Liz's Ireland Journal

Liz Weir visits Study Abroad Ireland!

The participants in Study Abroad Ireland had the pleasure and privilege of hearing Liz Weir in class on Monday, June 27th. Liz stayed with us for the whole morning, and during that time she told us 18 stories, provided us with her wisdom on the art and practice of storytelling, responded to questions, and gave us invaluable words to live by. At the end of our time together, Elizabeth Tejeda Payan first noted that she was a very accomplished woman and then asked her what life advice she would offer. Liz’s response was, “Value every day.” Later she added, “Keep yourself challenged.”

Here are the participants reflections on what they observed, appreciated, and learned:

Nicolette Beaulieu: I appreciated that she expressed that you can be an excellent storyteller with a shy personality. That was very encouraging. I learned that everyone has a story and sometimes when someone thinks they don’t, those are the most impactful ones.

Jules Corridan: I observed that Liz really embraces herself and her own way of storytelling. She is very enthusiastic when she tells. She also gets straight to the point when she tells her stories. I learned that you do not have to have any specific style of storytelling but just be yourself.

Ray Dutton: I noticed Liz’s restraint when telling, or not restraint but gentleness? She didn’t over emote where most would. It really helped build a calm atmosphere. It drew the listener in more. I learned about the importance of creating a community like space for storytelling, being on the same level as the audience and having everyone looking at each other.

Axel Bejarano Fahl: One thing that I noticed about Liz was that she didn’t need to use excessive body movements. With her voice, she led the story and it served as a tool for humor to amuse. A key takeaway from Liz was that if we as audience want to become storytellers, listening is going to be as essential as talking. Knowing who our audience is will also help us in what kind of language to use as well as time and place.

Adamari Giachetti: I liked how she admitted she was shy and had to learn to do this. I also liked how she said that it wasn’t necessary to shout or boom your voice. I learned that to be a good storyteller, you have to listen. Listen, listen, listen. Yes, talking is important, but the key is to listen.

Noel Martinez: I observed that Liz’s stores were short, but fast paced with lots of detail. I enjoyed it very much. I learned that storytellers are still very valued across the globe and that the good ones, such as Liz, get to travel a lot.

Sarai Lopez: Something I observed about her style of telling was the way she told in detail – it was very fun when she made us repeat after her like we were in control of the story. Something important I learned from storyteller Liz Weir was that “Stories make us who we are.” I believe that this statement is very powerful and ultimately true.

Elizabeth Tejeda Payan: I really like Liz’s works/service, especially when she spoke of trauma and mental illness and providing a safe space with storytelling and actual therapists. I thought was amazing. Every time she spoke, I was impressed. What a good human.

Anna Thornton: I really enjoyed Liz’s storytelling style. It felt very personal. I think that’s partly to do with her personality, but I also think she just really knows what she’s doing. I learned that really anyone can be a storyteller. Liz said that she’s shy and it really didn’t seem that way to me, but she’s also had years of experience. It showed me that with practice, we can be good storytellers too.

Vaughn Yerkes: I enjoyed how Liz’s stories were seamless between her speech. She was very good/specific about location. I learned that there are story parallels between Irish telling and Native American telling, and the word moccasin has Gaelic roots.

Malcolm Young: I appreciated Liz Weir’s very natural storytelling style and how she’d flow from story to conversation. I also liked how Liz learned all our names at the beginning and seemed to make a genuine effort to maintain eye contact and form a connection with us as an audience. I also really enjoyed how Liz provided very interesting history for her stories without it feeling too expository. It was mostly just background context for the Troubles, or the people involved.

From left to right: Nicolette Beaulieu, Adamari Giachetti, Jorge Leon, Elizabeth Tejeda Payan, Axel Bejarano Fahl, Noel Martinez, Ray Dutton, Jenny Tripp, Vaughn Yerkes, Saria Lopez, Anna Thornton, Malcolm Young, Isabel Abadia, and Jules Corridan. Liz Weir seated in the front.

Orla McGovern visits Study Abroad Ireland!

