Stones, Boats, and North

About a month and a half has passed since the events described in this blog transpired, but better late than never, as I always say. Now you get stories and pictures, and when it comes to blogs it is imprudent to ask for more.

This journey of epic proportions began with my wonderful Aunt Rita (hi, Rita!) kindly volunteering to come and visit me in chilly Cork. We would hire a car (one does not rent a car here; one hires a car from a car hire) and go speeding down the wrong sides of Irish roads in pursuit of scenery and escapades and culture. Our journey would take approximately a week and put us through twenty-two of the thirty-two available counties, in both the North and Republic, and all four provinces. Below is a map, colored in charming pastels, which I have drawn on (poorly) for your benefit showing the general route.

We missed the counties of Mayo, Monaghan, Cavan, Longford, Westmeath, Offaly, Laois, Kildare, Tyrone, and Fermanagh. We’re saving them for next time.

The circumambulation of Ireland began on an inauspicious Easter Sunday. I woke up to pop the extremely fancy pesto-stuffed chicken I’d made for Easter brunch in the oven and found that every single electrical appliance in the apartment had ceased to work. After a frantic hour or so lodging calls to the landlady and flipping switches like madwomen, the inmates of number twelve Grattan street got the fridge running and lights working. Our less-than-fantastic luck continued the next day when, en route to Belfast, we stopped by the immigration office to finally register myself with the state. However, it being Easter Monday, it was a bank holiday and that particular office was closed. My dear beloved bank here in the magnificent land of Hibernia hadn’t processed my deposit until Good Friday, so I was quite nearly an illegal alien in Ireland. Yet, postponing our gallivanting off through the counties by a day allowed for some adventures around Cork, which brings me to…

Phase One!

As a UCC student and technical resident of Ireland for the past five months, I’ve been fairly hesitant to partake in the more diddly-eye tourist activities offered from the Northern highlands, to the Western islands, from the hills of Kerry, to the streets of Free Derry (Which, as the Waxies will tell you, belongs to you and me. The views expressed in this video are not necessarily those of the author.) Blarney Castle is one of those things from which I shied away for the first three months of my stay, due to its association with loud, culturally insensitive tourists, wearing leprechaun shirts and asking after corned beef, searching for the gift of the gab. However, it’s only a fifteen-minute tool through the countryside North of the city, so we set off to kiss the stone quite soon after being denied the opportunity to register me with the Garda Siochaina.

One thing to Blarney’s credit: it is drop-dead gorgeous. The weather was chilly and damp, with icy crystals of quasi-snow in the air and a gale blowing up at the top of the tower. The majestic tower of Blarney castle and the elegant gardens, park, and turreted mansion (Blarney House) were, however, a perfect contrast in the teeth of the wind, order and right angles and beds of chipper daffodils despite the frost. The cold had also culled out the weaker tourists, so the line to climb the tower and plant a smooch on the Blarney stone wasn’t as long as I’ve heard tell it can be.

Still, the stone sits embedded in the wall at the very top of the tower. It is part of a machicolation; that is, an opening in the wall through which projectiles can be hurled to repel an enemy. You may remember this vocabulary word from the post on Cashel and Cahir. Waiting to kiss it was a line of people winding all the way down the narrow, dark, clockwise-turning staircase- probably three or four stories’ worth of mumbling, shivering folks, some of whom were frightened of the dark or the height or the tight space. There were many small children, but they tended to be the hardiest of the lot. Behind Aunt Rita and me was a young man from Florida who was deathly scared of heights and was chattering nervously to distract himself. It was all very tense.

 

At de top dere

At the top of the tower it was nearly snowing and my hands were numb. We snuggled into our collars as we watched the stone grow ever closer, with each successful kisser grasping a pair of iron bars for safety and sliding down over the parapet to plant a big one on the Blarney stone. Blarney castle employs someone (or a number of people) whose job is to firmly cuddle each and every gab-getter to make sure they don’t accidentally go slithering through the iron grille just below the stone itself, hundreds of feet down. While this was somewhat uncomfortable, it’s certainly preferable to the original method of kissing: stone smoochers in days of yore used to be dangled over the edge by their ankles.

