| Margarets Pages on families of Brosna Co Kerry, Ireland |
| Bartholomew Shine O.P. "I must say for myself that on his account alone were there no other, I could love the Dominican Order". The parish priest of Fossa, Patrick Shine, who wrote about his granduncle in these terms in 1870, was not alone in his affection for the friar who had worked in the high, windswept uplands of the Mullaghareirk Mountains, where Co Cork marks with Co Kerry and Co Limerick. Go even today into Brosna and ask about Fr Bartholomew Shine and the people will recall traditions of him, his holiness and his powers, and point out the flat slab in the Shine plot in the corner of the graveyard where he is buried. Bartholomew Shine was one of the many Dominicans who worked alone in Irish parishes during the 18th and early 19th century. This period saw the numbers of Irish Dominicans fall to a low ebb, from which they only began to rise again with the foundation of Tallaght in 1856 and the return to regular monastic observance. For the modern friar it is hard to realise the kind of life, more or less as a sort of secular priest, that men like Fr Shine lived, along and cut off from all the external observances of Dominican life. Because Fr Shine seems to have been an exceptionally holy individual, his memory has been kept alive by the people of Brosna, his grave is still venerated, and the Order itself preserves a letter from Fr. Patrick with a first hand account of his granduncle. Yet the story of Fr. Shine stands for the story of many Dominicans, who lived similar lives in country parishes scattered through Ireland Bartholomew Shine was a Corkman. He was born in 1757 at a place near Freemount in North Cork called Glounicummane. Patrick Shine tells us what his home background was like. "His parents and for many generations before were known to be respectable. Having large tracts of land, horses in abundance, sheep and lambs. So many cows were milked at his father's house that 365 firkins of butter were made there every year, a firkin a day". Young Shine went to school with the famous classical scholar of Dromcolliher, Cantillion. "The family were always remarkabel for their hospitality". says Fr Patrick and that Barthomew was able to bring back sicty of the scholars to stay over the weekend. It was too far from home for Bartholomew to go daily to school and he stayed away at his studies the whole week, only coming back to Glounicummane at the weekends. The popular sport of the district was ball playing. It is said by Fr Patrick that there were 365 students at Cantillon's school and when Bartholomew's father died, these 365 (who presumably had all enjoyed Shine hospitality in batches of sixty !) "all got linen cypresses and went in funeral procession to the graveyard at Tullylease." Bartholomew next went abroad to continue his education. From college he entered the Dominican Order, and next appears working as a chaplain to a family living near Louvain:- where, of course, the Dominicans still had their college of Holly Cross. Fr Patrick says that his granduncle was four years with this family, and that the whole party were just about to set off on a pilgrimage to Rome when the French troops invaded Louvain. The nobleman, instead of going to Rome, took his place among the contending forces, and the Louvain friars had to fly:- with such haste that they spend each successive night in a dozen towns. The charity of an English officer got Fr Bartholomew Shine back to Ireland, but not before the friar had done good work ministering to the wounded and dying on the battlefields. Fr Shine was affiliated to the still surviving Tralee priory. The Dominican house in Tralee itself had, of course, long been abandoned and ruined, but the friars retained the title and at this period were trying to maintain community life at a place called Knockanure between Athea and Listowel. They had come to this "house of refuge" around 1840, and lived there in a thatched cabin very poorly. Tradition says their principal food was oatmeal porridge twice a day. Soon after Fr Shine came to work each on his own in parishes. Fr Shine was first CC in Castleisland, later, parish priest of Brosna, where he remained for twenty years until his death in 1827. He was the last of the Tralee friars and the house then became extinct, until its restoration in the town of Tralee itself in 1861, and the building of a new priory and church there. I visited Brosna on a cold, sunny February day, when there was a coating of snow on the ridge of the Slieve Mish Mountains, and the rough mountainy roads glittered with puddles of rain water. Brosna itself is a street of houses climbing up the back of a ridge, the graveyard and church on the height of it, looking out over the undulating mountainy country, fields and moors and peat mosses. The present church is later than Fr Bartholomew's time - when he was there the Catholic chapel was a mud walled cabin standing in the graveyard. Brosna itself is of substantial slated houses, but scattered over the mountainy upland of the Mullaghareirk hills are little thatched cottages, with the central chimney stack also thatched to its rim, and the whole carefully lashed down against the winds with withies. Such would have been the sort of house familiar to Fr. Shine. |
| The following article came to me, from Tim Curtin of Charleville whose parents farm land at Glounicomane townland. Its origin is unknown. |
| In Brosna Graveyard Revd Patrick Shine P.P. Fossa died 29 April 1878 Revd. Bartholomew Shine died 7 July 1827 (flat stone) |
