Monday June 13, 2011
Today we left the west coast of Ireland and headed for Dublin. On the way, we stopped for a tour at Cruachan Ai, the possible location of Queen Medb and King Allil’s palace. These two figure in the Irish mythology that we studied in “The Tain,” the story about the cattle raid that Medb instigates when she realizes that because her husband possesses a fine bull and she does not, he surpasses her wealth. Medb was a warrior (as indeed were most Irish women) who fought alongside her husband and her own soldiers on the cattle raid. The place of women in Irish society is unlike anything I’ve ever heard about before; they seem remarkably “forward” or liberal, for lack of a better term. The women had all the rights belonging to a man, and she had control over her own lands, servants, family etc. But what impressed me the most was that the Irish had specific laws in place to protect children. They considered any sexual union that resulted in a child being born as a “marriage” in that the child was always considered to have both a father and a mother. By law, there was never a fatherless or motherless child (what we would term an illegitimate birth) in this society and there was always, by law, a caregiver for a child. The protection afforded the child, someone who never asked to be born and should be cared for just by right on being a human being really impressed me; it’s an idea we could learn from in our society.
After finishing inside the museum, we bussed over to some of the actual sights we had talked about. The most interesting by far was the cave considered to be an entrance to the faeries’ world. Six of us crawled down it, no easy task by the way, as it began as a small, muddy steep opening to wriggle through and continued as a rocky, again muddy, and very dark passage into the earth. It opened up to standing height and before about 15 feet down but we didn’t go much farther than 30 feet since it became very muddy and none of us had prepared for a small spelunking adventure.
Our tour guide provided me with a bit of comic relief during the 3+ hours we were at the sight, simply because I could definitely see myself as being just like her. She was obviously incredibly passionate about her job and about the Cruachan Ai site. She kept wandering off the beaten path of the tour’s information into tangent after tangent as things she had said before sparked new information she wanted to tell us. It became the longest tour I have ever been on (and a little exhausting as the wealth of information began to drift together) but I totally understand how she got as carried away as she did. It’s fun to talk about things about which you’re passionate.
We drove to Dublin then where we’ll be for the next week. The first item on the agenda was LAUNDRY as we have all been running out of clothes. I’ve really never appreciated the excitement of actually getting to do laundry. The hot water, that delicious-smelling detergent, the dryer were nothing at all different than normal but after having to wait for it, it was luxurious. It’s the little things in life, really…
Tuesday June 14, 2011
We started today with a trip to Newgrange, a ceremonial burial site that has been dated to 3500 BC. We were lucky enough to have arrived early and were the first tour of the day, and so the customary horde of hundreds, if not thousands, of people were nonexistent. The workmanship, scale, age and mystical “aura” surrounding the monument was astounding. The intricate designs of swirls and interweaving spirals, geometric triangles and zigzags showed the skill of the ancient Irish on a micro level while the vast scale of the monument and the feat of engineering that it was to create it shouts their abilities at the macro level. The mathematical calculations and the creating of passage so that exactly at the winter solstice, the beams of the rising sun would flow directly through the door header, pass up the winding passage way and illuminate the entire inner chamber is staggering. I wish I could be there for that!
After Newgrange, we hopped back in the bus to see Glenn de Lough, which means “Valley of Two Lakes” and was the sight of an early monastic community. The site, like all the other places we’ve been, was beautiful and peaceful. We toured the ruins of the monastery then decided to hike up a trail that led to a view of both lakes. We all stayed together for about the first hour, then when going got rougher, all the girls but Shannon and I turned back to go take a nap. The rest of us climbed on. And on. And on. Although the stairs built up the mountain did remind me of the Never-ending Steps the Frodo and Sam have to climb in Return of the King to get into the backdoor of Mordor, the view, once again, was worth it. As we stood and looked around us at the mountains, we could barely see the top of the Glenn de Lough’s round tower peeking through the trees and were imagining the relief pilgrims journeying to the monastery hundreds of years ago would have felt at finally glimpsing it.
On the way the Glen de Lough, we ALL passed out on the bus. This last week has been exhausting but I had hardly noticed it because it has been so enjoyable. It finally hit this afternoon and we all slept most of the 1 ½ ride between the two sites. It was lovely, to state it mildly.
Wednesday June 15, 2011
Today we took a day trip to the Yeats Tower and the towns of {town name} and {2nd town name}. Joyce lived in the Tower only for a short time, but the opening chapter of his masterpiece book, Ulysses, takes place in a similar tower with characters based off of the guys Joyce was living with at the time. Even though we knew it was Joyce and his friends who had really lived there, it was easy to imagine Stephen Dedalus, not Joyce, and Buck Mulligan instead of Joyce’s good friend. The Tower is one of an old garrison built to defend the Irish coast from Napoleonic attacks but once that threat was no longer eminent, the government began leasing the towers to people very cheaply. It is directly on the coast and right beside a swimming hole and Charlie took the plunge, not once but twice, into the frigid water, reminding us all of an episode in Ulysses where Buck Mulligan does the same thing.
