Here is a short message for Dr Brendan Scott and his adoring fans, his patron and protector Whacko Jacko Keys and the others who organised talks in association with the forthcoming fleadh in cCvan. It is taken from the lyrics of the inimitable Marshall Bruce Matheers III, aka Eminem:

YOUL’LL BURN IN HELL FOR THIS SHIT

Brendan had been going out with a girl for a year but he’d been reluctant to go onto Level 2 of the relationship because he was ashamed at the smallness of his willyu. He decided to ask the advice of his friend Eugene.
“Size isn’t everything”, counsels Eugene. “It’s what you do with it. Get her in the right place and the right mood, and the fact that you’re a bit on the small size won’t make any difference.”
Armed with this advice he goes out with his girlfriend. They drive to a dark spot where Brendan considers it’s a now-or-never moment. He unzips his fly, whips out his willy and gently guides his girlfriend’s hand to it.
“No thanks,” she says. “I’ve given up cigarettes.”

A man is standing at the urinal in a lavatory beside another male in an olive-green suit who seems no bigger than a dwarf, but his attention is drawn by the size, length and girth of this second man’s male member, which is, without doubt, a whopper. The first guy doesn’t want to appear to be getting his kicks by looking at another guy’s cock, but his interest is noticed.           

“Is everything ok?” asks the dwarf.

“No problems. I’m sorry but I just can’t help remarking on the size of your cock. As a man you’re on the small side but it’s enormous.”

“Ah let me explain. You see I’m a leprechaun and all leprechauns have massive cocks in spite of their size.”

“I wouldn’t mind having one that size”. comments the first man.

“That can be arranged. After all I’m a leprechaun so I can grant anything you wish for,  but you have to do something for me.”

“Name it!”

“You’ll have to let me give you one up the butt.”

“Well I don’t know about that…” stutters the first guy.

“Now it’s your decision and I’m putting absolutely no pressure on you” counsels the dwarf soothingly.

“I suppose no one need know”, answers the first guy and quickly looking around to ascertain there’s no one else in the can he gestures to the dwarf to join him in one of the cubicles.

After several moments of excruciating pain for the man the dwarf asks him:

“How old are you?”

The man turns his head and answers, though writhing with agony: “I’m … ugh … I’m thirty-six… arghhh!…why?”

“You’re thirty-six are you? And you still believe in leprechauns?”

I have recently completed a charming book called Cloverhill: A Church of Ireland parish in County Cavan, c. 1720 -2010 written by Dr Jonathan Cherry. This was produced in association with the 150^th anniversary celebrations of the parish church’s consecration.

 Jonathan Cherry is a very good friend of mine. We have much in common. We both attended Cavan’s Royal School where the teachers, not least Douglas Anderson and Ivan Bolton, imparted that spirit of civility, combined with a thirst for knowledge, which has served us both so well. We have both been “doctored” in history. We are both scholars,  motivated by a deep and sincere respect for each other’s work.  What is more we both come from well-respected families in our respective communities.

 Dr Cherry’s book is a history of a small, vibrant and tenacious rural community. He traces its history, using written sources, maps and folklore, as well as less traditional sources. But this is more than just another history book, as Dr Cherry brings the unique perspective of an historical geographer to his task. He tells the story of the locality, but never forgets that its story unfolds in a far wider context.

 Cloverhill was, for over two centuries, synonymous with the local landholding family of the Sandersons. Dr Cherry sympathetically describes their relationship with the community, and what emerges is a picture, not of exploitation, but of co-operation. The Sanderson demesne lands at the centre of the parish were a considerable employer, while the rents collected didn’t feed the gaming habits of some far-off and ambivalent absentee proprietor. Instead they were used by a series of landlords, including the indomitable Mary Ann Sanderson, who was deeply committed to Cloverhill.