| "Here lies the body of Fr. Bartholomew Shine who died Jan. 7, 1827 aged 70 years", the tombstone tells one (though actually it was "Little Christmas Day", he died, the 6th.) Above the inscription is carved a chalice, one side is around object probably a Host, the other side a square object perhaps a book. Water collecting in the hollows of these carvings is still regarded as a cure for sore eyes, and people also, thought not now very often, used to take the earth from the grave for cures as well. There are still Shines at Brosna, and the hospitality that, the Dominican's home had been famous for, is still offered to the enquiring stranger. Talking to Brosna people, I was asked "why isn't he canonised?", and among the stories they told me was on of how the Dominican was called to a sick person who lived on tue opposite side of the River Feale. The river, a substantial one, was then in full spate and impassable. Fr Shine prayed and the waters divided and he went across dryshod. Fr Shine was a famous for cures both in his life and after his death. The people say that at the end he was called to an apparently dying woman. "You'll live another 21 years and I'll go in your place", he told her and returning home, died. This tradition is borne out by Fr Patrick's statement that his granduncle died of a fever caught in the discharge of his duties. The people of Brosna told me also that the friar's body was incorrupt and gave off a sweet smell. "The Little Flower" he was nicknamed in Irish. Looking up Fr Patrick's account in Tallaght Archives, I found the surviving tradition authenticated. Patrick Shine said that as he died unexpectedly of the fever he had caught, he was hastily buried in a temporary grave in Brosna churchyard. He goes on "either at the end of a year and nine months, or nine months, I forget which, (the remains) were taken up for a suitable monument. Many of the parishioners were present besides his own friends from whom I heard it. They looked quite fresh, there was no sign of decomposition, no bad smell, but a sweet scent of apples. All could observe it, as the lid was taken from the coffin." Fr Patrick goes on:- "Miraculous efficacy has been constantly attributed to his remains after death. People have come from far and near to carry portions of the earth from the grave which they use as poultices and various other ways for cures. It is also stated that when donewith it, they bring it reverently back." That was, as already mentioned, written in 1878. Today, the devotion to Fr Shine is lessening; the young are less interested in local traditions and history than the older people. Emigration too is helping destroy Irish oral tradition. How did a man like Fr Shine live? What was he like? Patrick Shine, who was baptised by him, lived in the same house and tells how the Dominican was not merely a saintly missionary priest, but a good scholar and theologian. Patrick got his first religious teaching from his granduncle who taught him the Our Father and the Apostles Creed. He was, says Fr Patrick, well built and good looking, with "beautiful and prepossessing features": his transport to get him about his parish:- "being great want of priests, the functions of his ministry were extended over a considerable portion of the mountains of Cork, Kerry and Limerick", was a "nice dark bay horse with bridle and saddle". |
| One room in the house was Fr Shine's own, here he slept, said Mass and read. He had an abundance of books which he was always reading. "I remember a very beautiful chest at the feet of his bed which served him for an altar, nor can I forget the cross on the wall whcih was always there at the back of the chest and was before him celebrating." Prophecy, miracles, were attributed to this man even in his lifetime, but perhaps we should think of these as only accidental attributes; the essence of Fr Barthomew Shine's work was to keep the Faith alive amongst the mosses and mountains of the Mullaghareirk hills; not merely to do the work of a parish priest, but to continue to live up to his Dominican vocation and show forth the Order's ideals in such wise that Fr Patrick Shine, an old man now, parish priest of Fossa himself, would look back to his youthful memories of his granduncle and write that "on his account alone were there no other, I could love the Dominican Order." |
| Typed up 23 January 2002 updated 16 April 2003 |
| Postcript - Shines from the lineage of these Priests moved to Fermoy, Brosna and Meelin. Old records of births, marriages & deaths were be kept in the Parish Priest's house at Tullylease, Co Cork, Ireland. The old house where Bartholomew Shine was bought up at Glounicomane townland, near Freemount village, is still being lived in to this day. (was the home also of the late Jeremiah & Josie Curtin, RIP. Josie died 29 August 2001) The original Shine farm at the time was 999 acres. |
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| pre 1800 thatched cottage |
| 2 roomed thatched cottage from 1800c. |
| Brosna village, showing graveyard, The Square, Chapel, and houses, etc |
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| Picture of the original SHINE home with Coach House & Stables at the back - still standing at Glounicomane, Freemount, Co Cork, Ireland. According to a stone over the fire place the home was built around 1600 and left Shine ownership about 1820 with the marriage of a Shine daughter to a Mr. Murphy. 6 Shine brothers were transported to Van Diemen's Land, Australia in this era. Their crime was to organise a meeting against unjust rents charged by land agents. |
| The old stone buildings run the full length of the house at the back, and were probably built about 1800. A headstone exists in Tullylease Graveyard erected by Fr Bart Shine to his parents about 1800. |