 

Orla McGovern visited Study Abroad Ireland in Athlone on Wednesday, June 23, 2022.  Orla is an actor, writer, event organizer, and storyteller based in Galway. The participants were captivated by her compelling style of storytelling and how they felt pulled into her stories.  Here are some of their comments:

Isabel Abadia: I observed the way Orla used facial and arm movements to add to the dramatics of the story. I learned that holding back emotions adds to the feelings that the audience feels.

Nicolette Beaulieu: I really liked hearing her stories and how her repertoire was so multidimensional. She embodied her stories so much so that it was easy to get lost in the story along with her. It was interesting hearing about her story-making process. She was very encouraging and was open to explaining her though processes. Overall, very positive experience.

Charlie Ellis Bradford: I liked her body language and expressiveness. I learned how vocal tone affects a story.

Ray Dutton: I noticed Orla’s casual air and tendency to slip into story rather than announce herself or say something like “once upon a time” or “long ago.” I liked this as it felt more immersive, less separated from reality. I think I learned about how to make the story more immersive by including the audience or room. This grounded the story further in reality.

Adamari Giachetti: I observed that I really enjoyed how Orla added a lot of different voices for the characters and how she added a lot of emotion. I learned that you can tell stories well without having to know it word-for-word. Unless they are traditional stories, then you would have to know it well.

Joely Hollander: I really liked how Orla was very descriptive in her storytelling which made it very easy to picture the stories, as well as her emphatic tone which pulled me into the story. From her, I learned about the Magdalene Laundries, which I’d never heard about before. The moment in her story when the woman grabbed her arm made me cry and I realized how absorbed I was when she finished the story.

Jorge Leon: I observed how people naturally have their own storytelling style despite them having little to no experience with storytelling. I liked the history of storytelling in Ireland. I learned about adding or taking away from performances thanks to my storytelling.

Sarai Lopez: I noticed that when she was telling her story she pulled a lot of things together when she talked about her life. I liked that she was theatrical and the EYE CONTACT! And she dragged me into the story when she grabbed my arm. I LOVED it! I also love how encouraging she is as well. I learned that if you hold your emotions, it has a pull-back method which made me feel the emotions she was feeling.

Susie Papadopoulos: I really liked how she told her own story and was telling stories naturally and extremely passionately which was very captivating, and she made every story seem very real.

Elizabeth Tejada Payan: I truly enjoyed how her storytelling just seemed to flow like regular conversation. It really drew me in. It moved me, the story of the nuns. I had no idea things like that happened in Ireland. Her story brought tears to my eyes.

Anna Thornton: I LOVED having Orla come to class. I was entranced. When she told the personal story of the Magdalene women, I cried real tears. I loved how she got lost in her own story. It pulled me in like magic. I loved her style and I learned how I could maybe incorporate some of that in my storytelling. I also really liked the advice she gave about writing stories.

Faith Wheelington: I loved the way that Orla used outside sounds to bring her stories alive. She was very personable and made it very easy to speak to her. I saw how she used different techniques to story tell like improv and her theatre background.

Malcolm Young: I noticed Orla had a very natural way of picking up a story by leading into it with the flow of conversation. I learned a lot about pacing and taking time to embellish details to the audience and the teller can get lost within the story.

Back row L-R: Axel Bejarano-Fahl, Faith Wheelington, Ray Dutton, Noel Martinez, Jorge Leon, Malcolm Young, Charlie Bradford, Nicolette Beaulieu, Isabel Abadia. Front row L-R: Joely Hollander, Sarai Lopez, Elizabeth Tejada-Payan, Orla McGovern, Adamari Giachetti, Susie Papadopoulos, Jenny Tripp, Anna Thornton.

Go here to learn more about Orla and her work.

Delicious Day on the Antrim Coast

Saturday and Sunday, June 9 and 10, 2018

After the bus left Loughcrew to take the students back to Athlone, I drove up to spend the weekend with Liz Weir at Ballyeamon Barn, the tourist hostel she operates. We had dinner with the Lynn family (Ciara, Fergal, Eabha, and Orlaith) at Harry's in Cushendall, which is our tradition. I didn't get to see them last year, so it was a privilege to visit with them, see how much the girls have grown, and get caught up a little bit on their lives.

