Heroes and Villains and the Four Faced Liar

Having left the chickens, the dog, the cat, the rabbit, and the distant cows behind me for the day, I walk toward the Crawford Art Gallery, feeling dowdy in my flannel overshirt and jeans. This is Cork. This is the big city. These people are sharply dressed and attractive. These buildings tower impressively, demanding more respect from me than one crumbled down castle wall had. Look at us, they say, look at us!

I’ve got a long list of things to visit and only eight hours before I need to catch my bus home to the countryside again.

So, naturally, I start off with a leisurely breakfast and coffee at the Crawford Art Gallery’s café. It’s been some time since I’ve had the luxury of eating out. It feels indulgent. Silently, I count my pennies and wish I’d washed my hair the night before. Pretending I’m sophisticated enough to be there, I settle back and sip my coffee. While I wait for my food, I look over my plans for the day. I’ve been told Cork is a very walkable city and I’m hoping this is true. I want to go from one end to the other. From that end to somewhere else.

After I’ve finished my breakfast (maybe more delicious for the fact that I didn’t have to make it), after the gallery has officially opened, I walk up the stairs to see the Harry Clarke stained glass and then go down again one flight to visit The Heroes and Villains exhibition.

I make a hurried pass through the rooms, hardly even appreciating that there’s a Picasso, there’s a Larocque, there’s a quote from David Bowie, there’s a quote from Spiderman.

I’ve got too many places to fit into my day to really take my time here. In fact, the gallery hadn’t even been on my original list of places to visit. I’m only here because my host had mentioned the gallery and its nice café when she’d dropped me off. And I’d thought it was as good a place to start as any.

Now, I wish I had a more relaxed mind. For this idea of the Hero and the Villain is an intriguing one. The exhibition plaque’s last introductory paragraph says, “From fallen heroes and reformed villains to accidental heroes, heroes of the moment, and villains for all time, this exhibition showcases a wide variety of real or imagined figures and the many ways that artists have celebrated or presented the shades of good or bad in all of us.”

Surely, that’s a big topic to cover. And surely, life is full of contrasted extremes.

Hoping I’ll think about it all later, I walk outside and head past the Opera House. I cross a bridge and go towards a church bell tower. At the top of my day’s list is the Shandon Bells. “You haven’t done Cork until you’ve played the Shandon Bells!” one website had exclaimed at me. And I’m not one to turn down an opportunity to play bells.

I ask a passing lady if I’m going the right direction (I can no longer see the bell tower from this part of the street) and she says she’s going that way and motions me to come along beside her.

We chitchat amiably, about the weather, about the fantastic summer it has been, and I ask her what I shouldn’t miss on my one day in Cork.

“Oh,” she says. And I recognize that oh. I’ve felt that oh before myself when others have asked me that about the places where I’ve lived. “I’ve lived here all my life and I’m so accustomed to everything I forget.” She thinks for half a moment and then she lists a few places. “The Butter Museum. St. Fin Barre’s Cathedral. Elizabeth Fort is worth a visit. Shandon has many old buildings.”

“Was Shandon a person or only an area?” I ask. My Irish history is still abysmal.

“An area,” she says. We turn a corner and then she pauses, “This is where I go down for work. But if you follow this road up, you’ll see the church.”

I thank her and we bid each other farewell. 

I go up the hill and around another corner. There’s a church, there’s a bell tower. It looks different from what I was expecting from the online pictures I’d seen, but, nevertheless, I venture into the visitors’ center. I wander down a hallway. There’s a man at a computer who stands when he sees me looking lost and hopeful.

“Is this where the Shandon Bells are?” I ask.

“No,” he says. “This is the Catholic church. Shandon is Church of Ireland.” Oh lord, that’s why it didn’t look familiar. I hope I haven’t offended him by asking for the wrong church.

“I’d heard you can play the bells at Shandon,” I say, as an explanation of my choice.

“That’s right, you can. Come on, I’ll show you where it is.”

He takes me back outside, crosses the street with me, points down a road, and tells me I’ll bump into St. Anne’s that way. Sure enough, I will. I can see the Shandon Bell Tower of St. Anne’s from where we’re standing.

I thank him and we go our separate ways.

It’s no secret that I like bell tower bells. But I’m even more endeared to this bell tower after reading that the tower’s clock—one clock face for each side—is affectionately (as one site says) called The Four Faced Liar because they are seldom, if ever, telling the exact same time.

The two I see from this side of the road are off by a minute or so.

