A brush with greatness — and a town called Nobber
SYNONYMOUS with style, bling, opera, football and Formula One, Milan has been an international focus of culture and commerce since the Middle Ages.
They’ve shopped till they dropped for centuries here. Mainly because — and you’re unlikely to need me to remind you — this is one of the world’s foremost fashion and design centres. So much so that the English word milliner come from the name Milan.
While on the subject of names, check this out: the word ‘Milan’ comes from the same stem as the Celtic ‘Medelhan’, meaning ‘in the middle of the plain’; so it shares its name with Co. Meath. Probably not worth mentioning in Italy.
As you sip your morning espresso in cafes once frequented by Verdi and Puccini, you might do better to comment on the ongoing struggle for international catwalk supremacy in the fashion world.
Alongside the hectic buzz and thrum of contemporary life, Milan is stuffed full of art treasures.
Last Easter I was in Milan. It seemed the perfect time to visit the Monastery of Santa Maria delle Grazie. This is where one of the great paintings in the world hangs — The Last Supper by Leonardo da Vinci.
It’s in the refectory of the building; not unusual for monasteries and convents at the time to have an arresting masterpiece for the monks or nuns to contemplate on as they enjoyed their nosh.
The completion of The Last Supper wasn’t without snagging problems — basically Leonardo was taking too long to finish it. Apparently an official from the monastery complained about the delay. There’s always one, eh? The complaint, naturally enough, went down badly with the artist. Here he was painting one of the greatest works in western art, yet all this gobdaw was concerned about was how long it was taking.
Da Vinci wrote back explaining he had been struggling to find the perfect villainous face for Judas, and that what he had in mind was to use the face of the prior who complained. The grumbling stopped. But on gazing at the beautiful painting in Milan, a thought did strike me — and I wouldn’t be surprised if it also occurred to the complaining abbot.
When the disciple in charge of arrangements went to the inn to book the table for the Last Supper, the conversation must have gone along the lines of:
DISCIPLE: “Yeah, we want to book a table for 26.”
INNKEEPER: “But, er, there’s only 13 of youse.”
DISCIPLE: “Yeah, I know. But we’re all going to be sitting on the same side of the table.” DIVINE ARCHITECTURE THE fire at the Notre Dame has been a tragedy — but at least it looks as if the cathedral will rise from the ashes.
To be honest, it’s not an unusual fate for a cathedral — to be built, burnt down, rebuilt. Many cathedrals in Ireland have experienced this and worse.
From Derry to Kerry, they boast histories as violent as anything you might expect from a religious institution earning its living in Ireland over the last 500 years.
Down Cathedral in Downpatrick has a record for which the word eventful barely does justice. It has been rocked by earthquake, seized by the Normans, burnt by the Scots, destroyed again by the English, and then left in ruins for the best part of 200 years. Lord Leonard Grey, the Lord Deputy of Ireland, stabled horses in the cathedral, basically destroying the place. He was hanged for his trouble just up the road in Downpatrick Gaol.
THE Cathedral Church of the Holy and Undivided Trinity, as Down Cathedral is pleased to call itself on formal occasions, is of course significant for another reason: in its grounds lie the remains of St Patrick.
A large granite slab marks the grave not only of the Apostle of Ireland, but also Ireland’s other two official patron saints — St. Brigid and St. Colmcille.
But it’s unlikely the bones of any of these saintly personages occupy precisely this tomb. Because, rather incongruously, the site was picked out and erected at the beginning of the 20th century by the Belfast Naturalists’ Field Club. Granted they used local knowledge, putting the stone on the spot that was traditionally marked out. And ample evidence exists that Patrick is buried somewhere in these grounds.
DRAC CRAIC WHITBY in Yorkshire first came to the notice of the Irish way back in 663 AD when a synod was called there to sort out differences between the Celtic and Roman Christian Church.
It was here they battered out the date of Easter. The back story was that the Irish Easter was not the same date as the Roman one.
So confident were the Irish that their calculations were correct, that one of their number, Columbanus, reprimanded Pope Gregory for putting the wrong date about.
The whole thing was sorted out in Whitby in the 7th century. The Romans won the day, the power of the Celtic Church was diminished, and it drifted off into obscurity.
The next Irish influence in the North Yorkshire town was heralded in by a feast of crabs. On holiday in the area, Dublin civil servant Bram Stoker dined on a meal of local seafood, and that night had a vivid dream.
It inspired story based Transylvania, Whitby and London — probably the his in first time in history that the three places were mentioned in the same sentence. From this improbable exercise in town-twinning the greatest horror story ever written, Dracula, was fashioned in 1897.
Today Whitby has its own Goth festival — this year celebrated in April. So it was that earlier in the month I donned my high-collared cloak, stuffed the garlic into my pocket, and headed across the Irish Sea. At The Fleece pub on the East Cliff I gave a short, impromptu lecture on Bram Stoker. Well, OK, I talked to a couple of people at the bar. But I explained that the supernatural cauldron from which Stoker’s Dracula sprang was largely drawn, not from Transylvania, but from Irish mythology and history.
Bram’s mother Charlotte would regale her son with stories about the 1832 cholera epidemic in the West of Ireland, rumoured to have originated in an unknown place in central Europe.
One stranger who strayed into Co. Sligo, thought to be infected with the disease, was buried alive. Other local victims of the plague were rumoured to have disappeared from their coffins, presumably risen from the dead. DAYLIGHT NOBBERY LIKE Ratass, and to a lesser extent Ringaskiddy, Nobber usually raises a chuckle among the more immature. The Meath village, the birthplace of Turlough O’Carolan, has to live with it.
Grand harpist and composer though he was, even O’Carolan never mentioned Nobber in any of his compositions. Despite the fine Irish tradition of using a crowbar to wedge the most lyrically awkward place-names into lyrics, no place has ever been found for Nobber. Nothing along the lines of “Oh Nobber boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling”.
It’s not because of the name Nobber that the annual O’Carolan Harp Festival taking place in Keadue, Co. Roscommon and not Meath. The O’Carolan family relocated to Connacht, and that’s where O’Carolan died — after having had a good go at re-configuring Irish music. The festival takes place from August 2–5. FRANCO FLIGHTS AER Lingus have just launched their first direct flights from Cork to Nice. Which means that just a couple of hours after leaving Cork, you could be basking in the sands of the Cote d’Azur.