The next day Liz had arranged a very special treat for us.  We spent all day on a guided food tour of the Causeway coastal route with Toast the Coast, led by its creator, Portia Woods. We started at 11:00 a.m. at The Bank House in Whitehead and ended up at 5:30 p.m. at Mary McBride's in Cushendun. At each of the six stop we met the owner, or the chef, or the whiskey expert to give us context and details about what we were eating or drinking.  It was a spectacular day!

Our first and second stops were the The Bank House in Whitehead and Ann's Pantry in Larne. Clockwise from the top left: Breakfast at The Bank House, where owner and manager Sinead Brennan told us the story of the transformation of their building from a bank to the restaurant and gift shop it is today, and life-size wicker statues in their garden; a button box in the yarn shop that shares the building with The Bank House; the manager of Ann's Pantry decked out for a community event, and the front of Ann's Pantry, where we were served thick cut rashers and grilled potato bread.

Our third stop was at Ballygally Castle in Ballygally and on Ballygally Bay.  Clockwise from the top left: tapas and gin cocktails and two of the rubber ducks that are the signature of the Hastings Hotel chain which owns the castle; a view of the castle grounds; our two gin options - Jawbox or Shortcross; the view from the castle to Ballygally Bay, and Portia Woods presenting the gin!

Our fourth stop was at Glenarm Castle.  I'd been there before with Liz, and another time Mark Goldstein and I had visited the gorgeous gardens there.  I was surprised to see that the tea rooms had been doubled in size and very much modernized.  We had some time to wander the garden before we sampled the fare.  Clockwise from the upper left: Adrian Morrow, the estate manager at Glenarm Castle, provided us with all the details of the salmon hatchery near by and the source of the beef in the photo diagonally from this one; a lavender hedge outside of the Glenarm potting shed; our plate of locally grown salmon and beef; a look down one of the lanes in the garden.

Our fifth stop was at the Londonderry Arms Hotel in Carnlough.  There we were treated to a whiskey tasting and lots of whiskey information from the very enthusiastic and knowledgeable Martin Davey.  We also learned that Winston Churchill had briefly owned the hotel, having inherited it from his aunt.

Our final stop was at Mary McBride's in Cushendun.  Liz Weir treated us to a story and we had a delicious beef and Guiness stew. Below, in addition, to stew and Liz, is a view of the coast near Cushendall from the bus on the way to Cushendun.

Liz had cleverly had someone drop us off in Whitehead in the morning, and Raymond Watson came from Cushendall to pick us up in Cushendun. We went back to his house for tea and talk, and then he took us back to Ballyeamon Barn just in time to get ready for the session at 8:00 p.m.

Free Weekend!

Saturday and Sunday, June 9 and 10, 2018

The students returned home from Loughcrew late afternoon on Friday.  With Saturday and Sunday completely open, many of them ventured out into the country. On Monday we heard reports from Cork, Galway, and Westport among others.

I had driven my own car to Loughcrew so that I could drive on up to Northern Ireland to spend the weekend with Irish storyteller, Liz Weir.  

(A couple more pictures from Loughcrew: The one at the top is our group in front of Cairn T. Below, several people sat and told each other stories at the ancient site. Rachel Borghese is telling to Kim Pearl, CJ Werner, Tessa Charley, and Limda Ems.)

Loughcrew

Friday, June 8, 2018

The first Friday of the program is the day we go to Loughcrew in County Meath.  It’s part of the Boyne Valley Neolithic ceremonial complex that includes Newgrange. As Jean McMann notes in her book, Loughcrew: The Cairns, “People have probably been telling stories about the Loughcrew Hills for more than five thousand years.” The stories I know best and love most are about the Cailleach, the titanic, earth creating goddess who is credited with creating the cairns on the tops of the hills by filling her apron with boulders and then jumping from hill to hill to distribute them.

Loughcrew is made up of three hills, and the center one is called the Sliabh na Cailli, or Sliabh na Caillighe (both these spellings are on signs at the bottom of the hill), which means Hill of the Cailleach, or more commonly, Hill of the Hag. A fourth hill, Patrickstown, is often called the grave of the Cailleach.  There is a heap of stones at the base, and a story says that as she tried to jump there she fell, broke her neck and dropped the rocks in the wrong place.

