The Fates Conspire and a Letter to Cork

I had planned a brilliant gallivanting journey all the way to Belfast for this weekend. It was going to include scenery, trains, old boats, and new friends, all of which are on my list top ten favorite things.

And then! O, alackaday, tragedy struck with the double-edged sword of a sudden fever and a blizzard between Dublin and Belfast, landing me in a comatose state unable to swallow and Iarnród Éireann unable to  run its trains to the North on time. Therefore I spent the weekend slowly puttering around my apartment, forcing liquids down my throat and trembling meekly. Very little gallivanting was had, but I did produce this thing here, in response to complaints that I don't write about Cork enough.

(If you do not like overblown silly melodramatic prose, this is not for you):

The (Surprisingly Smooth) Rocky Road to Dublin

With a much shorter turnaround time than you or I ever hoped to expect, I present the third cold, gray story of the last two weeks. Essay’s done and turned in, and before I settle into the next one I thought I’d take a word-vomit break.

One of my government classes (Irish Politics for Visiting Government Students, great class, five stars, highly recommend it) organized a field trip to Leinster House, the seat of Irish Parliament, to be followed by a sit-down question-and-answer session with a number of members of the Oireachtas. By this I do not mean an Irish dancing Oireachtas, a few of which I’ve had the pleasure of experiencing- rather, I will provide a quick glossary of political terms as Gaeilge for your edification:

Dáil Éireann- or just the Dáil. Pronounced just like “doll.” This is the lower house of parliament, i.e. the House of Representatives

Seanad Éireann- or just the Seanad, pronounced “shawnud.” It’s the upper house, the senate.

TD/Teachta Dála- pronounced “tawkta dolla.” It puts me (unfortunately) in mind of the colloquial phrase “dolla dolla bills,” and refers to a Member of Parliament. What a bright young academic I have become.

Taoiseach- The head of Irish government, the Prime Minister. Pronounced “tea-shuck”

Tánaiste- The Deputy Prime Minister, pronounced “tawnushta”

Oireachtas- The bicameral Parliament, consisting of the Seanad and Dáil. Pronounced (for those of us not well-versed in Irish dance lingo) “Orawktus.”

Now that you’ve a bunch of Irish words boiling about in your mind, allow me to return to the field trip. Keep your newfound vocabulary, though, as there will be a quiz!

Our professor was awesome enough to procure for the class both a time to sit in on the proceedings of the Dáil (which is the ________ house) and an opportunity to ask questions of the TDs in attendance. However, the only time available to do this was smack in the middle of the week- Wednesday afternoon, from 15:00 onwards. While this gave us plenty of time to make our way from Cork to Dublin by public transit, the trip would be a four-hour bus ride, three hours of political banter, and then four hours back. I was loathe to go all the way to Ireland’s capital city without taking the opportunity to have a look around. So, as per my usual, I hatched a plan. None of my wonderful classmates were particularly comfortable following me into the jaws of adventure, so I was to go it alone.

My plan was simple and altogether mundane, so I don’t know what the fuss was about on the part of the classmates. I decided to take a train to Dublin early Wednesday morning, wander about, taking in the sights until the meet-up at Leinster House, spend the night in the city, and then do some more sightseeing the next morning before hopping a noon train back to the South in time for my later classes Thursday. It was just about 27 hours in total, so nothing particularly big. I think the catch was that I was planning to couchsurf for the night. Have you heard of couchsurfing? It’s quite the wonderful organization, and is at its most basic level a website that lets travelers contact each other in order to have a free place to stay for the night. Hosts can also show their visitors around the cities or towns they live in. There’s usually some sort of cool exchange of knowledge that takes place, like cooking in exchange for guitar lessons or practice speaking a different language. Since Dublin’s hostels were already jacking up their prices to reflect St. Patrick’s day demand, I decided to give surfing a whirl.

I woke up far, far too early on Wednesday morning and slogged through forty-mile-per-hour/twenty-five-kilometer-per-hour winds replete with gusts of rain and off-course seagulls to reach Kent station on the East side of Cork. I grabbed a window seat on the train and cracked open my Postnationalism notes for the duration of the three-hour ride through misty fields and foggy glens and rainy towns with names like Portlaoise and Mallow. At last Dublin’s fair city came into sight, harsh industrial lines on the outskirts softened by the drizzle.

