“Along the west of the site of the ancient vallum flows a stream, which, no doubt, in former times turned the abbot’s mill, and, as it flows through the centre of the town, it passes an ancient well, overshadowed by a huge old thorn. The waters of this well are said to be medicinal, but the popular belief in its healing powers may be only the last remains of a tradition that St. Comgall, or one of his sainted successors, pronounced over it the benediction which is still preserved in the old Irish missal found at Bobbio, which has been published by Mabillon.”The holy well is probably that known to have existed in the vicinity of the present Southwell Road and called “The Eye Well” by the old inhabitants of Bangor.
The Abbey Churchyard is a justly celebrated one and was once more extensive than it is today, as evidenced by the discoveries of remains on the site of the Health Centre to the south, under Church Street, Abbey Street, where my father owned a shop and I ran for a time Pretani Press, and Castle Park. Among the so-called “Prophecies” originally translated by Nicholas O’Kearney and attributed to Coireall MacGronan, one reads:
“Did the Irish only learn the truth as it is –
All their men, women and young ones –
(Did they know) the privileges of this smooth cemetery?
It is in it they would arise to the general judgement.
“Were all the Irish that ever lived and shall live
Interred in the mould of this cemetery?
Darkest demons should not have power to carry away
The least among them from Bangor.
“Consecrated from this day henceforth for ever
Is this spot which will prove beneficial to all.
There is no place similar to it.
This level spot is the third Rome!”
Yet there is also in that graveyard one of the saddest reminders of Ireland’s troubled history. This is the gravestone of one of my family, Archibel (Archibald) Wilson, the Carpenter from Conlig, who was accused of treason following the 1798 Rebellion and hanged with two others at the Far Rocks above our village. Archibel was said to have gone on his knees to the gallows singing psalms to God and died protesting his innocence. The headstone is a split slate one with hammer, axe, trowel and knife between two sets of leaves at the top.
“Here lieth the body of the Archibel Wilson of Conlig who departed this life June the 26 in anno 1798, Eg. 26 yr.
Morn not, dear friends, tho I’m no more
Tho I was martyred, your eyes before
I am not dead, but do sleep hear
And yet once more I will appear.
That is when time will be no more
When they be judged who falsely sore
And them that judged will judged be
Whither just or on just, then they’ll see.
Purpere, dear friends, for that grate day
When death dis sumance you away
I will await you all with due care
In heaven with joy to meet you there.”
Not so very long after this tragic event there visited the Abbey Church an aged cleric, whose whitened locks and venerable appearance threw around his person an air of strange interest and marked him out as no casual visitor. As he approached the Communion Table, near where the altar had once stood, a gleam of the very sunshine of youth seemed to light up the old man’s face. Suddenly his prayers, which had at first been silent ones, were raised to a level of audibility which embarrassed his companion, Dr. McDonnell of Belfast, not less than it astonished the sexton. That old man was Lord Abbot McCormick, the last Abbot of Bangor.
O’Laverty asks us to picture the scene:
“That old abbot, bowed down with years – a stranger and unknown – the connecting link between the present age and the remotest past, standing on the same spot whence his predecessors thirteen centuries ago – ere nations that have long since disappeared had yet come into existence – sent out those bands of missionaries who converted the Franks and the Longobards and for ever linked the name of Bangor with the history of the Church.”
The Lord Abbot McCormick was born in County Antrim in the year 1726. Like so many priests of his faith in the eighteenth century he was forced to seek on the Continent of Europe that learning which was denied to him by the laws at home. The French Revolution, however, deprived him of that asylum, which the houses of his order afforded and he came back to close his days as Sacristan of Maynooth College. It would appear that Dr. Patrick McMullan, Bishop of Down and Connor, expected that the Abbot would claim some of the privileges of his ancient predecessors, for the Bishop’s agent in Rome, the Rev. Luke Concanen, wrote to him:
“Rome, Minerva, 28th May 1796
I pointed out how you were to behave with Rev. W. McCormick, by threatening him with suspension, should he come to cause any trouble or disobedience in your diocese under colour of his empty title of Abbot of Bangor. You may safely refuse him any promotion, if you think him not qualified to do good. You need not fear, whilst I have the honour of acting for you, that he will give any trouble from this quarter.”
Dr. McCormick at no time attempted to exercise any jurisdiction in Down or Connor. He died on 7 May, 1807, and his ashes mingle with the sacred dust of a long line of abbots, the successors of St. Senan, in Laraghbrine. The inscription on his tomb does not style him Abbot of Bangor. At that time the existence of a member of his religious order was against the law; consequently Maynooth College, a royal institution supported by the State, could not openly admit that it employed clergymen of that outlawed class. But his spirit lived on, for it was the Spirit of Bangor.
Their spirit is no more evident than in the fine painting by Kenneth Webb in the chancel of Bangor Abbey. The mural was commissioned as part of the modern renovation of the church under the guidance of Canon James Hamilton. The use of the triangle, denoting the Holy Trinity, pervades the whole design and leads the eye upwards from the figures of Comgall, Columbanus and Gall in the foreground to the central figure of the Ascending Christ. The features of Christ are those of a black person, emphasising the mystic nature of the Son of Man. He is conceived as giving his last command:
“Go ye into the entire world and preach the Gospel.”
So it is written….Let it be done….
Concluded
© Pretani Associates 2014