Tea at Trianon: Eye Wells

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Wednesday, July 31, 2024

Eye Wells

From The Abbey of Misrule:

Tobar na Súil literally means ‘the well of the eyes’, and it’s a common well name across the land, perhaps even the most common. ‘Eye wells’ seem to be the most common type of healing well. In her book The Holy Wells of County Cork (recommended; it has some beautiful pictures too), and in her accompanying blog, my fellow well-nerd Amanda Clarke notes that, of the 330 wells she visited in Cork, 71 were eye wells; that is, wells noted for being able to cure eye diseases through prayer and bathing the eyes. That’s just over 20%. I can’t find any figures for the country as a whole (there probably aren’t any) but if it were more or less the same, that would mean there were about 600 eye wells in Ireland. It has been suggested that peat fires in smoky, badly-ventilated cottages may have caused many of the eye problems for which cures were sought at these wells. (Read more.)