'Round abouts the 29th of August we took a little trip to the Ring of Kerry. Having arrived in the country only a week before and not having made any plans of my own, I was happy to go along on a day trip with my new friends. This also meant I had no idea what the Ring of Kerry was. "Ring" to me implied some kind of architectural structure. My misconception was quickly corrected when we got on the bus and the driver kindly informed us that the Ring of Kerry is, in fact, a road that (surprise, surprise) goes around the county of Kerry.
Our day dawns cloudy with light, scattered rain showers. Our first stop is a brief one in Killarney for a cuppa tea. We pass the Lakes of Killarney and pause to take pictures - through the bus window since it is raining again. The clouds filling the sky are dramatically turbulent and the lakes peeking through the green landscape are calmly silver. But the bus window is dripping and I have to lean over two seats to get a shot. The landscape that sweeps by in the intermittent rain reaches out to the horizon in layers of green and misty gray hills. We stop for lunch at the Red Fox Inn where they served traditional Irish meals, warm and filling, perfectly complimenting the traditional weather. We head toward the coast and stop at Dingle Bay where we are told that on a clear day we would be able to see Dingle on the far coast and dolphins in the water. Looking up as we drive off again, the cliff slopes gently upwards and then more steeply, disappearing into the mist. Flickering by the bus window, the purple heather and the yellow gorse tangle with thick grass and rough boulders. The mist thickens even more the further we drive along the coast. The the driver says, surely we can image this view over the water, the most beautiful view on clear days. We pass where the Skellig Islands, barren islands of rock in the sea that monks once inhabited, might have been seen on a clear day. We make a mid-afternoon stop in the town where Charlie Chaplin had a house and a statue of him stands by the side of the road with a swath of green behind him leading to a rocky beach and choppy surf. Some folks get an Irish coffee in the pub and we catch a little of the (Gaelic) football game. The rest of the afternoon fades into evening, a darker gray and I drift in and out of napping. We stop in another rainy town for some supper, I have packed my own, and then pull back into Cork under a clear night sky.
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We spend the beginning of the next week learning about material culture and food in preparation for a trip to Bunratty Castle and Folk Park. The weather is still questionable, but by the time we arrive at Bunratty on Thursday, the rain has cleared and it stays sunny for our time there. We get a brief tour of the castle, actually a tower house, and then are turned loose to explore the castle and folk park on our own.
And now for the educational bit: The first castle built on the site was a wooden structure erected about 125o by Norman adventurer Robert de Musagros and by the end of the century the town had reached a population of about 1,000. In 1275 the lands were granted to Thomas de Clare by Edward I. De Clare built the first stone castle, drove out the natives, and brought in the Normans. The Irish, upset by this intrusion, attacked, led by the Ó Brien and Mac Namara families. By 1450 they finally managed to drive out the Normans. The present-day castle was built by the Mac Namara family at that time and was later taken by the Ó Briens. Henry VIII made the Ó Briens earls. Their wealth put them in the top 2% of the population. It was attacked and ruined in the Cromwell and Williamite wars and by 1700 was deserted. It was restored in 1959 and has operated as a tourist destination since then.
And some more interesting tidbits, given by the tour-guide, a delightful English gentleman who started off his talk with a little jig as we waited for the whole group to file in. His job was actually mostly upkeep of the castle (tightening the beds, for example, as well as working on the restoration of tapestries, a very long, intense and expensive undertaking):
1. How did they get those huge dressers and whatnot into the castle if they were made in carpenter's shops and the doors are rather short? Medieval Ikea. Most of the furniture is held together with wooden pegs so furniture was brought into the castle in pieces and assembled there.
2. Spiral stairs (there are a lot) were built clockwise so that (right-handed) attackers could not use a sword coming up the stairs, but (right-handed) defenders could swing freely coming down the stairs.
3. Limestone darkens with age, so the walls were whitewashed every year to keep them bright.
4. There are 11 steps down to the dungeon plus one around a blind corner. The last step is 15ft. deep.
5. The murder hole was a hole above the drawbridge through which defenders could pour boiling oil onto attackers' heads.
6. The holes in the walls throughout the castle were for eavesdropping, just like in the movies.
7. All the decorations and furniture in the castle are authentic medieval and renaissance items.
In the folk park, post-famine houses from around the country were moved and re-constructed in the park to show what typical homes might be like from poor farmers to strong farmers to fishermen. A village main street is also re-constructed there with a potters' shop, lace shop, pub, doctor's house, and printer's shop. The pottery, lace, printer's and even the pub are all in operation, following traditional methods of their trades. I wandered from house to house, delighting in the discovery of coop dressers, beds out-shot, parlours, and byre houses. Now and again I would run into others from my class, but almost immediately would get left behind as I tried to take a picture of the Shetland pony or the fishing nets or the sewing machine. By the time I got to the village street, evening was setting in. In the print shop, the gentleman was just closing up when I came in, excited at the sight of a letterpress through the window. Prints of poems and quotes with quaint, hand-colored illustrations hung on clotheslines to dry and lithographs of lettering, again hand-colored, from the Book of Kells were in racks like postcards from the past.