This time, going inside the correct church, I buy a ticket for the bell tower and get handed a pair of sound-canceling earmuffs and an informative and welcoming slip of paper. Thus equipped, I start up the stone steps. There are 132 of them. St. Anne’s was built in 1722. The little informative paper also says it’s “the oldest church in continuous use in Cork City.”

I reach the first floor and there is the wall with the bell ropes.

The Shandon bells are rung by a mechanism called an Ellacombe apparatus. Each of the eight bells has its own numbered rope set within a wooden frame which is set against the wall. The rope when pulled, going up through the ceiling to the bell tower, causes a hammer to strike against the outside of the stationary bell.

This is contrasted to the change-ringing style of bell ringing where a clapper inside the bell is made to strike either side of the bell as the bell itself is pulled upright and then swung down again by its rope. Ringing a non-stationary bell requires practice and correct technique to ensure both the ringer and the bell’s safety.

The Ellacombe style requires nothing more than the instructions to pull the rope towards you and to pull the ropes at a quick and even pace.

I’m alone in the room, but I still feel the weight of the outside listening world as I choose the song I’ll play and put my hands on the first two numbered ropes. The instructions at the start of the songbook asks visitors to have fun ringing but not to be excessive with their playing out of consideration for the church’s neighbors.

I wonder what it must be like to be a neighbor to this church. Would I like bells so much if I were?

I play Lord of the Rings. Mostly because it’s one of the shorter selections in the book. Whether it sounds like the soundtrack to the movie, I can’t tell. But I ring it out joyfully and then go up to the next level.

Eventually, (I lose count of the stone steps) I arrive to the floor with the clock’s mechanisms. My paper tells me, “the machinery weighs 2 tonnes and is one of the largest caged clocks in Europe.

I admire it and then go up to the next level. As I make my way up and upper still, I put on my sound-cancelling earmuffs (the paper calls them “ear defenders”) and now I’m on the level with the bells.

Someone below is ringing out a song. I watch the red clappers strike the outside of the bells. I listen to the muffled sound. What a bell experience!

From this point—even with the signs pointing me on, even with the official looking sign that says To Balcony, I’m not convinced there is a going on. That’s a pretty non-official looking ladder. That’s a kind of clambering scramble. That’s a pretty tight squeeze on to a flight of ever-narrowing stairs.

Well, I can go on.

I go on.

And then there I am, at the top of the world. There below me is all of Cork. There beyond that, all of Ireland. There, somewhere is the sea.

Someone plays Ode to Joy. Someone plays one of Vivaldi’s seasons.

I could stay here forever, but I can’t. I’ve got a list of other places to visit. Look, below, there is all of Cork. I’ve got all of that to see, to walk.

Still I linger. Finally, though, I make my way down the tiny, narrow steps. I pause to listen to another song from within the bell tower. When the last note has rung out, I scramble down the wooden ladder and climb down to the next level of stairs.

Once more in the ringing room, and there alone again, I flip through the book and for a lark select Edelweiss. It sounds nothing like the song that Captain von Trapp sang in The Sound of Music, but I play it still.

I’ve rung two songs! I’ve rung church bells, I think as I clump down the remaining steps to the ground level. I tell the two women at the front thank you and what a wonderful place this is as I hand them back the ear defenders.

They smile and bid me good day.

I go out into the open air. When has a bell tower ever disappointed! When have I ever got to ring before this day? Apparently, now I can truly say that I’ve done Cork. I’ve rung the Shandon Bells. Happy, I walk around the perimeter of St. Anne’s, noting that the clock faces are indeed all showing different times. I smile. There’s nothing like a four faced liar.

Trying my best to connect the pieces of my day together, I wonder, is a liar a hero or a villain? But that seems a bit of a stretch. I head across a different bridge and make my way toward St. Fin Barre’s Cathedral in all its grandeur. But that’s a story for another day.

In any event, my day in Cork is a day of contrasts. Country and city. Heroes and Villains. Protestants and Catholics. Old and New. Dowdy and Stylish. North and South. East and West. This side of the bridge and that one.

In any event, it’s a full and wonderful day.

After visiting St. Fin Barre’s Cathedral, Elizabeth Fort, having seen fountains, statues, old city walls, the Nano Nagle Centre, the Red Abbey Tower, the English Market, and another clock (not a liar, I presume), I find my way to the bus station. Exhausted and satisfied, still wearing my flannel shirt, I catch the bus back home to the country where possibly (for now) I belong.