 The central aspect of this community is without doubt St John’s parish church. It was built by the aforementioned Mary Ann Sanderson. Like many people I had been misled into thinking that the church had been consecrated in December 1856 by a centenary service reported in the Anglo-Celt in December 1956. The formal consecration took place in 1860. This may help in identifying the architect. Dr Cherry repeats Jeremy Williams’ assertion that one of the Wellands may have been responsible. Why I felt that it was NOT the work of William Hague Jar (1836-99) was that, in 1856 Hague was only twenty years of age and not a qualified architect. If the building work only began say in 1857 or 1858 it Hague might have had a hand in drawing up the plans for his father who built the church, although he was as yet still too young and inexperienced to be credited with the work.

 In an introductory chapter Dr Cherry outlines the various sources he used. He outlines one which is probably the most important, and which is all too easily overlooked: an intimate knowledge of the location.  He writes:

 An often understated but hugely important source in understanding the sense of a place or the place as lived is personal experience. As a native of the area … I have been immersed in the history of the place since an early age. My own personal interest in the evolution of the village and district, coupled with strong familial ties to the area, have been of significant value in charting the history and understanding Cloverhill past and present. Speaking with local people and simply observing change has given me a greater understanding of what Cloverhill means to those who live there.

 This is a local study par excellence. It is of value on many different, though parallel levels, first as a local history, and then as a volume that gives keen and erudite insights into rural and religious history, as well as the history of landscape. All these elements are deftly brought together by Dr Cherry through his engaging and pellucid style.

The commemoration for the victims of the convent fire will be a truly memorable and heart-warming event. Everything is falling into place. Even the weather looks as if it’s going to be pleasant. I am sure that our efforts are being helped along by the spirits of the thirty-five girls and the elderly cook who perished that night.

 Our involvement in this project has been a pleasure. It is amazing how a group of people can make a difference when they set their minds to it, and how they can move mountains by harnessing the skills they have amongst themselves. I already knew Sean Galligan, who is the spring-board of the group. I have een able to meet again my old friend (though not in age) Ita Madden, whose knowledge and commitment has always ensured that the group always does he right thing. But I have made so many new friends, like Eamon and Lorraine, not to mention Fr Ultan McGoohan., a true gentleman. Some may have heard Karin Charles’ wonderful documentary about the tragedy and the commemoration on Northern Sound radio.

 The ceremony is for all the people of Cavan. It is an opportunity to remember those who perished, but without rancour.

 Alas our success has attracted  the attention of some elements of Cavan town’s publicity-hungry political pond-life. They couldn’t be persuaded to come to our meetings, (even though I saw one of them in the bar of the Farnham on a night we were having a meeting, until they sensed that, by not getting involved they  might lose a photo opportunity. I do hope none of them come along wearing their chains, though it might be difficult to tell them to get lost. They’ve been of no help to his so far, but that does not mean that they couldn’t be a hindrance to us in the future.. But let us not think of such people, but instead of the thirty-five girls and their cook who died that night. Had they lived they would have been able to spin that web of magic which each of us spins, which is called our lives.

According to RTE news Gardai are investigating a suspected arson attack at an industrial estate in Dublin.

 The arsonist(s) are probably on the run now, fearing apprehension, but I want to give them some words of consolation for the future. You should really get out of the grime of the big city and move to a border county. There your involvement with arson will be initially forgotten, especially if you join Fianna Fail and the Knights of St Columbanus. You will then be able to look back upon your past with pride and speak candidly and unashamedly about it. And what’s more you will even get a job with the local authority.

 Instead of having to keep a low profile to escape the Bill, you will be able to have your mugs emblazoned on a weekly basis in the local paper. When you attend social events camera bulbs will flash as if you were Brittney Spears. If you still have criminal tendencies you will be able to steal with impunity, and because of your newfound friends you will be able to slander decent people, and what’s more be believed.

The BBC reports that President Ahmedinejad has arrived in Zimbawe on an official visit. Photographs show the two pariahs – Ahmedinejad and Mugabe – together. I’m not sure whether there are any Jews left in the country that he can insult.