The Sliabh na Caillighe is the only hill that the public can access.  There is a little car park about midway up the hill, and it is always staffed by people from the Office of Public Works.  Cairn T, the largest on any of the hills, is aligned to the equinoxes. On those days, the sun shines straight down the passage and illuminates the carved stones at the end of the passage in the center of the cairn.  George Knight, a guide that worked at Loughcrew for several years, explained that this was the sun fertilizing the body of the goddess to bring life to the land.

The day was cool and a little rainy – the first cool day we’d had since we arrived, as Ireland had been experiencing a hot dry spell for almost two weeks.  We always stop for lunch before we climb the hill.  In the past, we’ve stopped at Loughcrew Gardens, down the road about half a mile from the steep, narrow road that leads up the hill. This year we went the Loughcrew Megalithic Center, which is just 100 yards around the corner from the carpark.  One of our students, Cynthia Herda, was exploring as she waited for her lunch, and she found a well that had been dedicated to Mick Tobin.  Mick was a man of great local knowledge, and a fixture at Loughcrew for many years.  When he died, a monument was erected to him in the carpark on the hill, featuring a poem written about him by George Knight.  Cynthia had read about Mick in a blog post of mine and came running to ask if I knew about the well.  I hadn’t seen it before, and wouldn’t have if we hadn’t changed lunch venues, and if Cynthia hadn’t gone wandering!

 The Cailleach isn’t the only Loughcrew based celebrity to have stories told about her.  When I searched The Schools Collection (duchas.ie) for stories from Loughcrew, I found several about her but also about the mythical foster mother of the god Lugh, Queen Tailtiu.  The site is also associated with Ollamh Fodla, a legendary lawgiver, and the lands around Loughcrew once belonged to Oliver Plunkett, a Catholic martyr executed in 1681 and beatified in 1920.  Check out these seven stories about Loughcrew from duchas.ie here. They are filled with stories, poems, geographical information and more. 

One little story collected by Frances Fitzsimmons had a version of the cailleach’s story I’d never seen before. In her version, the goddess doesn’t just drop rocks or boulders, she drops entire hills!

(The image at the top is Emma Abreu and Nik Dunlap on the west side of Cairn T at the Sliabh na Caillighe, the next is of Mick Tobin's well, and the last is from Frances Fitzsimmons' copybook.)

First Week of Classes

Tuesday, June 5, 2018:  The Irish Storytelling Tradition meets from 9:00 – 11:30 a.m. Monday through Thursday for the four weeks of the program. Since the first Monday of June is a holiday, our first class was on Tuesday. I met the students in the carpark outside our apartments at 8:45 a.m. to walk them across the street to the Athlone Institute of Technology, where the program rents a classroom.  Two walls of the classroom are windows, one is bright orange, and the last is the front with a board and a screen.  We had introductions and I tried to quickly memorize everyone’s name.  We then did a story exercise called “Learn a Story Fast” that gets participants immediately into Irish stories and shows them that learning and telling a short story is a manageable and fun thing to do. We took a break and made a quick visit to the excellent AIT cafeteria. I then reviewed the syllabus, expectations, and homework assignments and it was 11:30 and time to go

Wednesday, June 6, 2018:   Day two began with approximately half the class expressing concern about the amount of work that would be required between my class and Barry’s Irish Religion to the Middle Ages. Dr. Vaughan’s class covers Celtic myth and religion, including the Irish gods and goddesses, and the great Irish epic, The Cattle Raid of Cooley, and on into early Christianity on the island.  In my class we study and tell the stories from the mythic cycles, the saint legends, and the folktales.  Our two classes fit together perfectly.  Participants do have a lot to read, and in my class they have something due every class period: reading responses, story summaries, and reflections after each story they tell in class. Both classes meet graduation requirements for those who will be applying the credits towards their degree: Barry's class satisfies the Humanities requirement, and mine qualifies for Global Awareness. 

After reviewing and discussing my expectations for their assignments, we talked about the Celtic wheel of the year (cardinal directions, elements, seasons, time of day, and time of life), the Hill of Uisneach as the physical and mythological center of Ireland, and Athlone’s role in the middle of the country and of Irish history.

