Liz's Ireland Journal

The Busiest Day I Ever Had in Ireland

          My busiest day ever in Ireland started late afternoon on Wednesday, June  18^th. The next day, June 19th, included a guest storyteller in class, a trip to Portumna to tell stories, Sandy and Dwight Oglesby arriving in Athlone, and the evening concert of the Three Rivers Storytelling Festival.

I picked up storyteller and scholar, Miceál Ross, at the train station in Athlone at 6:30 p.m.  Here’s what happened after that over the next 28 hours:

ü  6:45 p.m. – Drove Miceál back to the apartment, made him an omelet and visited with him and my flat mates Mary and Elizabeth.  He was able to explain the Lisbon treaty that the Irish had voted down. He had spent a lot of time campaigning for it and was livid that it hadn’t passed.

ü  10:00 p.m. – Before I went to bed I remembered that Sandy and Dwight would be arriving the next day at the Croi Oige Student accommodation.  I had forgotten to get towels ready for them, so I ran a load over to the laundry.

ü  10:15 p.m. – Went on to Google. Maps and got detailed directions to Portumna, emailed myself the link so that I could print them in the lab the next morning.

ü  11:00 p.m. – Thought through what stories I would tell the next day at the Portumna library.

ü  11:30 p.m. – Tossed and turned in bed until about 5:30.

ü  5:30 a.m. – Got up, showered, ate, dressed, and ran over to the laundry to put the towels in the dryer.

ü  8:00 a.m. – Made sure Miceál was up.

ü  8:15 a.m. – Went back to the classroom and printed off the map and directions to Portumna.

ü  8:30 a.m. – Started class and gave the students who were telling that evening in the concert a chance to rehearse.

ü  9:30 a.m. – Ran back to the apartment to bring Miceál back to class. We had an exciting session with him over the next hour and a half.  That's him regaling us at the beginning of the post.

ü  11:00 a.m. – Grabbed the towels out of the laundry and folded them when class was over.

ü  11:30 a.m. – Drove Miceál to the train station.

ü  11:45 a.m. – Carefully placed my map, directions, and cell phone in the seat next to me.

ü  11: 50 a.m. – Drove directly to Portumna with nary a false turn.  A beautiful drive through the Irish countryside. I took a conscious moment to remind myself how glad I was to be in Ireland.

ü  1:00 p.m. – Met the librarians, had delicious sandwiches and tea and then a  really satisfying session with the children and teachers from the local school.

ü  2:30 p.m. – Drove home.

ü  3:30 p.m. – Dropped my cell phone in the toilet and flushed before I realized it was in the bowl.

ü  3:31 p.m. – Cursed.  Cursed again.  Took phone apart to try to dry.

ü  4:15 p.m. – Drove to the bus station to wait for Sandy and Dwight around the time I thought they were supposed to arrive, since now my phone would not be receiving a call from them.

ü  4:30 p.m. – Found them, explained why I hadn’t answered the phone, and drove back to the apartments.  Found Gavin.  Found their apartment.  Took them their towels and a few other amenities.  Told them where the Londis was and that we would be leaving for the concert at 5:30.

ü  5:00 p.m. – Grabbed a quick bite, threw on a different set of clothes, attempted to style hair.

ü  5:30 p.m. – Drove Sandy and Dwight to the Aidan Heavey Library in Athlone.

ü  5:45 p.m. – Met Mae McLynn and the other librarians, moved some chairs, welcomed Danielle and our featured teller Jack Lynch from Dublin.

ü  6:30 p.m. – Welcomed the audience, composed of almost all of our Study  Abroad Ireland Students, the librarians, our arts officer from the Westmeath County Council, and several other local people.  Three of my students from the Irish Storytelling Tradition told stories:  Jake McKindles and Amber Watson (pictured), and Lindsey Stokes.  They all did extremely well. Jack Lynch was, of course, the star of the show.  In between emceeing, I posed for the photographer from the Westmeath Independent with Mae and Danielle.

ü  8:00 p.m. – Concluded the concert, gabbed with lots of people, and said our  good-byes.

ü  8:30 p.m. – Drove to The Shack for a celebratory pint with Jack, Danielle, Sandy and Dwight, my colleagues and several students.