While we’re waiting, let me tell you, in three sentences, the history of the Blarney stone:

1.      The official statement from Blarney castle is that it was given to a McCarthy forebear by Cliodhna, the sea witch goddess.

2.      McCarthy, one of those rebellious Desmonds who’ve built every castle I’ve thus far mentioned, used its magical properties to sweet-talk his way into winning a lawsuit

3.      Ever since, McCarthys and everyone else for that matter have been able to gain mystical skills of flattery after kissing said stone.

Blarney, by definition, is improvement of the truth, usually in the form of sycophancy, and while I reckoned I could use that skill every now and again, I wasn’t overly concerned with gaining the gift of the gab. I’ve had enough Blarney practiced upon me to know how often it fails to achieve the desired effect.

Still, when it was time to lay down on the plastic mat and slide on out over the ledge, I must admit it was rather thrilling. I made sure to kiss the underside of the stone; legend has it that annoyed locals urinate on the thing at night as revenge against the tourists that clog their roads with their shoddy driving. I gave the rock a chaste peck (no stone shifting here) and clambered back out. It was not that bad, although our Floridan friend about died for fright.

After Blarney we roadtripped to Cahir (which YOU know all about) before heading back to Cork city for some publicious sightseeing.

The next morning we at last got my official foreign resident card run off at the Garda station and made tracks for the North. Our goal was the town of Portrush, situated far and away up in county Antrim. Our route took us up the entire East coast of Ireland, with notable views to be had of Dublin and Belfast both. Incredible sunsets, seaside vistas, and snowy fields of snowy sheep rolled by our windows.

The highlight for me came in New Ross, a town in Wexford on the river Barrow. This town has two claims to fame: it is the ancestral homeland of the Kennedy clan, and is currently homeland to the famine ship Dunbrody.

I’ve mentioned the famine ship Jeanie Johnston numerous times on this blog, and so you gather already that such a vessel entails a gorgeous three-masted ship at permanent anchor, furnished with frightening mannequins intended to educate the masses on the conditions faced by Irish emigrants fleeing the famine during the middle of the nineteenth century. Dunbrody is another such thing, but the catch was that I wasn’t expecting it. When we came zipping around a hairpin turn into New Ross and I saw its yards and topmasts silhouetted against the noontide sky, I about screamed.

“OHMYGOSH! IT’S ATALLSHIP!” I gasped, flailing like a beached whale. An agile beached whale, too.

Aunt Rita did not understand my garbled screeching or gesticulating (sorry, Rita) and was concerned that we had hit a small animal or child. However, I soon calmed down enough to make my sentiments known, and we summarily decided that a tour of the Dunbrody would be the only way to keep my blood pressure at a normal rate.

The tour was perfectly overdone, with actors, mouldering mannequins, copious fiddle music, and fake puke buckets in the hold. I was in raptures. I feel like I learned a whole lot of nothing as any new information I might not have picked up in my numerous history courses addressing the famine (which was, as you know, a genocide) went straight over my head. I was too busy casting loving glances at crisply tarred shrouds and smooth sanded gunwhales. Not even the actress portraying an upper-class termagant poking me in the bicep with a bony, suspiciously manicured fingernail and asking if I stole her chamberpot could ruin my argument that this was the best historical experience ever.

After disembarking from the Dunbrody we continued our way up North, reading aloud Keats short stories and eating jaffa cakes. The border breezed by us without comment; it wasn’t until I saw a sign referencing our exit of county Down that I realized we had been in the North for a good half hour. We stopped for petrol and had to pay in pounds; the accents were different and the attendant was named John, not Sean. I will leave you in the darkening streets of Portrush, Northern Ireland, where we parked on the side of a cliff overlooking the harbor and its rainbow of boardwalk carnival lights. I have a concert to go to and I shall finish the story presently!

Ta ta for now!