After a break, I taught them basic story structure, and provided them with a list of prompts to quickly craft a short story about themselves. We then moved the chairs into a circle.  Each person told the story they had crafted to their neighbor on one side, and then again to the neighbor on the other.  Several people were willing to then tell their story to the whole group. We talked about the role of personal and family stories in traditional storytelling. That got everything flowing again and people left class in a better frame of mind.

Thursday, June 7, 2018: The last day of our first week was devoted to preparing to visit Loughcrew on Friday and to them finding their stories to analyze and tell.  Loughcrew is a Neolithic passage tomb complex spread over four hills in Co. Meath, about 34 miles of the Newgrange, the Unesco World Heritage site.  Access to Newgrange is carefully controlled, but while Loughcrew is monitored by guides from the Office of Public Works, we are free to wander all over the site and enjoy the monuments and views.

The Irish name for Loughcrew is Sliabh na Calliagh. The students were assigned to read the blog posts I’ve written about Loughcrew over the years, and about the titanic goddess it is named for, the Cailleach.  We reviewed their responses to the reading, and I told several stories about the goddess (How she and her sisters formed Ireland, how she made Loughcrew by dropping boulders from her apron, an alternate version of the story that includes St. Patrick, and The Best Walker in All Ireland, a folktale about her documented in the 1800s). After a break, participants had about an hour to read and look for stories they wanted to summarize and tell. I have a good selection of books containing Irish myths, legends, and folktales for students to use.  Danielle Allison, an Athlone based teacher and storyteller, keeps them for me during the year and uses them as she needs to.   Every year the collection is supplemented by a few from her collection, too!

Here are the posts from previous years that I’ve written about Loughcrew:

• http://irelandjournal.typepad.com/lizs_ireland_journal/2007/06/st_patrick_and_.html
• http://irelandjournal.typepad.com/lizs_ireland_journal/2008/06/there-really-ar.html
• http://irelandjournal.typepad.com/lizs_ireland_journal/2009/06/the-goddess-of-rocky-places.html
• http://irelandjournal.typepad.com/lizs_ireland_journal/2013/06/child-of-the-solstice.html

Since the students were concerned about “drowning” in readings, I thought this would be a good story to include in the post.  M. Daly, a student at the Christian Brothers School in Athlone in the late 1930s, collected this story from his (her?) father.  Lough Ree is a lake on the River Shannon just north of Athlone.

A Legend of Lough Ree:  Once upon a time a man named Feenan lived in Bally Kieran. One day he was out spearing eels in Bally Kieran lake. The spear disappeared in the water and he could not get it up. That night a knock came to his window. He got up and saw a mermaid outside the window. She asked him if he lost a spear and he said he did. She told him the spear was stuck in her daughter's eye and asked him to come and take it out. She promised to bring him safely back on dry land and he went with her. He took out the spear and she left him back on shore. She then asked him if there was any favour he wished. He wished that he would never be drowned. She then promised that no one of his name would ever be drowned in the water of Lough Ree.

(The image above is the mermaid inside Clonfert Cathedral near Ballinasloe.  The image below is a swan and her cygnets on Lough Ree earlier this month on a glorious sunny day.)

 

Excursion to Emo Court and The Rock of Dunamase

Monday, June 4, 2018:

The first Monday in June is a Bank Holiday in Ireland.  Bank holidays, always on Mondays in Ireland, are really just public holidays when most people can count on a three-day weekend.  The first Monday in June is always the first Monday of Study Abroad Ireland, too.  Since the Athlone Institute of Technology is closed that day, we take our first excursion.

This works for several reasons. First, it’s nice to get out into the countryside before classes begin.  Second, most people need another day to adjust to the time difference, and being outside climbing hills is good for that.  Finally, we go places that provide context for what we are teaching.  The two places we visit on our first excursion are Emo Court and The Rock of Dunamase, both near Portlaoise.  They represent the beginning and the culmination of Norman and then British domination of Ireland.