ü  9:30 p.m. – Said more good-byes and drove home.

ü  10:00 p.m. – Fell in bed!

ü  10:30 p.m. – zzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

I Got Lost in Ballinasloe!

             We got back from Dublin on Tuesday afternoon, the 17^th of June.  Wednesday and Thursday were my days to tell stories in the Three Rivers Storytelling Festival.  I was expected in Ballinasloe for a 1:30 session at the library on Wednesday.  I wanted to be there at 1:00 so I could visit with Mary Dillon, the librarian in Ballinasloe and one of the Festival planners. 

             I’ve been to the library in Ballinasloe many times and I was sure I could drive right to it.  I did drive right to Ballinasloe, but then I spent the next 25 minutes driving around in the rain trying to find the library. I pawed around in my purse for my phone as I drove so that I could call Mary. I could not put my hand on my phone and convinced myself that I'd left it home. I hadn't.  Once I got there and calmed down, I found it lurking in a dark corner of my bag where phones should not go alone.

             I really was very close the whole time, but I just couldn’t quite get there. Check out this link for a map of Ballinasloe.  You’ll see it is not a complicated town.  How clever it would have been for me to have a nice map like this before I left Athlone! Perhaps also knowing which street the library was on would have helped. Or how about having my phone sitting in the console of the Nissan Micra where I could reach it?  This is a regrettably apt illustration of what my husband Mark often says about me: "What she lacks in facts, she makes up for in confidence." I was so sure I knew just how to get there!

            I finally stopped at the county council offices and got directions. I was only two blocks away from the library and probably hadn't ever been much more than that. I just kept finding new ways to circle it without getting there.  I walked in the front door of the library just as the children were walking around the corner from their school.  We had a good session, and when the children left, Mary brought out a beautiful tray of sandwiches and hot cups of tea.  That’s them at the beginning of the post.

Mary told me not to worry about getting lost in Ballinasloe. She said that signage in Ireland is terrible, and sometimes even nonexistent.  She told me about a time that she and a group of people were being driven to an event on the other side of the island in a small bus.  The professional driver got lost! 

It made me feel better, but I did get very explicit directions from her to my session in Portumna the next day. Portumna is on the north end of Lough Derg, and another 30 minutes past Ballinasloe.

Ballyhoo in Baile Atha Cliath

She is not an Irish town

And she is not English,

Historic with guns and vermin

And the cold renown

Of a fragment of Church latin,

Of an oratorical phrase.

But oh the days are soft,

Soft enough to forget

The lesson better learnt,

The bullet on the wet

Streets, the crooked deal,

The steel behind the laugh,

The Four Courts burnt.

This is the fourth stanza from Dublin by Louis MacNeice. Its baleful tone is a good match for my memories of Dublin this year, especially the first day or two.

The Gaelic for Dublin is Baile Atha Cliath, pronounced Bal-yeh Awe-hah Clee-ah, which means something like ‘town of the hurdled ford,’ or ‘settlement of the ford of the reed hurdles.’  Study Abroad Ireland goes to the Town of the Hurdled Ford every summer for Bloom’s Day, June 16^th, the day described in James Joyce’s Ulysses.

This summer’s trip to Dublin got off to a very bad start – one that left the faculty fearing ‘the crooked deal, the steel behind the laugh.’  We arrived at the Abbey Court Hostel to discover that our first night’s rooms had been cancelled.  Somehow, the hostel had figured out it was an error before we arrived.  Although they had already rebooked most of the rooms, they still had enough for about 40% of our group of 35. They had found additional rooms for the remaining 60% in a hostel quite a distance from the city center.

Mary and I divided up the group.  We stood out on the busy sidewalk and told everyone what had happened and who was going where. We made arrangements to meet back at Abbey Court early the next morning. The hostel paid for taxis to take them there.  We sent all the young men, some of the young women, and three of the faculty – both of the men and the most experienced traveler.

With the value of hindsight, I now wish I’d gone too, or instead of one of the other faculty. But, I didn’t; I stayed at the Abbey Court. Instead of sleeping in a room with a bunch of backpackers in their 20’s, I dragged the mattress from bed #5 – the one I’d been assigned – into Mary’s room and spent the night on the floor.  That’s me hamming it up in the photo at the top of the post.

