Mirabile dictu. The trumpets are back.
They were taken early on Thursday morning from on high at the consecrated ground of St Fin Barre's Cathedral in Cork, the great Church of Ireland bastion in the city, and found yesterday in other consecrated grounds at St Patrick's Catholic church, a few miles away.
An anonymous caller to the 96FM radio station in Cork said she had spotted the gilt-edged trumpets in the grounds of St Patrick's yesterday. The station, which is hugely popular in Cork, dispatched someone to the church and the trumpets were recovered.
Earlier the Niall Prenderville show on 96FM had been discussing the value of the stolen trumpets.
A Cork jeweller suggested they had little intrinsic value. The Church of Ireland thought otherwise. They were the priceless legacy of a major Victorian architect.
Like the cathedral, the trumpets were designed by William Burges and were the adornments on the gilt-edged six-foot golden statue of the resurrection angel which he donated to the city on the completion of the project.
For 130 years the statue, complete with trumpets, looked east over Cork. The legend then spread that if and when the trumpets sounded, the end of the world would be at hand.
Reputedly, the cathedral was built on the site where St Finbar founded his monastery many centuries before, leading to the emergence from the bogs of the city of Cork.
Another popular legend suggested that if the "goldy angel", as Cork people have affectionately called it down the years, fell from its perch, St Fin Barre's would come into the ownership of the Roman Catholic Church.
All of which added to the striking presence of the great cathedral.
Then someone stole the trumpets from the angel's hands.
High scaffolding had been erected around the cathedral as renovations are under way, but anyone stupid or bold enough to dislodge the trumpets had to dice with death. The top of the scaffolding is some way short of the statue. The thief would therefore have had to scale a sheer face to reach the trumpets and then get back down safely.
That someone did so was reason enough to give thanks to the Lord, said the Church of Ireland authorities.
That the trumpets were found intact was another reason. The cathedral will be restored, and the "goldy angel", its trumpets restored, will once again preside over the city.