Here and There

New Zealand Tablet, Volume L, Issue 18, 10 May 1923, Page 37

Here and There

The Pastoral Letter of the Bishop of Bobbio has a |Speei a l interest for Irish readers, inasmuch as the successor °t the Ins b St. Coluraban has proclaimed the celebration the 13th centenary of the great founder of Bobhio. This ..MOOth celebration of the death of St. Columban, who entered into his reward at Bobhio on November 23, 615 as announced in October, 1914, for due commemoration in Mi le year 1915, but the great world war put an end to the project. Now, however, the Bishop of Bobhio, who rejoices in the restoration of St. Columban’s crypt and basilica, hanks to the munificent subscriptions, organised by the revered Cardinal Primate of all Ireland in 1908, has proc aimed a grand religions celebration to duly commemorate the 13th centenary of St. Columban, whose last resting place is in an Anennine tomb. • The fact 'that a recent date was the anniversary of the fire which occurred in the Irish Parliament in 1792, reminds a correspondent to an exchange that it caused the destruction of many valuable paintings, amongst them a work of James Barry, the Irish painter, who died on February 22 1806. In 1763, in the 22nd year of his age, he came from Cork to Dublin with several paintings, amongst them The Baptism of the King of Cashel.” This had an immediate success. It represented the ancient legend of the baptism of Aongus, King of Cashel, by St. Patrick, which is fully described in Keating’s History of Ireland. The subject and tho selection of the incident in his picture testified to the high accomplishments of the young painter. He exhibited it in the rooms of the Society for the Encouragement of Arts and Manufactures. It was' hung near two historical paintings of tho best Irish artists of the day. Barry’s picture received universal approbation, and the Society voted him a premium of £2O. The picture was shortly after purchased and presented to the Irish House of Commons by some of its most distinguished members. And there it perished in a fire which almost completely destroyed the historic buildings. Cavan, like Bodonstown, in the Co. Kildare, whore Wolfe Tone lies, has often been made a place of pilgrimage by Irish Nationalists, for it, was in the Franciscan Abbey there that Owen Roe O’Neill was buried in 1619, having died close by, at Clod, Ibicbtar, on November 6 in that year on his way south from Derry to try the issue out with Cromwell :

“Though it break my heart to hear, say again the hitter words,” From Derry against Cromwell lie marched to measure swords, But the weapon of the Saxon met him on his way, And he died at Cloch Uachtar upon St. Leonard’s Day.

Davis, in this well-known “Lament,” gave currency to the belief that the Irish leader had been poisoned by the English, but later on-Father Meehan, in his Fliylif of the Earls , proved that-it had no basis in fact, from a letter which he found in the State Paper Office written by Owen on his death-bed to the Marquis of Ormonde. One ,of the notable residents of Cavan was Dr. Thomas Sheridan, the friend and correspondent of Swift, where he was master of the Royal School, where the Dean often visited him. It was at Clough Oughter, too, that Bishop Bedell, whosename has come down as the translator of the Bible into Irish, was imprisoned in 1641. A correspondent writes to us (says a Home paper) about a “find” he made in a Dublin second-hand bookstall recently, He writes: “I picked up a copy of the late D. J. Q’Donoghue’s delightful little work, Sir Walter Scott’s Tour in Ireland in 1825; and one of the first interesting items I came across in turning over the pages was an account, quoted from the Dublin Fenny Journal of the time, of the great novelist’s visit to a Dublin literary street emporium. “More than once,” says the chronicler, “lie sallied out by himself, at an early hour after breakfast, on the quest for Irish books. On one occasion he was observed to remain at a stall, “standing upon the quay near the Custom House for nearly a quarter of an hour; and during that time he never took down a single book from it s place” or even removed his hands from behind his hack; contenting himself with patiently and carefully going over the