I find it sstrange that when a bad-mouthed pseudo historian like David Irvine makes comments denying the Holo0caust he is (rightly) ostracised, but when a heade of state does it he suffers little by way of such a cordon sanitaire. I am sure he would be welcome in Ireland. 

But Mugabe’s days are numbered. I can reveal though that part of his exit strategy includes retiring to Ireland. This will be announced in conjunction with  his ttrip to Dublin to receive the Jim Tunney Memorial Gay Bashing award next year. President Bob has long complained how his rest has been disturbed by a homosexual on the farm he seized from its white owners. As for Ahmedinejad there are persistent rumours that he intends to apostasise from Islanm. This would mean automatic death. To avoid this he will stay in disguise in the Redemptorists’ Mother House in Limerick City.

The allegations that appeared in yesterday’s Sunday Times show that the former bishop of Kilmore, the late Francis McKiernan, knew of the activities of paedophile priest Brendan Smyth as early as 1975. One other fact should be borne in mind here. In 1977 I remember Dr McKiernan delivering a sermon in Cavan’s Cathedral in which he told parents that they should not listen to their children’s “tales” brought home from school, and that the children must be discouraged from doing this. Were the children being sworn to secrecy and silence too? I think that, taken together, one can only come to the opinion that there was a serious attempt to cover up charges of clerical sexual abuse going right up to the bishop himself and including the then Fr Sean Brady. The latter’s actions could very well be construed as criminal conspiracy to pervert the course of justice.

 Once again those well-informed canines have known about McKiernan for years, but it is only now that the truth is seeping out, but it will not really affect the near saint-like devotion in which he is held by certain sections here in Cavan. He was such a great historian, they say, the world’s greatest living expert on the O’Reillys – until he died, and why wouldn’t he be? – sure he was the bishop.

Spring is late this year. While our days are frequently bathed with quite warm sunshine, our nights see temperatures plummet well below zero. As a consequence plant growth is seriously retarded. This is not a unique phenomenon.

 I am reading a charming and informative book called Since Records Began: The Highs and Lows of Britain’s Weather by Paul Simons (Collins, 2008) which records many of the most serious weather events that have afflicted the United Kingdom. In particular, March 1891 saw heavy snowfalls affecting the south of England resulting in metre-deep drifts in places like Dartmoor. One train, travelling from London to Plymouth became buried on Dartmoor with snow entering the carriages. There were no radios so the train’s misfortunes remained unknown until some day’s later when a local farmer out looking for sheep discovered the turret of the train engine sticking up through the snow. Even after being rescued some passengers insisted on travelling on to Plymouth, arriving there eight days’ after leaving London.

 Strangely, two years’ later much of the south of England experienced one of the most serious spring droughts ever recorded. Rivers dried up while London residents, some of whom were just coming terms with new-fangled gadgets like flush toilets faced water rationing while there were serious outbreaks of diarrhoea.

 The book contains examples mainly from the United Kingdom, though incidents like the Athlone lightning storm of October 1697 are mentioned. I think that a readable book looking at Irish weather phenomena would be popular; indeed I think there would be far more of a market for it than some of the turgid historical tomes that somehow managed to get published in this country. I’d love to write the book. I have already written about topics like the “Year without a Summer”, the landslide that washed away the village of Tober in the early 1860s and hurricane Debbie. Then there is the sterling work produced by my good friend Tom Hyde about the winter of 1947.

 All I need is a publisher but given my free-thinking and fun-loving spirit and will not contain any coded excerpts from El Viaje, I doubt any of the Opus Dei printing houses who seem happy to provide vanity publishing for some people would be interested, even though it has considerable commercial possibilities.

The National Council for the Blind in Ireland (NCBI) which claims to represent the interests of the bind and partially sighted in Ireland has organised a meeting for next Thursday. The “Special guest” will be Dr Brendan Scott who will talk about the Franciscan Friary in Cavan.

