The Castles and Crags of Cahir and Cashel (parte uno)

Ah, blog! It has been too long!

Today I will tell the tale of my weekend, a tale involving wind, rain, old buildings, older buildings, ancient ruins of buildings, rocks with sheer drops, history, greenery, scenery, lots of roundabouts, attack pigeons, and also a really delicious panini.

I could just leave it at that, but I have resolved to write more often than I have been of late- which has been not at all. There’s certainly room for improvement.

Also, I am waiting for a cake to bake, so I have some time to kill.

Yesterday I woke up fairly early for a Saturday and suited up for an excursion to Cahir Castle and the Rock of Cashel (which could have a more informative name, as shall soon be described) in county Tipperary. It is not too long a way to Tipperary (from Cork at least), but I was still a touch queasy thanks to the skinny little roads and frequent roundabouts between the two. Needless to say I was quite delighted to be met with a brisk bracing chilly and/or icy breeze upon diembarkating the bus at Cahir Castle in the aptly named town of Cahir (pronounced like “care”).

This excursion (I should note) was organized by the lovely folks at USAC, which just happens to be the program that brought me here to Cork. Myself and about fifteen other students from all over the US of A are thusly lucky to have Mary Steele, USAC’s contact at UCC, as our advisor, trip leader, and quasi-mother-figure for our five months abroad. Mary, besides giving me advice on classes and providing our group with Cadbury bars, was thoughtful enough to find us a bus driver who was practically a brogueing, lament-singing Simon Schama. Liam (the aforementioned bus driver) most wondrously condensed all of Irish history into a twenty-minute lecture, delivered as he navigated Tipperary’s turnpikes and tollbooths and roundabouts (so many roundabouts!) with much skill. In all six of my upper division history and government classes, three weeks have hardly contained the breadth of information provided by the good Mr. Liam. It was quite impressive.

At any rate, we reached Cahir around 11 o’clock and made for the castle. Our tour featured the following highlights:

1.      There is in the outer wall of the castle a cannonball that has been embedded there for a solid four hundred-odd years. Queen Elizabeth’s forces under Essex put it there with one of two cannons that accompanied their force of 20,000 infantrymen and 2,000 cavalry in 1599. Why these numbers stick in my head is a strange and marvelous mystery.

2.      The castle features a ridiculous amount of defensive measures. I must say that my respect for Early Medieval architects has grown exponentially. There exist within the walls of Cahir castle such things as machiolations, which are specially-designed openings in the castle walls used to pour boiling oil, tar, sand, or quicklime onto attackers; air-lock-type rooms between layers of castle that could be sealed off and collapsed with the enemy inside in the event of an attack; arrow slots everywhere, later converted to fit guns; gnarly portcullises; stairs built purposely of odd and mismatched heights so that attackers would stumble whereas defending local soldiers, familiar with the castle, would know the lay of the ground; low ceilings that force anyone coming through the duck, making visibility difficult; and, lastly, a plethora of spiral staircases turning clockwise, which would force right-handed soldiers (and all soldiers were right-handed, since the left hand was still associated with the devil) to switch their swords to their left hands as they ascended. Defending soldiers would have the right-hand advantage coming down the stairs. SO BRILLIANT.

3.      The one of the last people to nominally live in Cahir castle was, technically, Oliver Cromwell, possibly the most hated historical figure in all of history other than Hitler. He (Cromwell, that is) took a liking to it whilst on campaign and ousted the Butlers (Earls of Ormond, for anyone who cares about that sort of thing) from their ancestral home. They eventually regained it, but it gave the historian in me the creeping chills to think about that.

4.      I haven’t the patience to write all about Irish Elk/Giant Irish Deer/Megalocerus giganteus at the moment, for there is very much to tell about them, but I will mention that there was an admirable rack of Irish Elk horns/antlers/??? in the great dining hall at Cahir. 

Those things are approximately 10,500 years old, and that, my friends, is very old indeed.

My apologies if this has offended the delicate sensibilities of my discerning and gracious readers.

5.      To return to the pouring-hot-nasty-liquids-upon-thine-enemies tack from #2, our tour guide informed us that up until the advent of the firearm the Irish thought it cowardly to wear armor. They would go to war in their shirtsleeves while their enemies where covered in a good many layers of chain, leather, and metal. This meant that when the hot nasty liquids were poured on them, the armour melted and had the same effect as tarring someone. Brutal. And also badass (if you’ll excuse my French) of the Irish, doing battle in plainclothes and all. Reminds me somewhat of their dueling rules. Honor! Glory! Rules.

6.      We were allowed a leisurely time for walking about and exploring the castle after the tour, and a few of the towers (used as bathrooms, where ammonia gas from the toilet pits would be used to disinfect clothing hung above the john. Again, extremely clever) were open. The top of one was home to an attack pigeon (one friend submits that it was, instead, a pterodactyl) which became trapped between myself and my fellow intrepid explorers and a locked door; its fright was nothing compared to ours, and a near-death experience was had by all.

The river Suir from the pigeon tower. Cahir Castle is on an island in the river, ergo the whole thing is like a moat. Sooooo clever.

7.      Speaking of death, it was sobering to realize just how many people- Irish, English, Butlers, soldiers, civilians- had been killed through the centuries on the ground of Cahir castle. Compared to the Old Penitentiary (where, for those who don’t know, I interned this past summer) and its relative deaths, which can be counted on digits with your shoes off, the human cost of keeping Cahir castle was staggering.

On that morbid note I shall end this post, as my cake is baked and it’s time to prepare for a presentation in one of my classes. I’ll be writing on the Rock of Cashel sometime soon!