James Joyce, my erstwhile least favorite author and current favorite author, had a lifelong obsession with his dear, dirty Dublin. Walking from Heuston station to the city center, it became clear why. Dublin has all the history and myth of London but with ragged edges and maybe a bullet hole or two for punctuation. As I strolled along the quays of the Liffey (not quite so fair as the Lee, but a great river nonetheless), familiar names of revolutionaries and saints greeted me from every signpost and old pillared buildings caused me to wonder what all they’d seen. I was attracted by some excellent promotional billboards pointing me towards the National Museum at Collins Barracks so I took a detour through deserted weekday streets and found myself quite suddenly here: 

But it was definitely not this sunny. It was, in fact, too rainy to take a picture for fear of damaging my camera.

Favourite revolutionary? Maybe. Why don't you check this extremely trustworthy source and decide for yourself?

Collins Barracks houses the decorative arts and history divisions of Ireland's National Museum, and it was quite serendipitous that I literally stumbled upon it. Naturally, I gravitated towards the military history wing. I spent a good few hours wandering its four deserted stories of tommy guns, longboats, and battlefield dioramas in complete awe. This place had the coat Michael Collins was wearing when he was shot. I was in awe.

Eventually I made tracks for the heart of Dublin city and on the way popped by Saint Patrick's cathedral (but couldn't take the tour because they don't take card for admission) and the Iveagh gardens as well as a number of other significant gardens, greens, and churches. The weather was crummy, but who doesn't want to see Dublin in the rain? 

I stopped for lunch (jam scone!) at a three-seater cafe on the inner fringe of outskirts of the South Side and chatted with the waitress in French, which made me feel accomplished. The only other patron, a wizened Cork man, asked me where I was from (if I had a nickel for every time an Irish person inquired as to my place of origin I would be well provided for; if I had a dime for every time I had to explain the concept of Idaho, I would be fabulously wealthy and probably tanning in Lake Como at the moment, not writing this blog) and surprisingly knew where Boise, Idaho is. He had in fact been there. 'Tis a small world, so it is like. 

Again, it was definitely not this clement, but I was too busy inching through metal detectors to get a picture. 

My next stop was Leinster House itself, where I met up with my class and we waited in a plate-glass vestibule for a good long while before we were cleared for entrance. We marched through the gorgeous political halls to the Dáil chambers, where we sat in the balcony and watched the few pertinent members of the Dáil (called _______s, abbreviated to TDs) debate the implementation of a new funding scheme for the Garda (the Irish police force). It became very heated at one point and cross-partisans accusations of disrespect and breach of confidentiality flew around the room like... like agitated bats. We'll go with that.

The visitor-handlers at Leinster House were very kind and shepherded us next to a tour of the main premises. A security guard with a truly gnarly lip scar lectured us on the history of the building as we passed under portraits of every past head of state (called, in Irish, the ________) from Eamon De Valera to the blank space where the portrait of Brian Cowan, the most recently-replaced Taoiseach, will hang upon its completion. It was extremely grand.    

Definitely did not take this one either

After walking the many plastered, pillared, portraited halls between party offices and chambers, the class made its way to a discussion room with strangely cheery pastel cushions for us to sit on. A series of Parliamentarians from both houses (you've already answered for the Lower house, what's that upper one called? ________) cycled through between their committee meetings, constituency time, and a score of other dreadfully important TD things. I respect Irish representatives extremely, largely because they must devote every waking moment to government during the meeting times of the Dáil and Seanad. One representative described a typical day during this season to us, and it sounds particularly gruelling as Irish representatives are expected to simultaneously take care of the individual needs of their constituency (literally; TDs publish their home addresses, phone numbers, and have frequent open-door sessions when voters can bring their issues straight to the representative) and make the decisions that influence not only their district but every town, city, county, and province in Ireland. It's an extremely personal brand of politics, but leaves little room for national decision-making. 

I will spare you the gory details of Q&A with the TDs for, though interesting, this is not a blog about political theory. Rather I will speed on by to that evening and make mention that some of the TDs were hoots and a half. Irish politics have nothing if not character. 

No prizes for guessing who did NOT take this picture

I trotted on down to Trinity College afterwards, seeing Saint Stephen's Green and a goodly handful of stately government buildings on my way. I met up with my couchsurfing host on campus and got to see even more in the way of significant Dublin sights on the way to fetch dinner and later visit Temple Bar- which is, by the way, an area of Dublin, not a bar. I suppose there is a bar called Temple Bar in Temple Bar, but I did not go to it. It is said to be painfully touristy. Anyway, the highlight was the Bank of Ireland building which, prior to Independence and the purchase of Leinster House for the Free State in 1921, served at the home of the Irish Parliament. This impressive Palladian building was the first purpose-built bicameral Parliament house. In the entire world. That is extremely impressive. Keep in mind that it is now the Bank of Ireland building because its Parliament was that of the Kingdom of Ireland, aka that of an entity dependent on the British crown. As demonstrated by Cobh, the Irish are not enthused about using remnants of their colonial past. 

