Margaret Dickson
Margaret Frances Dickson was an American tourist who visited Clare in 1841 and sent her reports for publication to the Dublin University Magazine (whose readership was mainly the Protestant ascendency class).
This report provides a very descriptive insight into how a funeral would have been conducted; the conditions in which the locals survived; the clothing worn at the time in Quin.
“After taking leave of our kind hosts at Dromoland, we started for Ennis, and on our way stopped at Quin Abbey and spent some time in exploring the ruins, than which nothing can be more beautiful or picturesque. There were the dim shadowy aisles – the broken gothic windows, tapestried with ivy, through which the light fell on ruined altars and ancient dilapidated tombstones, the heaps of mouldering bones and shattered skulls, the graves beneath our feet of generations long passed away; all these images of the nothingness of man could not fail to impress the mind with the seriousness. I was suddenly startled by a tall figure in blue, with a white nun-like drapery over the head, gliding round the sharp angle of a cloister, sinking in a kneeling posture on one of the tombstones and remaining there as fixed and motionless as the marble beneath.
The figure was soon followed by others; peasants in long blue or scarlet mantles, white caps or kerchiefs tied over their heads, came pouring into the abbey; they belonged to a village funeral scattered about the aisles, or kneeling motionless in silent prayer on the tombstones, their long cloaks falling in graceful drapery around them, was exquisitely picturesque.
2 views from the entrance to the alter when the friary was over-grown with ivy
The custom at funerals among the Irish, of each going to weep and pray over the grave of “their own” is a very touching one. We stood watching the groups as they entered the aisles, every face wearing a solemn expression; and saw them separate each to her own dear spot, where, after making the sign of the cross, knelt in prayer.
We climbed up a sort of altar or monument, over which was a large gothic window curtained with ivy. Looking through the window, we saw beneath us two figures, one dressed in a scarlet mantle, with a white cloth thrown over her head, who were seated together, bent over a grave.
The two voices joined in the wail, which now rose wildly in the loud violence of sorrow, now subsided into a low murmuring chant, re-echoing, and at last dying away among the distant cloisters.
We were struck by the apparent absence of sorrow in the funeral procession. The countenances round the hearse were solemn but there were no tears, none of the signs of grief usual on such occasions. This was explained afterwards. The departed was a young girl of eighteen, who died of fever; three days previously, her father had been buried in the abbey and a fortnight before that her sister had died of the same complaint. The whole family had it. The wretched mother, widowed and bereaved of her children, had but just risen from her sick bed with five fatherless ones to provide for, and in expectation of the birth of a sixth in a few weeks.
The view from the abbey from the place where we rejoined the carriage was beautiful and the scene from within its enclosure full of interest, even at that distance. The sober grey colouring of the old ruins with their rich and graceful draperies of dark ivy, contrasted finely with the bright and varied hues of the groups gathered under the walls and seated in picturesque attitudes amongst the moss-covered graves. The blue mantles and snow white head gear of the women with here and there a bright scarlet or crimson cloak, a brown staff dress or blue check apron and red shawl, formed a very national and interesting variety of colouring. On a rising ground behind, stood a group of men in their grey frieze coats; this fortunate woman escaped to safety. Mrs Hopditch young girl’s coffin, lying waiting to be removed into the narrow receptacle out of which the men were digging and throwing up the earth.”
Extracts from ‘Letters from the coast of Clare by Margaret Frances Dickson’ – Dublin University Magazine 1841
