OPINION (AN COLÚN): A princess, savages and an artist in Mayo

After putting away our bikes during our recent trip to Mayo, we tapped into a Princess Grace vibe for a bit.
Using the genius thing that is Google Maps we found Grace's out of the way, ancestral home. It's located in an undulating pastoral landscape not far from Newport. You get to it down a boreen and it overlooks a small lake. Grace wanted to buy the place, do it up and use it as a holiday home, but her dream was never realised. She was killed in a road accident on one of the steep, twisting roadways of Monaco before that could happen.
Rosalind and myself read about Grace's story before our drive to the ancestral cottage. We looked at pictures of her first visit to Ireland in June 1961 when we all went a bit doolally in the presence of this astonishingly famous celebrity, who had a very deep attachment to the land her ancestors came from. In one of the pictures she's visiting the ancestral cottage. The walls are whitewashed, the roof is thatched, the building looks in good shape. It was a bit of a shock then when we visited it. We expected the cottage to still be in good nick. Sadly, it's now a ruin. There's no roof, the whitewash has disappeared; there's no windows or doors. It's an empty shell. There's nothing stating the Princess' connection with the building - no plaque.
Nearby Newport is a small place of about 600 souls which is dominated by one of the most striking churches in Ireland. Constructed in 1918 in the Irish Romanesque style it's a masterpiece of a building. The edifice stands tall and proud on a hill overlooking the village. A few cats congregated outside the church and we gave them a few bits of meat as we passed, sausages and ham. As they tucked in we admired the splendid Mayo view from this elevated spot, taking in the remote and magnificent Nephin Beg mountains. Below us we could see cyclists on the Great Western Greenway, which we had just ridden the day before. We examined the main door of the church. We loved it. It was inspired by the romanesque doorway of Clonfert Church which for Birr people feels part of one's home because it's so near. The Newport door didn't have Clonfert's famous heads but it did have the fundamental design.
Inside the Newport church is a magnificent artistic masterpiece - three splendid stained glass windows created by Harry Clarke and his Dublin studio in the 1930s. The windows were much larger, much more striking than we had been expecting. We were in awe. We slowly approached them in a state of reverence, and closely examined their beauty for a long period of time. In the right-hand window Clarke put a self-portrait amongst the damned, because he considered himself to be one of the damned. He's easy to make out because his head is upside down.
The windows are called “The Last Judgement” and they were to be among Clarke's last major works. He never finished The Last Judgement because of his premature death. His studio finished the work afterwards.
During his short lifetime Clarke created 130 windows which caused such a sensation because of the beauty and the highly imaginative quality of the drawing and the striking use of coloration.
Clarke's health had not been robust for many years when he was told in 1929 that he had tuberculosis. Seeking some relief from the disease he spent some time in a sanatorium in Switzerland. Travelling back to Dublin he died en route, in the town of Chur in eastern Switzerland, on the 6th of January 1931, where he is buried. Shockingly, his remains were disinterred in 1946 and reburied in a communal grave.
People admire Clarke windows for a number of different reasons, as do I. However the most important thing about the windows, I think, is their imaginative force. We live in a world of constraints and rules, written and unwritten. Our spirits are subjugated to the fashions of the time whether that be in terms of interior decor, or personal dress, or the things we believe. The unique thing about great art, I believe, the thing which makes it so important, is its temporary smashing of rules, constraints and restraints. Great works of art whisper to our psyches, they whisper that we are all offspring of God, and because God has no limits neither should we. Our imaginative worlds can roam where they will and are not bound by any curbs or tyrannies. Great art and imagination and freedom are all one and the same thing.
Leaving the church, the magical experience of the Clarke windows still resonating in our hearts, we drove to nearby Burrishoole Abbey, which is set in a very tranquil location on the shores of one of Clew Bay's innumerable inlets. Burrishoole is now a romantic ruin. It was once a Dominican Friary, founded in 1470. According to a fascinating article I read in the Connaught Telegraph the remains of Fr Manus Sweeney are buried within the walls of the abbey. Sweeney was hanged by British forces on the market crane in Newport in 1799 for the part he played in the 1798 rebellion. Another moment of savagery happened in 1652 when Cromwellian soldiers attacked and plundered the abbey and murdered two nuns.
On one side we have Harry Clarke, the blossoming of imagination and a union with our loving creator. On the other we have religious zealotry, land-grabbing and crimes of war.