FURTHERMORE
By Gerry Moran
Yes, I have to confess to begging on the streets of Kilkenny, along with my best friend, and cousin, Bobby. And I blame the Black Abbey, celebrating its 800th anniversary this year. There were ever only sixteen altar boys in the Abbey and we were a happy bunch. The only downside was that marriages and funerals were not celebrated there – the offshoot being that, unlike altar boys in the four parish churches, no monetary remuneration came our way.
That said, come Christmas we were treated to a party in Heslin and Maher’s (a grocery-come-public house-come-undertakers, now The Pumphouse) just down the road. In a café to the back we enjoyed lemonade, ice-cream, assorted confectionary – and a half-a-crown each. A small fortune as far as we were concerned.
One Christmas, however, the half-crown, for reasons unknown, never arrived. Not sure about our fellow ‘servers’ but Bobby and myself were devastated, shocked. We had big plans for that money – go to the pictures in the Savoy Cinema across the road and later get some whipped ice-cream cones and chips in Hickman’s nearby. A mighty treat.
Despondent and downhearted we resorted to Plan B (even though we didn’t have a Plan B). We stood outside the Savoy – and begged! Okay, begged might be a slight exaggeration – we stood outside the Savoy looking lost and forlorn waiting for people we knew to come along and regale them with our tale of woe, hoping for some handout towards our plight.
Did we succeed? I honestly don’t know – it was, after all, some 60 years plus, or so, ago. What I do know is that our mothers, God rest them, would have been mortified had they’d known what their darling sons had got up to. As for Bobby and myself – we’re still mortified by our act of desperation.
That said, I have the fondest of memories of the Black Abbey: serving six o’clock Mass on frosty Christmas mornings, serving Benediction (if anyone remembers) the evening summer rays streaming through the magnificent Rosary window, the wonderful Fr Andrew Kane who made footballers of us and brought us on a marvellous holiday to Knockadoon Camp in Co. Cork – an adventure never to be forgotten.
Meanwhile on this the 800th anniversary of the Black Abbey here is a brief history of the church:
The Black Abbey, whose official title is Abbey of the Most Holy Trinity, was 267-years-old when Christopher Columbus discovered America. Founded in 1225 AD by William Marshall, the younger, Earl of Pembroke. the Black Abbey gets its name from the black cape that the Dominicans wore over their white habits and it is the only Dominican foundation in Ireland to have survived on its original site.
In 1543, during the Reformation, King Henry VIII confiscated the Black Abbey. The community was dispersed and the church was turned into a courthouse. Sixty years later the people of Kilkenny seized it and returned it to the Dominicans.
In 1650 the abbey was sacked by Cromwell’s forces to such an extent that only the tower and parts of the walls remained standing. The Abbey was reopened for public worship in 1816 and was completely restored in 1979.
The great window, known as The Rosary Window as it depicts the Joyful, Sorrowful and Glorious mysteries of the Rosary, is said to be the finest in Ireland.
Some years back the Black Abbey was particularly susceptible to flooding from the nearby River Breagagh, whose name translates as ‘False’ from the Irish; aptly named as in summer it practically vanished underground while in winter it occasionally wreaked havoc on the residents of Irishtown and the community of Black Abbey. During the great flood of 1947 as the waters rose to the level of the main altar, Dr Gaffney, known always as Doc, a gentle intellectual, dived into the angry waters to rescue the host in the tabernacle.
Across from the Black Abbey is the last remaining gate of the medieval wall that once surrounded and protected Kilkenny: Black Freren Gate, named after the black-caped friars of the Abbey. The Black Abbey is still home to the Dominican order and is very much in use to this day.