The next morning I got an exceptional tour of Trinity college from my host and, before hopping the tram for Heuston station, took a walk down O'Connell street to see Ireland's very own docked tall ship, the Jeanie Johnston. The poor Irish state hasn't the resources to sail her anymore, but she's been fitted out as a replica famine ship. I didn't have time for the full tour, but next time I'm in town it's at the top of my list! 

But let's talk about Trinity real fast. If you'll pardon my French, hot damn. The campus is incredibly gorgeous. While the Book of Kells had been shuttled away for maintenance when we went through the Kells exhibit, I got to see a replica of it in HERE:

This is the long hall in the upper story of Trinity's old library. It about turned me catatonic. There are sliding ladders. It is widely considered to be the most beautiful/amazing library in the whole of the world. I was properly awed by its double-decker bookshelves filled with books, folios, quartos, and other fascinating old document types with exotics names, some older than the United States, most older than the state of Idaho. The rest of the campus is equally breathtaking. 

I tried to photograph the campanile and campus but it was an epic fail. This is why I have not posted another picture I've taken before now.

...but I did take this one of the Jeanie Johnston.

I took the train home and made it back to Cork in time for class, which is just about as much as a girl could ask for. Dublin was a gorgeous city despite the drizzle and I'm hoping to return sometime to catch all the things I didn't this time around!

Now I have an Irish Language final to study for. Farewell. Quiz answers shall be provided in my next post!

Two to Three Gray Tales

Today’s post comes to you from a busy author, who has her first final this coming week! Wow! I was also [un]pleasantly surprised by an essay that had been, until Tuesday, a mere figment of my professor’s imagination and is due directly after the Saint Patrick’s day holiday. Woop woop. Thus, I am going to attempt to cram my last week-point-half into one post and hope it counts.

(I will make mention, as my poor parents were worried, that the four papers mentioned a while back were all completed with much time to spare and one has thus far received “first honors,” or “one-haych,” aspiration on the hhhhhaych, which is a much more distinguished way to put “A+.” Maybe multitasking is not such a bad thing after all).

Today I have three cold, gray, expeditions ranging across the Eastern half of County Cork and all the way up to Dublin to describe to you, which, despite the inclement weather, were still lovely.

The first of these cold gray expeditions occurred fairly early on Friday morning, when one of my history classes took a ramble to the towns of Glanmire and Rathcormac, both generally North of Cork city. Our destinations were two “great houses” in the Ascendancy tradition, Glanmire’s Riverstown House and Rathcormac’s  Kilshannig.

Riverstown House

Kilshannig

I shan’t tire you with the minute details of the respective owners of these houses, or an extensive treatment on the lavish plasterwork (and the controversial mystery surrounding the plasterwork: was it the famous Italian La Franchini brothers, or an imposter of theirs, that wrought the plaster? Was it an apprentice of the La Franchinis? Is La Franchini actually spelled that way, or is it Francini? Do you even need the La? Were they even Italian??? ). Instead, I will show you nice pretty pictures and give a few general impressions:

Have some pictures of plaster.

Houses like Riverstown and Kilshannig are so very rare in Ireland nowadays because after independence nobody particularly wanted to preserve big ol' mansions that had once belonged to the English usurper. Though they are evidence of a good three hundred years of tradition, oppression, and social stratification, as well as some damn gorgeous architecture and decoration, most were let fall entirely into ruin or were purposefully demolished. I don’t blame the Irish state for condoning this, but it is regrettable that there aren’t more surviving great houses for me, a selfish backwoods American with the historical decency of a carpetbagger, to see. I feel that in America (good old ‘Merica) a rumpus would have been raised at the demolition of these romantic bits of history, nationalism or no.

In any case, houses preserved in their original Georgian states are few and far between. Both Riverstown and Kilshannig sport the vibrant walls, ornate (La) Franc(h)in(i) plaster friezes, and at least some elements of the Paladian style in their construction. Kilshannig is much more grand, having belonged to a wealthy merchant (the sort who was once a Quaker, but was asked to leave the church for his failure to live simply and stay out of politics) instead of a Church of Ireland Bishop, as Riverstown did. The current family to own Kilshannig are breeders of Thoroughbreds and possess a creditable number of distinguished family portraits and gouache-heavy modern art pieces that reportedly cost a mint. They also were kind enough to feed the frigid band of history students tromping through their home tea and fancy cakes, which was immensely thoughtful.

Hand. Painted. Wallpaper.

