St Pat's,a New Flat and the VAT (12/03/08)

The bells at Christ Church Cathedral just rang 6, and across Prince Edward St I sit sipping Theraflu and adding to the small pile of used Kleenex resting on yesterday's edition of the Herald Tribune. The Irish convert wind and peat to energy. If they could find a way to convert what's coming out of my nose into energy, they'd eliminate their reliance on foreign oil altogether. Of course, in order to maintain a steady supply of the resource, they'd have to put me up indefinitely in old buildings without central heating. It's not just castles and cathedrals that fit that description in Dublin, although I wouldn't be opposed to living in either.

Meanwhile, I'm in the flat on Prince Edward St, where we moved all our gear midday yesterday, Tuesday, when Jo's colleague left for home. It's a pleasant little second story flat in a five or so story building, with a kitchen, a sitting room, a bedroom and a bathroom, each coming off the entry hall. There's a small fireplace (presumably for heat) in the sitting room, and the windows off the sitting room and bedroom have wrought iron balconies overlooking the side street.

If you look down and to the left, you can see Leo Burdock's awning. I know this because last night at about 10:30 we heard a commotion of sirens and opened the window of the sitting room to see three fire trucks, lights a-flashing, in the street below, with a dozen or so firefighters milling about and looking all around, including up at us. No one told us to evacuate, so we watched from the balcony until they all got into their rigs and drove away. Who knows what that was all about?

We're in a Cathedral zone here, with Christ Church across the street and St Patrick's around the corner and down the road. Yesterday I got into St Patrick's for a few hours. I think the film crew I saw there last week (that kept the Cathedral closed to the public) may have been filming the choir for a Christmas special. I could be making that up (Jo and I fill in the blanks when we don't have all the facts; it makes for more interesting narrative in general and keeps us amused.), but the cathedral is known for its choir. In fact (and I'm not making this up), it was at St Patrick's that Handel's first Irish performance of his Messiah took place in 1742, using a combined choir from Christ Church and St Patrick's. It must have been magnificent in the huge vaulted space.

Both cathedrals are Church of Ireland, not Roman Catholic. St Patrick's was built adjacent to the reputed site of a well where St Patrick baptized Christian converts. Some sort of church has been there since the 5th century, with the current cathedral dating back to the 14th century. The tall spires came a few hundred years later. It's an impressive piece of ecclesiastical real estate.

A couple of cheerful Anglican priests (deacons?) sold me a ticket to tour the place, and I passed through a standard issue Irish souvenir gift shop area set up by the baptistry. There were businessy looking people having a meeting up by the choir. I think St Patrick's is a money-making operation in addition to a place of worship. It is also a museum, full of plaques and brasses and and statues and artifacts and, well, just a lot of stuff, all difficult to sort out on the first (and second) walk through. A disconcerting lack of aesthetic consideration. My Virgo self wanted to start rearranging chairs and tidying up relic cases and redirecting the lighting to shadowy corners. (Larry, you'd have a field day.)

Jonathan Swift was a dean at St Patrick's from 1713-1745, and his role is prominently noted in the cathedral, with informational banners, a couple of his death masks, a mold of his skull used for a phrenology reading (after his death, I'm assuming), early editions of his work, and other artifacts.

The cathedral has some beautiful stained glass windows--tall, thin ones, in gorgeous jewel colors, depicting lots of history that I'm not up on.

There are memorials to the war dead of just about every war, including some especially sad ones--like the list of former Dublin boy scouts killed in the first world war, and the marble plaque marking the battle death of the 20 yr old son of someone important enough to warrant that wall space. I may be naive, but it seems to me that instead of putting all that money into memorials after the fact, Christian churches and the people who support them financially need to be putting their efforts into opposing war in the first place. I find no glory in that kind of death, and I find lavish war memorials in churches to be deeply disturbing.

But there was plenty of other stuff to see. Like two big grave slabs from Celtic times, carved with early Christian symbols. Wonderful old brasses in interesting fonts. And a set of church keys dating back to who knows when, all different sizes and degrees of ornateness. And early sheet music for the choir. Oh, and each wooden seat used by the congregation has a different (and old) needlepointed cushion attached to the back of it. There are hundreds of them!

Not surprisingly, there were a few different statues of St Patrick, including a very old Santa-esque one that looked as if it had been exposed to the elements for a long time. It had a little plaque next to it saying the head had been replaced. I wonder what happened to the first head? (The Vikings kept order by putting the heads of their enemies on pikes around the castle wall and tossing them over to rot when it was time for a new batch. Maybe the Vikings took that St Patrick's head? Again, I could be making that up. Actually, I am.)

What do you call the sculptures showing the deceased person in repose? I can't think of the word. But there was one, in marble, of a viscountess or some such ranking person, that was lovely. Her hand came out of a ruffled sleeve and was quite beautiful.

Over the choir hang banners and what look like helmets (hatchments?) of the Order of St Patrick, which I've learned is a chivalric sort of organization that George III established toward the end of the 18th century, for Irish men of distinction. Not so much anymore, but it was considered a high honor at one time. (I wonder, did they run bingo like the Knights of Columbus?)

In a very dark corner of the North Transept is a wooden door with a rectangular hole in it, not looking at all like the famous artifact it is. I like the story: that in 1492, the Earl of Ormond and the Earl of Kildare were having a tiff that kept them from reaching any sort of compromise. Ormond was hiding out in the Chapter House. Kildare cut a hole in the door and reached his hand through it, thus ending the feud. The boys made up and there was peace once again (for a while at least, this being Ireland). So the door is in St. Patrick's today. Again, there is a lot of stuff in this cathedral.

FYI, even when you buy stuff in a church gift shop, they charge the VAT, a tax that adds almost 20% to the cost of whatever you buy. There's a way to get it back for goods you purchase while in Ireland, but the process seems far more complicated than the average tourist can manage without legal counsel. I'm going to have to sort that out before we leave.

Outside, I found a gate unlatched and wandered around a graveyard and along to what I think was a library, or maybe the choir school. In any case, there was good stuff to photograph before leaving the grounds.

The guys in the cassocks said it was OK to take photos, so I'll add some here, later. Now I hear Jo up and about, getting ready for today's bus adventure out to the schools. Time to get this Wednesday going myself. Achoo.