It was very stressful. We were upset that the arrangements were scrambled and we were confused as to how they got that way. We were worried about the students we had sent out to the other hostel. Later we learned that the alternate hostel was not the most secure and that made us feel even worse. The students handled it with great aplomb.  Many of them stayed out very late which meant they weren’t even in those rooms for very long.  The next day the whole group was installed in rooms at the Abbey Court.

As I said to myself and to Mary several times, “Nothing bad happened.”  And that was true, but how did it happen that the rooms were cancelled? I was with Mary when she confirmed them earlier in the week.  Did the hostel get a call from someone meaning to cancel other rooms and accidentally cancel ours instead? The manager told us that she had talked to an American, but that was about all she knew.

And even though nothing bad happened, and our students more than rose to the occasion, it really put a dent in my Dublin enthusiasm. It was as if my anticipation of a great Dublin weekend had been a bright red balloon floating above my head.  Once it burst, I couldn’t let go of the string and drug it along, deflated, for the rest of the weekend.

Looking Over Dublin Town

I remember sitting on a roof, looking over Dublin town

It still seems so warm

A sunny day, the shirts were off with love in the air

Oh, we had it captured there

We didn’t care too much about the weight of it all

(from Dublin Song by T. Noonan )

Dublin got off to a rough start, and my enthusiasm for being there was dented, but not crippled.  I still managed to have some fun.  On Saturday night, even as we were reeling from the hostel mix-up, Mary and Elizabeth and I had dinner with Sandy and Dwight Oglesby at Dunne & Crescenzi, the great Italian restaurant where Liz Weir and I had eaten earlier in the week. 

Liz and her daughter Clare were in Dublin that weekend for their pilgrimage to the Leonard Cohen concert.  I met them and their friend Kay Sunday morning for brunch at The Queen of Tarts.  Liz said it was the best concert she’d ever attended.  Clare asked, “Is it wrong to lust after a 70 year old?”  We said it was not! After brunch with them, I spent most of the rest of the day with Miceal Ross.  We sat in Johnny Fox’s Pub on top of the Dublin Mountains and talked for several hours.

That night I ran into a group of students who were all heading out to take the Dublin Ghost Bus Tour. “It’s storytelling! You have to go!” So I went.  Most of the participants were about their age – early twenties.  I’m pretty sure I was the oldest person on the bus by a good 15 to 20 years.  As a storyteller, I’d have loved to had a crack at crafting the “stories” the actor on the bus told.  Some of them were really worth telling!  But, in his defense, he really knew his audience – they were delighted with their experience. And the point wasn’t really the stories, it was to create an opportunity for people to feel scared, jump, and squeal while simultaneously being perfectly safe.  The fun for me was being with our students – and that they wanted me to go!

Monday was Bloomsday, and I decided to go out for breakfast before the events.  On my way, I passed the hearse and re-enactors preparing for Paddy Dignam’s funeral, which takes up most of Chapter 6 in Ulysses.  Later we all trooped behind Mary to Meeting House Square in Temple Bar to hear readings from Ulysses by celebrities, politicians, writers, scholars, and diplomats.  We stayed less than an hour and then cut the students loose.  Mary and I headed for Hodges Figgis Bookstore on Dawson Street.  On our way to lunch at Bewley’s on Grafton Street, we passed Davy Byrne’s Pub on Duke Street.  Since the pub is mentioned in Ulysses, there were actors in the street playing a scene from the book.  It was great!  I wish the students could have seen that instead of listening to the Korean ambassador read from the first chapter.

After lunch we passed a living statue of James Joyce on Grafton Street.  He stood absolutely still until someone dropped coins into his case. Then he slowly and decorously opened a box and offered it.  Inside were folded scraps of paper with lines from Ulysses.  I can’t remember what mine said.  I stuck it in my pocket so that I’d have it for the blog, but I never saw it again. 

Once every one got settled in Abbey Court, Mary and Elizabeth had a room in a new building owned by the hostel.  It was a full apartment on the fourth floor of a building facing the Liffey.  Their window looked right across the river into Temple Bar.  One evening we saw a rainbow behind the buildings.  I took it as a good sign.