 Brendan Scott is the same person who organised a conference on the medieval and early modern history of Cavan to which were invited specialists from as far away as the UK and America, though an expert who resided in Cavan, namely myself, was not invited. This was a deliberate snub, motivated by Dr Scott’s perception that there had been “trouble” between me and the museum, though it had been before his time.

 Some months earlier Dr Scott had unsuccessfully sought to replace me as a contributor to the Cavan Echo. I think it is obvious that Dr Scott has same issues regarding me. Though I’m damned if I know what they are as I’ve never even met him.

 This is the person the NCBI has invited as a special guest. Now it is bad enough that the NCBI does sweet FA to promote the interests of the blind, but quite another when they are siding with those who attack them. The invitation has cleared Dr Scott at a stroke of any accusation of discriminating against a partially sighted and disabled scholar. How could he have done such a thing he can say, when the National Council for the Blind itself invites him as a special guest – and in clear preference to the person whom he discriminated against.

 I am reproducing here an article I wrote for the Cavan Echo about Cavan’s Franciscan Friary, that I wrote in October 2007. But how silly and impudent of me to make such a claim when it is obvious I never wrote this at all. I have merely dreamed that I have written this, when in fact my hand and brain were in fact being directed by my double Dr Brendan Scott. It’s copyrighted. It was Francis Bacon who said “Opportunity makes the thief.”

 Given my expertise on the areas I have offered to give the talk instead, based on my own material, but the NCBI has responded to my offer with deafening silence. No doubt they are part of the voluntary sector in Cavan who are captives of the County Council, their members cowed into silence and acquiescence of discrimination by the promise of council grouses. While Whacko Jack presents himself as a guardian of disabled rights as he poses with yet another group of expensive, external consultants.

 By the way Brendan, does it make yo0u feel big and macho to pick on a disabled person and to steal from a cripple? You’ll have no luck you miserable bastard.

 Cavan’s Franciscan Friary

 Cavan Echo, October 19^th 2007

With the break-neck level of building development in Cavan town it can often seem as if the oldest surviving structure is a post-box or a petrol-tank. This accolade belongs however to the tower of the Franciscan Friary in the town’s Abbey Street, formerly known as Church Lane.

 Founding father

 The foundation of the friary, for monks from the Franciscan order or Ordo Fratrum Minorum (OFM) was the first surviving reference to Cavan in any of the surviving annals. The person who founded the friary was the recently-installed chieftain of East Breifne, Giolla Iosa ruadh O’Reilly, who more than anyone helped to re-establish the power of his family after the debacle of Magh Slecht half a century earlier which had seen the death of his father, grandfather, half-brother and many other relatives.

 Poorest of the poor

 The Franciscan order had been founded by St Francis in Italy in 1209. Their members were dedicated to rigorous and absolute poverty. At first they renounced even the principle of holding property in common. They spread like wild-fire throughout Europe, even reaching remote parts of Ireland, Scotland and Scandinavia within a century of their foundation.

 The Franciscans had been particularly successful in urban areas, so their success in the north of Ireland, which was still devoid of towns, was unusual. The first monks may have come from Dundalk or Drogheda, or from friaries elsewhere in Ulster, such as Downpatrick and Carrickfergus. These were under the control of the Anglo-Norman earl of Ulster Richard de Burgh. The earl was generally on friendly terms with Giolla Iosa, who named one of his sons Risteard after him.

 Nothing survives today from this foundation. An eighteenth-century antiquary wrote that Giolla Iosa built a chapel and marble mausoleum at the friary. This might have been too ostentatious for the friars though who were wedded to simplicity in all aspects of life.

 Arson around

 Many of the buildings were of wood. In 1452 much of the abbey was destroyed in a fire caused by a careless monk called O Mothlain who was reading his breviary by candle-light, although The Annals of Ulster infer that he had partaken too freely of wine. In May 1575 the friary, with much of the town of Cavan went up in flames, though on this occasion a highly-placed arsonist was to blame. The wife of the then ruler of Erfast Breifne, Aodh Conallach, had a grudge against one of the residents of Cavan and set fire to their house. Alas for the town and the friary the flames spread. .

