Tea at Trianon: Lost in Time

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

Tuesday, July 16, 2024

Lost in Time

From The Abbey of Misrule:

You wouldn’t know it to visit, but Tuamgraney is one of the most important local ecclesiastical sites in Ireland. Today it’s a quiet village near the southern end of Lough Derg, not far away from the site of last week’s hilltop expedition, our visit to Holy Island, or the two wells of Killaloe. In early Christian Ireland though, it was all happening here. The village is mentioned in the Annals of Ireland more than thirty times between the eighth and the sixteenth centuries, and is still home to St Cronan’s Church, a tenth-century building said to have been founded by local hero Brian Boru, which remains the oldest church still in use in Ireland.
Also nearby is the famed ‘Brian Boru oak’, a tree said to be a thousand years old, which is a tiny remnant of the great oak forest that once covered this region. (Here is a pleasantly old-fashioned TV news piece from 1987 about the tree.) It’s well country, basically.
This week’s site is a lot easier to find than the last one. For a start, its location has been established for centuries, and secondly it’s right next to the main road out of the village. In fact, the old stone wellhouse of St Coolan’s Well stands in the driveway of a big stone house. When we drew up in our car to visit the well, the house owner came out onto the drive and looked at us suspiciously. It seems this well doesn’t get too many visitors. (Read more.)