Clonmacnoise

I got to go to Clonmacnoise twice this summer.  It’s just south of Athlone on the Shannon.  It’s one of the most beautiful places in the midlands of Ireland.  Since I live in a place where the river is held captive to provide water and electricity, I love to see a river running free. The first time I went with our students; they were impressed.  The second time I went with Mark; he was not.  Both times it was crawling with busloads of German, and some Spanish tourists, but not many Irish people. 

The first time I went to Clonmacnoise was the first summer I taught for Study Abroad Ireland in 2005.  When we returned I went to the Londis, our corner market, for some groceries.  The young Irish clerk asked me where we’d gone that day.  When I told her we’d taken the Viking Boat down the Shannon to Clonmacnoise, she looked puzzled.  When I told her a little more about it, she shook her head, “No, it doesn’t ring any bells.”   Over the following years I’ve become ever more aware that the old sites and old stories of Ireland that fascinate me and other tourists are often of little interest or relevance to many modern Irish people. 

Nonetheless, the old stories and myths do a have a very strong presence in Irish life and culture. The Cuchualain Transport is just one example of how the mythic heroes pop up in everyday life.  It was parked outside the hospital in Athlone.  Maybe the connection is between the wheelchair and Cuchulainn's chariot.                                                The picture at the top shows five Study Abroad Ireland students at Clonmacnoise with the Shannon and its flood plain behind them. From left: Jared Corder, Kalli Fox, Ashley Bagley, Alex Shannon, and Ed Pettet 

Why I Love Clonmacnoise

His two guardian angels then came to Patrick and he asked them if it were the will of the King of Heaven and Earth that he be listening to the tales of the Fian.  They answered him with one voice: ‘Dear holy cleric,’ they said, ‘these old warriors tell you no more than a third of their stories, because their memories are faulty. Have these stories written down on poets’ tablets in refined language, so that the hearing of them will provide entertainment for the lords and commons of later times.’*

             We have texts like the one above from Tales of the Elders of Ireland because of monasteries like Clonmacnoise, a monastic site established in 545 A.D.  Although that particular story wasn’t written there, Clonmacnoise held a central role in the bardic system that recorded many of the old stories. We wouldn’t have many of the great tales of Irish myth if the monks at monasteries like Clonmacnoise hadn’t written them down.  Robin Flower in The Irish Tradition writes, “No evidence has ever been produced to prove the existence of writing for literary purposes in Ireland before the coming of Christianity” (p. 73).

As I’ve learned more about Ireland in early Christian times, I’ve developed a better understanding of why the Irish embraced Christianity in the fifth and sixth centuries. The Fianna were the warrior bands that patrolled Ireland.  There job was to protect the borders and the people.  At their best they did that with honor and glory.  At their worst they were bloodthirsty gangs. Their exploits make great stories, but the reality of living with them took a toll on the populace.  The translators of Tales of the Elders of Ireland write:

(T)he Church moved rapidly into a central and dominant role in Irish society.  Once established, it also felt obliged in Ireland, as elsewhere in medieval Europe, to mediate and mitigate the effects of endemic violence in society.  Thus it is likely that the Church was the major agent in the demise of the fian as a viable social institution.**

             Finn McCool, the greatest leader of the Fianna, represents the best of the honorable warrior tradition.  Finn was a poet and a warrior, and known for his generosity.  In Tales of the Elders of Ireland, St. Patrick asks Caoilte, the ancient warrior who had served Finn, if Finn McCool had been a good leader.  Caoilte responds:

             ‘Were the dark leaves gold, that the trees discard,

             And the white waves sliver, Finn would give away all.’

‘What has kept you warriors alive for all these years?’ asked Patrick.  Cailte replied, ‘The truth of our hearts, the strength of our arms, and the constancy of our tongues.’ ***

             That last line is what I’d like to see on my tombstone: Elizabeth Ann Warren, 1954-2054, Kept alive for one hundred years by the truth of her heart, the strength of her arms, and the constancy of her tongue.

*Dooley and Roe, Tales of the Elders of Ireland, p. 12, ** p. xii, *** p. 6.