By the time I finally tore myself away from the print shop, the evening sun was casting a thick, bright golden light across the landscape. I passed a field of goats and sheep, paused in a house that has just closed the dairy section, or rather, ice cream shop and made my way to the walled garden. I took a few minutes to fight with my camera that was complaining of a dying battery before giving up and just enjoying the view from the top of the garden with the Irish countryside rolling out beyond the lower wall. I hurried my steps on to the Ardcroney Church, beautiful in its simplicity (to prove they were not Catholic). The clear glass window at the altar actually made me think of an episode of the Vicar of Dibley in which (after much turmoil and amusement on the part of the viewer) the church installs a clear glass window instead of stained glass because the view is the best in town and what better way to worship God than by looking out at His beautiful creation and being thankful that you can live in it. As a Welsh family and I left, the grounds-keeper locked the door behind us with a huge iron skeleton key. As I made my way out of the park, I passed the mills and the sheep again and convinced my camera that it could take a few more pictures.
The evening was spent lazily curled up in my hotel bed, reading. Dinner was slated for 8:45pm and so we all gathered at 8:20 to go back to the castle. We were greeted with a goblet of mead at the door to the upper hall and musicians played as the dinner crowd mingled. We were formally welcomed, briefly serenaded, and an earl and wife were crowned from the crowd for the night. We trooped downstairs to the long trestle tables (fifteenth century originals) and were given a brief lecture on the eating of food (it is to be done with your dagger and fingers!). Course one: soup as only the Irish can make it, drunk slowly, filling you up and served with their amazing brown bread. A rousing chorus of "No, nay, never! No, nay never no more! Will I play the wild rover! No, never, no more!" was sung. We moved on to course two: the most delicious spare ribs I have ever eaten. Bones were discarded into a bone bowl and fingers were rinsed in the finger-bowl. The main course was chicken breast with a sauce and vegetables. The chicken and vegetables came together and a platter of small potatoes was given to every six or so people, to be stabbed and consumed at will. Wine was free-flowing throughout the meal (I had to water mine down, it was rather strong) and by the time the desert course came around, some tables seemed to be having the best time of their lives. Desert was a berry mousse thing with peppermint leaves and was served with (gasp!) a spoon! After-dinner entertainment was a-capella singing, songs with harp and fiddle accompaniment, and a beautiful slow fiddle and harp duet. All performed by the servers, dressed appropriately for the Renaissance. Coffee and tea were served in the dungeon (converted to a room with informational signs about the history and restoration of the castle) afterwards and we slowly made our way back to the bus which took us to the hotel. Some folks opted to go across the way to Durty Nellies and the rest of us tumbled into contented slumber. Which, coincidently is what I should be doing now.
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As I have written this post, the night has passed into the wee hours and the partiers (some of them, anyway) have returned. Tonight is the night of the big 250 for Guinness (Arthur's Day, September 24 is the birthday of Arthur Guinness). My flatmate Elodie came home around 11:30 and informed me that all of Cork was celebrating. That is to say, the majority of the population is drunk. Just below me in apartment 6, a party grew from dinnertime through about 11pm. I opened the window to hear the lively flute playing coming from below (alcohol does not affect the Irish musician's ability, apparently). For about two hours on and off, the intrepid player was reeling off jigs. I ate some ice cream and popcorn. The party broke up to go out, though from the yelling on the street, it seems they could not agree on which pub or nightclub they would be going to. I turned on the television for company as the revelries died out below. And eventually I turned it off because it was just getting too bad. So I guess it is about time to wrap this up. I'll come back in the morning and read this again because I've probably misspelled things and created very ungrammatical sentences. Maybe I'll add a couple pictures. But for now, good night!
Edit: Well, I've corrected spelling and grammar, though I'm sure there's still something I missed. I also realized I forgot to mention the drive home from Bunratty. We stopped briefly in Adare, supposedly the most beautiful village in Ireland. It has a number of thatched buildings still, and a really cool abandoned abbey on the river. But our teacher only gave us 15 minutes because she wanted to stop in Killarney where we could take shelter. She seemed to think the weather was going to be bad, but it was just a little cloudy with a bright sun coming through and a pleasant breeze. Oh, we said sarcastically, wouldn't it just be awful having to walk all around town in the weather? But the decision had been made, and when we got to our next stop, the Muckross House, I was glad of it. It cost to have a tour of the house, but there was a nice cafeteria where we could get lunch that wasn't too expensive and the grounds were gorgeous. The house is situated on the edge of one of the Killarney lakes and has a number of beautifully laid out gardens, from flower garden to rock garden to English garden to artfully placed old trees. My camera was grouchy, but I got a number of good pictures before the battery really died. Then it was home again to Cork.
Edit, edit: So the internet or blogger is being annoyingly uncooperative and not uploading any pictures, so maybe some other time I'll try again, but here's the link to the relevant album on facebook (there's a lot more trivia in the captions and Blarney is in there, too), enjoy!
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=122291&id=571278438&l=6a49b16e02
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