ON THIS, the annual day of commercially charged romance, it is perhaps apt to remind people that the course of true love was never plain sailing.
The National Library has done a service to hopeless romantics by issuing a copy of a Matrimonial Map to coincide with St Valentine’s Day, almost 200 years after it was printed in Co Cork.
Described as a “cartographic curiosity” by the curator of prints and drawings at the National Library, Honora Faul, the map was printed by Cork lithographers Callaghan Bros.
Ms Faul said the map was a “comical take on romance” that was acquired by the library in 2009. It charts the choppy waters of The Great Ocean of Love. Accompanying instructions caution young lovers entering a relationship to “avoid the Whirlpool of Impetuosity” (located near the Silly Isles) which has proven the “ruin of many”.
Romantics are warned to avoid the Rocks of Jealousy, “a dangerous group on which ships have been frequently dashed to pieces”.
The route taken by singletons is also well charted: Bachelor’s Fort stands on the shore of an inlet known as the Gulf of Self Love. According to the map the inhabitants of the fort are “very domesticated and distinguished for their peculiarities”.
They know nothing of the landmass to their south, on which the Fort of Old Maids lies nestled between the Gulf of Despair and Scandal Gulf, near the Valley of Regret. However the map also charts less troubled waters, particularly around the Bay of Delight and the Cape of Good Hope.
In a somewhat risqué passage, the text informs us that for those who navigate the Settlement Isles, landing at St Bride’s Bay: “The Temple of Hymen attracts the attention of the traveller; this structure has been long celebrated, and is worthy [of] inspection.”
Thereafter they can choose to venture to the Fort of Felicity, between the Gulf of Sincerity and the Lake of Affection.
Or they may choose to round the coast to Cradle Point and Baby Fort . . . but it is perhaps advisable to drop anchor here as by travelling further, they may end up shipwrecked against the Mountains of Hatred. These are located a short distance from the Divorce Islands, the population of which is “considerable”.