Emo Court was the home of the Earls of Portarlington, and the house was designed in the late 1700s by the famous architect James Gandon who also designed the Custom House, the Four Courts, and the King’s Inn in Dublin.  We tour the house, which was given to the state by the last owner, Cholmeley Dering Cholmeley-Harrison. (“Cholmeley” is pronounced “chummly,” fyi.) The house is nice, formal and fancy and all that, but the gardens are magnificent.  They contain over 1,000 varieties of trees, including sequoias, and hundreds of shrubs and exotic varieties of rhododendrons, azaleas, and camelias. I sat under a huge oak tree in a little secluded rhododendron cove and had a short forest bath. Heaven on earth. (The picture is my favorite room at Emo Courst. The columns are Connemara marble, of course.)

After Emo Court, we go to the Rock of Dunmase, the ruins of Strongbow’s Castle. Strongbow, Richard de Clare, was a Welsh-Norman lord. Dermot MacMurrough, the King of Leinster, was deposed in 1166.  He then sought support from Strongbow to regain his throne.  Strongbow agreed and arrived in Leinster in 1170 with a bunch of knights, thus beginning the Anglo-Norman invasion of Ireland.  Dermot did regain his throne, but died shortly thereafter, leaving a power breach the Wesh-Norman lords were happy to fill. Obviously, a much more complicated story, some of which Barry told us as we sat on the ruins on a cool breezy day.From the top of Dunamase, you can see why someone would build a castle there.  Ideal strategic location: you can see miles in every direction. (Below - miles of farmland, town, and countryside, with the Slieve Bloom mountains in the distance to the south-west.)

 

I found a story on dúchas.ie that is a good fit for the tree gardens at Emo Court. It’s a Rip Van Winkle type folktale, a type that occurs all over the world.  I learned a Welsh version from John Good years ago. Even though the Irish version is set in a graveyard, I always imagine this story happening in a wood. In short, a man goes into the wood and becomes enchanted by the singing of a bird, or wakes to the singing of a bird.  When he returns home, he learns that 20 or more years have past.

Here is the Irish version from Moyvoughly, about 20 miles north east of Athlone, collected by Liam F. Cox in the late 1930s:

Rehan Townland – How It Got Its Name

At one time a monastery of monks flourished here (situate about one mile from moyvoughly on the Ballymore side - the old grave are still traceable underneath the grassy sod). The story goes that on one occasion a monk left the monastery and went to pray in some part of the grounds. While he was praying a bird came and lighted on a tree nearby and commenced to sing sweetly. The monk listened. After a time - coming on to evening the bird stopped and the monk returned to the monastery but on reaching it he found all new faces, the monks were all different men. He explained who he was and the monks looked up the monastery books and found that the monk was one that was there forty, fifty or sixty years before. The local explanation of Rehan is a singing bird, and so the story of the singing bird.

 

(Christopher Gettens - aka Christmas Glasses - followed by Nancy Wolter and me at Dunamase.)

Orientation and Walking Tour of Athlone

Sunday, June 3, 2018

We use one of the apartments in the complex as a computer lab.  It’s on the ground floor in the block across the parking lot from the one we stay in, next to the manager's office.  We met there at 10:00 on Sunday morning for our on-site orientation. 

Jet-lag was much in evidence, but almost everyone showed up.  Barry covered the basics: start a list of the things that need attended to in the apartments, where to go and not go in Athlone, class times and locations, general safety and logistics.

We met at 1:00 for the walking tour of Athlone.  We walked from our apartments to Athlone Castle, and then to the lane of shops past the castle, and back around past the post office and the Garda (Police) station to the bridge.  Below is our route:

Barry leads and I bring up the rear to round-up stragglers. He paused frequently along the way to talk about the train, The Shack (his favorite pub),the Polish grocery and why there is one in Athlone, the milestone placed in 1780 marking the distances to Moate and Ballinasloe, and the Franciscan Friary.  Once in the center of town, we walked down Friary Lane to the River Shannon.  It was a glorious sunny day and scantily clad Athlone residents were sunning themselves on the benches along the river.

Barry talked about the crucial importance of the Shannon in Irish history as we admired the river, the 
bridge, the lock, and the weir. We then walked over the bridge to the castle and as we crossed, we saw the Viking Boat heading up to Loch Ree and many houseboats with people lounging about to catch the sun.  Once at the castle, we scrambled up to the highest point we could get to. We sat while Barry gave us a longer talk on the role of the castle and the bridge, and how the loss of the bridge in the Williamite War of 1790 had sealed the domination of Ireland by the British.

