He was awarded a VC in September 1918, but later he fought in the War of Independence.

A World War I memorial near the centre of Drogheda (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

By the end of the war, the attitude at home towards Irish soldiers in the British army had changed completely in the aftermath of the Easter Rising in 1916. The poet Francis Ledwidge, who died at Ypres in 1917, wrote after the Easter Rising: “If someone were to tell me now that the Germans were coming in over our back wall, I wouldn’t lift a finger to stop them. They could come!”

The war memorial in the centre of Cork (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The Armistice on 11 November 1918 brought an end to World War I. But the war also brought about the fall of the German, Russian, Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires, and the map of Europe was redrawn.

When the Irish divisions were demobilised, about 100,000 veterans returned to Ireland. But another 70,000-80,000 never returned home. There was high unemployment in Ireland, and the rising militant nationalism was hostile to the men who had served in the British forces.

Counting the dead

All Saints’ Church, Grangegorman, Dublin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Saint Michan’s Church, Church Street, Dublin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Powerscourt Parish Church, Enniskerry, Co Wicklow (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The number of Irish deaths is officially recorded as 27,405. However, the numbers may be higher, and the National War Memorial at Islandbridge in Dublin is dedicated “to the memory of the 49,400 Irish soldiers who gave their lives in the Great War, 1914-1918.”

In 1927, the Irish government donated £50,000 in 1927 towards a Great War Memorial. But it was located in Islandbridge, outside the city centre, rather than in Merrion Square. It was not until 2006, on the 90th anniversary of the Somme, that the Irish state held an official commemoration for the Irish dead of World War I.

The Cenotaph in Whitehall is in the heart of London ... (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

... but the Irish National War Memorial at Islandbridge was erected miles from the city centre (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Canon Patrick Comerford is Lecturer in Anglicanism, Liturgy and Church History, the Church of Ireland Theological Institute. This essays and these photographs were first published in July 2014 in the Church Review (Dublin and Glendalough) and the Diocesan Magazine (Cashel, Ferns and Ossory).