St. Patrick's Day
We celebrate St. Patrick's Day today with a celebration of Ireland's second-largest city Cork, with engravings by Daniel Corbett from the 1815 edition of The Ancient and Present State of the County and City of Cork (originally published in 1750) by the Irish topographer, writer, and apothecary Charles Smith (1715–1762), published in Cork by John Connor, one of the most successful Irish publisher/booksellers of his day. With curvy St. Patrick's St. splicing through the center of the old city, Corkonians (or Leesiders, as the old city is an island in the River Lee) often refer to their city as "the real capital" (ostensibly because of its its opposition to the 1921 Anglo-Irish Treaty in the Irish Civil War, but mainly because of its rivalry with Dublin) and "the Rebel City" (ostensibly because of its support for the Yorkist cause in the Wars of the Roses, but mainly because it residents view themselves as different from the rest of Ireland), and sometimes even as The People's Republic of Cork.
We appreciate Cork's independent spirit and Daniel Corbett's engravings of the city. The cartouche on his map features "the man of Cork," likely representing the River Lee, sitting in one of the quay's of the city. We don't know what he's holding in his left hand (it looks like an oar, or maybe a rudder), but we think he's holding some uilleann pipes in his right, and who knows what's pouring out of the urn next to him; perhaps the river itself?
The Exchange shown here was built on the south corner of Main and Castle Streets in 1708. Today, the Cork Catholic Young Men's Society Hall stands at that corner with a plaque identifying it as the original center of the ancient city and another plaque above commemorating John George MacCarthy (1829-1892), the Society's first president.
Lá Fhéile Pádraig Sona Duit!!
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