After eating our lunch overlooking the sea, we took a 6 km. hike over a mountain to the next village. The hike was beautiful and not difficult at all. The path ran directly on the side of the cliffs and we could look down and see the aqua blue water crashing on the rocks and the sea birds wheeling around, even though they looked like specs from the height at which we were walking. We finally arrived at the beach on the other side of the mountain and all took off our shoes to cool our feet in the freezing water. This time Drew and Charles, not to be outdone, joined Charlie in another plunge into the surf. They said the water was indeed, as Joyce puts it in Ulysses, of “scrotum tightening” temperature.
While we waited for the train to take us back to the city, we stopped at a pub for drinks, tea, Irish coffee, Pringles, Cokes etc. etc. etc. and then all found a cheap dinner at a vegetarian Indian restaurant back in Dublin.
Thursday June 16, 2011
Today, June 16, is “Bloom Day” here in Dublin, the day the James Joyce’s iconic novel Ulysses takes place. We opened our day with lunch in St. Stephen’s Green, the place Joyce stumbled through drunk one early morning to be taken in by a kindly Jewish man who took care of him and made sure he was ok. This man and this situation became the basis for the character Leopold Bloom in Ulysses. Today, there were people all over the place acting out scenes from Ulysses, dressed up in period costumes and wishing everyone happy Bloom’s Day. It was so cool to see people engaging so completely in a literary tradition that encapsulated for them their cultural heritage.
After lunch, we walked to the National Historic and Archeology museum and spent a few hours there looking at artifacts from all of Ireland’s history from Stone Age up through our modern period. Most interesting by far were the Bog People. Over the last 200-300 years, people have been uncovering humans buried in the bogs while they were harvesting the peat for fuel. Multiple sets of remains have been found not only in Ireland but all over Europe, and they often show signs of intense mutilation before they were buried. Authorities speculate that these people were human sacrifices that were the placed on tribal boundaries as peace offerings to the gods of the land. Sometimes, this practice was used to get rid of rival candidates to the throne, criminals or prisoners of war.
From the museum, we walked to the National Library to see a Yeats exhibit. It was amazing. As soon as you walked in, there was an area set up with recordings of people reading some of Yeats’ most iconic works, accompanied by pictures and the text of the poem. I got stuck there for 15 minutes before I even set foot in the rest of the exhibit! They had original, hand-written manuscripts of his poems like “Easter 1916” and “The Wild Swans at Coole” and “Prayer for my Daughter” which was amazing to see, and there were multiple exhibits about different important parts of his life, like his unrequited love for the actress Maud Gonne, his immersion the cult of the Sacred Rose and involvement with the Irish uprisings. I bought a book of Yeats’ poetry here and have been so enjoying reading it bit by bit in my little bits of free time. After this, our group of students walked to the National Art Gallery which was lovely. We spent about an hour there, spread out in ones and twos, absorbing the paintings. Dinner and going out for some pints rounded up the day.
Friday June 17, 2011
We began our day with a tour of Kilmainham jail, the place where many of the leaders of the Easter Rising in 1916 were imprisoned and executed. The jail was built in the “reformed” style, meaning that the inmates were given work to do as well as an extremely structured day within the prison walls. Based on the idea that “Idle hands do the Devil’s work,” the prisoners’ work consisted of unbinding the fibers of the massive, tar-coated ropes used on ships. They were separated from each other, ideally in separated cells although over-crowding of the prisons often made that impossible, and they were allowed 1 hour to attend to religious duties and 1 hour for exercise in the prison yards which consisted of walking in circles without making eye contact with other inmates. Children were also imprisoned, usually for stealing food in the midst of the Potato Famine. The reason we went to see the jail was because it was the sight of the execution by firing squad of the leaders of the rebellion. Before this time, most of the Irish considered the revolutionaries who wanted to break British control over Ireland as trouble-makers and did not look on their activities with a sympathetic eye. However, when the British, so summarily and without preamble, killed these men, public opinion rounded to them in anger over the injustice they suffered. In their deaths if not completely seen in their lives, these men spurred on the cause they loved, that of Irish freedom.
From Kilmainham, we walked over to a big museum that housed an exhibit dedicated to the Easter 1916 uprising, the same rebellion I was talking about above. We walked through and saw newspaper clippings, pictures, letters, and other things from the revolutionaries to each other and about public reaction to the uprising. It was here that Gretchen realized that she left her wallet at the supermarket at which we got lunch, so Julie, Charlie and I walked with her to go find it. Luckily, someone had turned it in so in gratitude for walking through the chilly rain with her, she decided to buy us all pints. As we headed back into Dublin on the Luas (an electric tram system), we started chatting with an Irish guy who turned out to be a college student as well. He found out we were heading pub-ward and took us to one of his favorites. We chatted over pints for an hour and then parted ways. Random, but super fun.
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