By Michael Patrick O’Brien–
During our 2011 trip to Ireland, my three young children often had an odd reaction to the many lovely monuments to Irish historical events and figures that we saw. Every chance they got, they morphed themselves into nearly exact replicas of the statue they were admiring.
It all started in Dublin, as we toured St. Patrick’s Cathedral and learned about its fascinating history. Saint Patrick baptized people on the church’s site in about 450. The current edifice, originally founded as a Catholic building in the 1200s, became part of the Anglican Church of Ireland in 1537 after the Reformation. Jonathan Swift wrote Gulliver’s Travels in 1726 while he was Dean of Saint Patrick’s.
Our children typically have tolerated quite well their parents’ love for historical tours, and they have developed interesting coping skills to what some might describe as boring adult activities. I detected such skills emerging in force when I noticed our two daughters (Erin Kathleen, then 19, and Megan Mary, then age 16) giggling and unusually interested in the Cathedral’s statues. I strolled over to investigate.
Erin had duplicated the marble pose (a subdued version of Rodin’s “The Thinker”) of Henry Richard Dawson, dean of the cathedral from 1828 to 1840. Megan took her picture, and they laughed, but then they read his memorial plaque too. Dawson established schools to educate both children and adults and was generally respected for his charitable works.
Megan quickly handed the camera to Erin and immediately found the nearby statue of King George III, immortalized in the musical Hamilton as the mad monarch who lost the American colonies (“You’ll be back…”). George also founded the “Most Illustrious Order of the Knights of Saint Patrick.” I think Megan liked his statue because she is a dancer, and the king’s feet are in the ballet first position. Megan reproduced his pose perfectly, head turned just off to the left, and Erin took her photo.
Not to be outdone by his older siblings, our son Daniel Patrick, then 13, created his own memorable living sculpture the next day. He was enduring our browsing in the gift shop of the world famous Waterford glass factory. He was polite, but not really interested in crystal bowls and vases, and grew less patient and more restless with each passing moment. I started to imagine the clichés that could be coined around the image of a bullish teenage boy in a glass shop.
Luckily, Danny spotted a statue of a glass factory worker standing in a window, a tribute to the skilled artisans who create the renowned Waterford products. Instantly, we had several moments of distracting and safe entertainment. Danny approached the window and looked around to see if anyone was watching. (I am skilled at averting my eyes while paying close attention.) He climbed up on the pedestal of the statue and, to my amazement just as I was about to intervene, he replicated the pose. His sister snapped a photo.
We emerged from Waterford without any “you-break-it-you-buy-it” moments, and continued along on our happy journey to Cork and the adjacent large harbor at Cobh. Formerly called Queenstown, Cobh was the last stop of the Titanic in 1914 before it sank on its maiden (and only) voyage. There is an interesting Titanic-themed museum in Cobh, including a humorous reference to a common Irish reaction to the disaster, i.e. that the unsinkable ship (built in Belfast) was fine when it left Ireland.
Like the Titanic, many emigrants from Ireland, including some of our ancestors, forever left behind friends and family when departing from Cobh, sometimes on the infamous famine coffin ships of the mid-1800s. These emigrants are memorialized with a statue just outside the harbor museum. The bronze image depicts Annie Moore, the first immigrant to pass through the new Ellis Island facility in New York City. She left Cobh with her brothers Phillip and Anthony in December 1891.
As you now know well, statues attract not just pigeons, but also O’Brien children seeking to replicate the images. In Cobh, Erin portrayed young Annie, while Megan and Danny played Phillip and Anthony. Another similar statue, this one of Annie Moore alone, graces Ellis Island. Maybe someday one of us will recreate that one too.
Our tour ended on the famous and spectacular Cliffs of Moher. The only disappointment our children felt there was the absence of statues to replicate. Luckily, as an alternative diversion, they got to climb a tall, rock-walked lookout station instead. It’s called “O’Brien’s Tower.”
The dictionary defines “stat·u·esque” as attractively tall and dignified. I think, however, that our children now have made the somewhat snooty word better and more interesting. And maybe, just maybe, despite their best efforts, they also learned something about their rich Irish heritage in the process.
*Mike O’Brien is a writer and attorney living in Salt Lake City, Utah. His book Monastery Mornings, about growing up with the monks at the old Trappist monastery in Huntsville, Utah, will be published by Paraclete Press in August 2021.