 Old peoples’ home with a difference

 The friary soon developed a rather non-religious aspect closely linked to the ruling house; it became a strange mixture of a retirement home and political refuge. Fifteen years after its foundation Giolla Iosa gave up the reins of power to become a monk in the friary where he died and was buried in 1330. His son Cu Chonnacht (whose descendants eventually settled in the Munterconnaght area of Co. Cavan) also retired there to die in 1366. His time at the top had been marked by tension with his brother Pilip, and Cu Chonnacht’s act of renunciation of the world may have been all the sweeter because he knew the friary afforded the right of sanctuary to all who lived there.

 The old order changes

 For many years a mistaken belief was held by some historians that the friary had been founded not by Franciscans, but by their brother mendicants the Dominicans or Ordo Praedicatorum (OP) There was a change in the rule followed by the monks in 1503 when the then ruler of East Breifne, Sean Mac Cathail O’Reilly, successfully petitioned the Papacy for the friary to change from the mainstream conventual branch of the Franciscans towards the much more rigorous and fundamentalist Observantines, which had been founded in Italy in 1368. but which was sweeping all before it in Ireland.

 A bishop’s residence

 The friary was important in the local secular church, to which in theory it did not belong. The last bishop of the diocese of Tir Bruin before it changed its name to that of Kilmore, was one Donat O Gabhain, and in the 1430s the Franciscan friary was his residence.

 A falling off

 It is probable that, like many other religious institutions in sixteenth-century Ireland it suffered from a falling-off of membership and religious discipline. It seems to have survived the various troubles of the sixteenth century intact. Nettercliff’s map of Cavan town c. 1590 shows a plain rectangular building with a tower on the site of the present tower,

 Kindly move aside

 With the extinction of O Raghailigh power and the advent of English rule this church was pressed into use as a place of Protestant Divine service. During the upheavals of the middle of the century it changed back to being a church of Catholic worship, only to be once more seized by the conflict’s victors for their religious uses.

 A final resting place

 Before this it had, according to tradition, served as the burial place of Eoghan ruadh O Neill, the military leader of the rebellion in Ulster, following his death at Clough Oughter in November 1649. Other traditions in the Clough Oughter area dispute this though. It had certainly been a place of burial for the O’Reilly chieftains throughout the later middle Ages. The late Philip O’Connell recounted another tradition of the unearthing of stone-lined coffins during repaving work in the nineteenth century.

 Going out for a slash

 Some antiquaries also testify to the survival of a tombstone belonging to the legendary Myles the Slasher, but as “Myles” did not die at the Bridge of Finea but passed away in France such a monument must have been a figment of their imagination.

 Continuation

 The church continued to be used as Cavan’s parish church throughout the eighteenth century. The monastery was knocked down and its materials used for the construction of a barracks for horses nearby.  The surviving tower possibly dates from the eighteenth century. The grounds were used as a cemetery until the late nineteenth century; amongst those buried there were the first barons arnham.   

The end of the road

It was obviously too small of a building to act as Cavan’s Parish Church. In 1807 work began on a new structure on land donated by the Farnhams. Construction was delayed by the ongoing Napoleonic wars but by November 1815 sufficient buildings had been completed to allow the first services to be held there, thus condemning the structure in Abbey Street to obsolescence; one of the last services held there took place on Christmas Day 1815.

While still used for burials the site soon became overgrown, a condition only recently reversed.  The inside of the tower itself was used as a dumping ground and alfresco public convenience. Some of the original wooden structures of the church survived until the 1880s, for in December 1888 the Anglo-Celt recorded a fire on the site, which by then had attained the importance of a sanctuary as the burial place of “Owen Roe”.

© Ciaran Parker 2007

I have since learned from among others Dr Eamon McDwyer of a long-current tradition that Eoghan ruadh O Neill was buried in 1649 at a site on the Bridge Street side of the abbey.