Page 110 - Demo

110 Stephen Dunford: The Journey of The IrIsh
“The Irish nobility have in every family a domestic physician, who has a tract of land free for his remuneration, and who is appointed, not on account of the amount of learning he brings away in his head from colleges, but because he can cure disorders. These doctors obtain their medical knowledge chiefly from books belonging to particular families left them by their ancestors, in which are laid down the symptoms of the several diseases, with the remedies annexed; which remedies are the productions of their own country. Accordingly the Irish are better managed in sickness than the Italians, who have a physician in every village.”
From the most ancient times in Ireland, the blacksmith /artificer ranked among the nobles of the land-alike the forger of fine arms and the beautiful ornaments in bronze and other precious metals. Ancient Irish pieces such as rings, bracelets, torques, necklaces, dia- dems, brooches, and also the chalices, crosiers, book-covers, etc., were rarely to be matched, anywhere in the world for their beauty and the intricacy and delicacy of workmanship. Thankfully, our museums have many such rare and beautiful objects, some of which are thousands of years old. Of the later ornaments, those that are only about one thousand years old, the Tara Brooch and the Ardagh Chalice, are probably the rarest and most well known examples of the perfection to which the Irish metal worker’s art attained. This ex- traordinary work is also splendidly exemplified in the shrines of St. Patrick’s Bell and the bells of other saints, and in the cumhdachs or shrines, special carrying-boxes for books, such as the Book of Kells and the Book of Armagh, and the Cathach or Battle-Book of Donegal, which we referenced as Colm Cille’s Psalter.
It is appropriate at this stage to make a quick mention of the many fine examples of the old Irish sculptor’s art that we find in the wonderful ancient stone crosses scattered through- out the land. For example, the Cross of Monasterboice in county Louth, and the Cross of Kells, in county Kildare, Drumcliffe in county Sligo, and Roscrea in county Tipperary, to reference just some.
During its Golden Age, apart from all the aforementioned arts, Ireland was also noted and celebrated for its scribes and decorative artists. Those talented scribes, who in exquisite penmanship, the likes of which cannot be emulated or reproduced to-day, even with our all encomposing technology, penned the many ancient Irish manuscript books, and the equally
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