Staircase at Kilshannig

Preserving such houses sounds like an absolute nightmare and a noble undertaking. Despite the fact that they don’t build ‘em like they used to (a witnessed by my own apartment; twelve years old and it’s already moldering like last week’s bread), it takes extreme effort to keep out the rain, vermin, and march of the centuries. I applaud the caretakers of both of these houses for that. 

Since you, gentle reader, were not there to goggle at the JAYKERS ‘TIS A CHERUB’S FOOT PROTRUDING FROM THAT PLASTER FRIEZE houses yourself, I’ll share some of the more interesting anecdotes:

Behold, a headless dove

Here is a dove whose head was shot off by a champagne cork, let fly by reveling United Irishmen (or some other rebel faction, it’s all apocryphal) during a siege on Kilshannig. Only one dove cooing among the plaster leaves in the front entrance has retained its head; the others have jagged stumps. Those rascally rebels.

Here is a deep well. It looks most dangerous and is surrounded by a ruined stable block with three stories of crumbling brickwork. Quite eerie, especially when contrasted with the glorious, perfectly preserved exterior of Kilshannig.

Now it is time for a revelation:

I wish to have a Georgian house.

I care not that they’re a bugger to keep warm, are in constant need of repair, will slowly eat away your vast fortune, and usually visit some disaster (i.e., collapsing ceilings) on their owners. One day, when I am by some miracle wealthy (here my parents are shaking their heads, ruing the day I chose a major in history) I shall endeavor to won such a house. And when students come to take a tour and ogle at my plasterwork, I shall feed them tea and cake.

Now, one very quickly to my trip to Cobh! It is pronounced like cove, though spelled see-oh-bee-hhhhaych.

Cobh is a lovely little town overlooking Cork Harbour, a body of water previously known as the Cove of Cork, ergo the town’s name. It was once called Queenstown, as it was the first place in Ireland to be visited by Queen Victoria, for a while; upon independence, the Irish state, for obvious reasons, wanted to get rid of the Queen references and thus shortened “Cove of Cork” to “Cove…” and changed its spelling to the Irish way, with a bee-hhhhaych, because of revenge purposes.

I went to Cobh by train early on a Saturday morning. The ride was lovely although the weather was, as I have already mentioned, quite dour. It’s only half an hour from the Cork station to Cobh, plus a short ramble into town along the harbor. Did you know that Cork Harbo[u]r is one of the many locations worldwide to claim to be the second-largest natural harbor in the world? ‘Tis a true story.

Our first order of business in Cobh was to get coffee to ward off the creeping damp chill. Then, we met up with our city tour at the Commodore Hotel. We had initially booked a boat tour of the harbo[u]r, but were informed the day before that the boat was not running for undisclosed purposes. Therefore we had to stick to the streets.

The tour was quite informative and focused mainly on Cobh’s designation as the last port of call for the RMS Titanic. As the guide romantically alluded, the eyes of Cobh were the last eyes to see Titanic… while she was still afloat. After our tour we stopped by the Titanic museum, located in the White Star Line offices through which the doomed vessel’s final passengers passed on their way to their watery grave. At the entrance we were assigned identities as passengers who had boarded in Cobh. I was Bridget Mary Sullivan, a twenty-one-year-old maid who was eloping with her boyfriend Joe. Myself/Bridget Mary did not make it off the Titanic alive, as I was cheerily informed at the end of the exhibit.

The museum was well-put-together and I would strongly recommend it to anybody passing through Cobh. However, it is an extremely sobering affair and not for the easily-disheartened. One of the highlights is stepping out onto the balcony upon which first-class passengers would have awaited the ferry that would take them to Titanic, anchored off Spike island at the harbor’s mouth. It was set up to be a beautiful moment, with the original pier from 1912 slowly crumbling into the cove and an industrial fog rolling out from behind the island. Unfortunately, a nearby café insisted upon blasting “Eye of the Tiger” quite loudly from some spot directly beneath Titanic’s pier, effectively ruining the beauty of the moment.

And he's watching us all with the eeeyyyyyyeeee... of the Tiger.

After lunch to calm our somewhat depressed spirits, we hiked up to the top of the town to see Saint Colman’s cathedral, the seat of the Bishop of Cloyne and an absolutely spectacular structure. As thanks for providing extra masses and spiritual council before their departures for the new world, many Irish immigrants who left from Cobh sent money back to the cathedral to build it up to be one of the finest in Ireland. Saint Colman’s was almost entirely funded by donation, and now I’ll let the pictures do the talking:

Now, I feel incredibly remiss for waiting THREE WEEKS to post this. Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. Therefore I shall truncate Three Gray Tales and make it Two Gray Tales and tack on Dublin sometime later, once I have finished this blasted essay on European Union agricultural policy.

Warm regards,

KB