Down around the back side of the Castle is the old part of Athlone, containing Sean’s (the oldest pub in Ireland, dating to the 900s), and several other popular spots to eat and drink.  Given the sunny warm day, all the places were hopping and there were lots of people on the street.  It felt festive!

We walked  around on Castle Street, which within a few steps becomes Main Street, and then High Street, and past a good stretch of shops and restaurants on O’Connell Street, including the Bastion Gallery, the nicest gift shop in Athlone.  We then turned and went back up Pearse street to the bridge. Barry then released us to make our way back to the apartments as we wished. (The picture at left is a mural at the corner of Pearse and O'Connell streets.)

I walked back down to Dublin Road, the ancient road that links Dublin and Galway, to the taxi rank by the Prince of Wales Hotel.  But there is massive road work in progress right in the middle of town and the road is closed to vehicles, so there were no taxis.  I walked on east past my favorite pub, Flannery’s, and then turned south to Golden Island.  Only one taxi there, but I hopped in and made it home.

 

I wrote about the Schools’ Collection in the previous post.  The stories are all available at dúchas.ie.   The  Irish word dúchas means heritage, but also contains concepts like birthright, ancestral home, and kindred affection. The stories are still in the process of being transcribed, and anyone can apply to assist in the transcription efforts.

When I checked the website for stories about the bridge in Athlone, I found a fantastic version of a world folktale type, The Man Who Became Rich Through a Dream.  In most of the versions of the story, a poor man repeatedly dreams he will become rich if he goes to a certain bridge far from his home.  Once he gets there he meets someone who laughs when he hears about the poor man’s dream. He tells the poor man that he too has had a dream of riches beneath a great tree in the poor man’s home village.  “But you won’t see me traveling all that way for a dream!” So, the poor many rushes home, because of course that great tree is in his own yard. The poor man digs up the treasure, shares with his neighbors and the church, and is poor no more.

The version from Dúchas is called “Hidden Treasure,” and it was collected by Annie Morgan from John Morgan,  a 68-year-old farmer in Williamstown, Co. Galway, where the story is set.  Of course, the Irish version is a little different, and no one actually gets the treasure in the end.  In fact, the protagonist, Peter Doherty, who travels all the way to Athlone Bridge, loses two fingers when he tries to recover the treasure.  My favorite part is when the storyteller asserts the credibility of his story: “The only proof my grandfather had of the truth of this story was that Peter Doherty lacked two fingers off his right hand ever after. No attempts have since been made to recover this hidden treasure because people fear the fate of Peter Doherty.”

 

(Athlone Bridge on a cloudy day in 2017.)

 

Where Are We?

Study Abroad Ireland is based in Athlone, Co. Westmeath, in the Midlands of Ireland. When we meet Irish people who don’t live in the Midlands, and we tell them we stay in Athlone they are astonished.  They almost always ask, “Why?”  Why would we come all the way from America to stay in Athlone?  In the Midlands, where it’s flat and nothing is happening?

We stay here because the Midlands, and especially Athlone, is perfect for us. Athlone is at the crossroads of Ireland. When you are in Athlone, you are in the middle of Ireland in every way – geographically, historically, and mythologically.

The Shannon River, the longest river in Ireland flows through it from north to south, and the ancient Dublin to Galway road goes through from east to west.

There has been a ford on the Shannon since the Bronze Age. The first bridge was built in the 11th century, and Sean’s, Ireland’s oldest pub, has been around since the 900s. Just a few miles to the south is Clonmacnoise, one of the most important monastic settlements.

Less than 20 miles to the east of Athlone is the Hill of Uisneach and the Aill na Mireann, The Rock of Divisions.  This has been known as the sacred center of Ireland since there were people in Ireland.  Modern geographers have confirmed that the ancient people got it right:  the hill is within six miles of the scientifically determined center-point of the island.