titles of the books inscribed on their backs. He expressed much disappointment at being totally unsuccessful in his hofm-A’l.' 1 ”! “ de f pa * r at his ill - tort,mc . ho went the'day ■IT he.left Ireland to Mr. Milliken’s, the bookseller, in Grafton Street, and expended upwards of £6O in the purchase of books relating solely to the history and antiquities of v the country,” I don’t think Sir Walter, if he could lev,sit the glimpses of the moon, would be so much disappointed to-day at the Dublin bookstalls as ho was a like lo read O’r) 4 ’ Y iIR " may > anyone.'who would land will° Donoh " e ’ reCOTd "f bis journeying in Train it is ! T-! i° PIOS lcft T 0,1 VUS that barrow if they hurry n.o/ of H nifiaitely n ' ore fascinating bit of reading than most of the novels we are supposed to be running through Ist now and at a price that would make any nefarious Barabbas who was a publisher,” drop dead on the snot vhen he heard it mentioned.

The d oath occurred recently of a brave old Catholic war Belfast’ * V f' lllla ' ] " J ' McGovern, ex-harbor constable of father*’ and , formerly of the Royal Irish Fusiliers. His fathc, who belonged to-the same regiment, fought in the t,r a f,? r am the Indian Mutiny; Whilst of his five broSoutb If * ,n . the Grcat War and the other in the .Sent African campaign. As corporal in the famous Faiud,. a-Ballaghs, under Sir Garnet Wolseley, deceased shared in the memorable night march at Tel-el-Kchir. He also fomdit he Bnrmali War under Sir George White, .for will he icceivod a medal, with clasps.

death ,f \r yr B ?"T Princo Cllarlio was broken by the d ath of Mrs. , Macleod Wylie, of Seton Lodge, North Ber of Tm,W He ft st lh "r nl Mr - Mob' Byres, Scottish fainilv f \r "' as t le c representative of the ancient Scottish family of Moir, of Stoneywood, and one of the members id the family was the celebrated’ antiquary, James O tairf Ponlo - V ' tho cl friend of Cardinal York, brother of Bonnie Prince Charlie, and the discoverer of the Portland

O nr new Lord . Chancellor, Viscount Cave, has (savs of rlhnhc Acirs sm-, cc, London) made his first appointment ", a \\oman magistrate by promoting a Catholic woman to • " bench in Lancashire, in which county, he has also nominated two Catholic men %s magistrates. The new woman magistrate, Mrs. Crooka.il, who belongs to Fleetwood, is a. well-known educationist in the diocese of Liversit Is ' 1 y ° arS She aCtd as llead in Catholic •schools, and many years of her life have boon devoted to out a " d I>u,)hc "ork U \ her town. Her fellow magistrates on the Commission of the Peace for the County Palatine Fiteh’T t p ar Ctr; t r ; J ° SCph F ° X ’ of Accrington, and Major tzherbert-Brockholes, an old pupil of the Birmingham Oiatonans, who won the Military Cross during the war. fll . The late Mr -. Arthur Stanley Butler, who was received nto the Church by the parish priest of Marlow a few days before ns tea was a nephew of the profound scholar and particular bane of Catholic moralists and sociologists—Sir brands Galton, who is generally considered to be the founder of the Eugenists and of the science of Eugenics. D. Butler was the son of an eminent Anglican divine, and 101 41 ears he held the professorial chair of Natural Philosophy am] Experimental Physics in St. Andrew’s Univermty, Edinburgh Another of his undos was the famous .Butler of Cambridge. Through Ins mother he had a kind of vicarious connection with Catholicism in England for she active collaborator with the great Cardinal 31 iilining m some of his social reform activities

vly Acton, wife of the celebrated peer and diplomatist, died at the family seat in Shropshire after a lonillness. Shortly before her marriage in 1904 the late Ladv Acton was received into the Church,'and throughout her life she has been as much distinguished by her Christian chanty as by her remarkable knowledge of languages When the v a broke out Lady Acton .was at Baden, with her husband and family, where Lord Acton was accredited as British diplomatic representative. The family was detained tions oMrT aml V aS ° n,y ° n th represents tions of the Prussian-Minister at Carlsruhe and the Swiss Minister in Berlin that they wore released. The first Lord Acton, father of the present peer, was one of the most famous historians of his day-at the time of his death he Cambridge! 80 " ° f MO<,C ' n Hlstory at tllG University of