An old Irish text, The Settling of the Manor of Tara, tells that it was great immortal Fintan who stood at the Rock of Divisions and divided Ireland into its five provinces: Ulster to the north, Leinster to the east, Munster to the south, and Connacht to the west.  And he named one other province: the royal province of Meath, the province to unite all the others. 

Athlone, so near the center of it all, is where two of those provinces still meet.  When you are on the east side of the Athlone bridge you are in Leinster; on the west you are in Connacht.

There are three main theories on the name “Athlone.”

The first is that it means the Ford of Luain. According to Sean’s Bar, that establishment was originally the Inn of a man named Luain, right at the ford, where people could rest and get refreshment.  The Irish word for ford is atha. So, Atha Luain became Athlone.

The second comes from the Irish national epic, The Cattle Raid of Cooley.  At the end of the story, after Maeve’s brown bull killed and dismembered Aillil’s white bull, a portion of the thigh, or loin, of the white bull was stuck on the horns of the brown bull.  When the brown bull passed by the ford on the Shannon that now bears its name, the loin fell into the water.  It was then after known as the ford of the loin, or Athlone.

A third suggestion is that the name means the Ford of the Moon, Atha Luan, with Luan coming from the Latin luna, or moon. 

My favorite story about Athlone’s name comes from Miss Maureen Farrell. Maureen was in the 5th standard, or grade, in Moate somewhere between 1937 and 1939.  You can see the page from Maureen’s copybook here.

Maureen and 50,000 other Irish children from 5,000 schools were sent out to their families and neighbors to gather “oral history, topographical information, folktales and legends, riddles and proverbs, games and pastimes, trades and crafts.” They gathered 740,000 pages in Irish and English that are still being transcribed and catalogued.

Here is Maureen’s story about how Athlone got its name:

There was a battle in Athlone many ages ago. A man was coming along the road after the battle. He saw a wounded man by the roadside, He said to him "Thou art alone".  And from that day to this the town is called Athlone.

Maureen didn’t include who she got this story from.  I like to imagine her father, or one of her grandparents telling her this story.  Maybe by a peat fire, or as they walked to school, or made dinner. I can see Maureen neatly writing it down in her copybook, which was carefully preserved by her teacher, and then by the National Folklore Commission, so that eight decades later we can read it on our computers and think about her and her family.

Getting Settled

Saturday, June 2, 2018

Goal for the day:  Stay awake until 8:00 p.m. without taking a nap.

We arrived in Dublin at 8:00 a.m., which is midnight Arizona time.  I didn’t sleep on the plane this time, so I was worried about driving from the airport to Athlone.  In some past years, I’ve had to pull off and take a nap, but this year I was fine.  I got a very large coffee drink about half way and that did the trick.

The key to getting past jetlag quicker is to not nap on the first day, and to stay awake to as close to normal  bedtime as possible.  So, Barry keeps us all moving. By the time I got to Athlone at noon, Barry had everybody sorted to their apartments.  Once I got there, he had three of them bring me my bins from storage, and I got unpacked.

A great mystery is this: Why does it take so long to pack, but the unpacking can be accomplished in a flash? I had my whole apartment set up by 1:00 p.m. That was the time Barry had announced that we would all be walking to the Tesco in the Golden Island Shopping Center, 1.2 miles from our apartments in the Croi Oige (Young at Heart) Student Accommodations.

But having just rented an adorable white Kia Picanto, I did not walk to the Tesco.  I drove over with one of the participants whose knee is bothering her.  We did our shopping, hung around and visited with Barry and some of the other participants as they came and went with their bags, and then went back to the apartments and unloaded.

Only 4:00 p.m.

I made dinner, watched a little Netflix, went over and visited with Barry, called Mark on Skype.  That took me to 7:00 p.m. and I gave up. I was in bed by 7:30 and asleep by 7:31.

I woke up about midnight completely disoriented, but other than that slept well and woke up early the next morning.

A few weeks ago, Mark found me this perfect Roz Chast cartoon in the New Yorker. I do often think that it is even more mysterious to wake up in my body every day than to find myself outside of it.  So when I woke up disoriented in the night I thought of the cartoon and laughed. 

Once again, here I am.

The picture at the top of the post is the view from my apartment window.  The second picture is the entry to Barry’s apartment.