Liz's Ireland Journal

My Travels at a Glance

View Ireland 2009 in a larger map

Google has a cool tool for creating interactive maps.  Click on the blue balloons for brief descriptions of where I traveled this summer. On the map I created, the straight line that runs from Derry to Roscommon actually went through Donegal and Sligo.  I'm not sure why it won't show it that way here.  And I haven't figured out how to embed links to the blog posts for the the spots either. I've written about most of them in the posts below.

Click the link to see a larger map, and then play around with the options.  I love to click "satellite" and then zoom in as far as I can.  When I did that on the Beara Peninsula, I could actually make out the Cailleach. I placed the balloon directly above a tiny dark point. That's her! When you look at the map using the satellite option you will see large orange patches.  Those are the bog lands.  The largest ones are being harvested by Bord na Mona, the Irish energy agency. 

SATURDAY NIGHT AT THE BARN by Eileen McIlwaine

    I've written posts here,  here,  and here  about a great session at Ballyeamon Barn on Saturday night, June 27. Eileen McIwaine, a regular on Saturday nights and at the weekly writer's group also held at the barn, thought it was a great session, too.  She wrote the poem below in praise of it. Thank you, Eileen!

Do you play an instrument, sing a song, or tell a yarn?

Then the place to be on a Saturday night is Ballyeamon Barn

Originally from the Land of O’Cahan there’s Martin O’Kane

Sure there’s music and song in the sound of his name

He plays banjo, sings, and does recitations too

And shares witty ditties, like the “beast” he bought from Micky Dubh.

If a song you’re after, Charlie McDonnell is your man

He’ll sing the haunting “Galway Bay” or the humorous “Transit Van”

And if there’s a lull in the proceedings between the music and the craic

I’m sure he’ll entertain you with the lively “Rosie Black”!

Young Bernadette Crawley has a fine singing voice

She’ll sing in Irish or English, whatever your choice.

To get to the Barn Tony Magill doesn’t have to come very far

You’d travel for miles to hear him recite “Our Wullie’s Motor Car”!

There’s another Ravel-Glen man, Mr. Alex Fyfe

Who sometimes brings Patricia, his own charming wife.

To any musician Alex could give them and their money a run

As he sings “The Blue Hills of Antrim”, or strums “Cushendun”.

Another man with talent it soon becomes clear,

Is composer and versifier, Mr. Hugh Speer

Once you’ve hear Hugh’s compositions, “Rathlin Island” or  the “Old Homestead”

You could go home happy and get ready for bed.

 

Not forgetting Cathal Carey who has links to Loughgiel

With his playing and singing the music scene he could steal.

Any James Taylor song on his guitar he can hack

Go for it, Cathal, you’re the new man in black!

Jonnie and Diane play both saw and guitar

To hear this talented duo you’d travel near and far.

There’s the Dall’s own very funny Feargal Lynn

How do I describe him, how do I begin?

Suffice it to say, and this is all I will say

If he’s going to Morrow he’ll want to go today!

If you’ve listened to the rendition of the Four Farrellys by the famous Wilson Logan

You’d never again go to hear Daniel O’Donnell or John Hogan.

Tonight we also had a very talented storyteller, another Liz by name

Whose poem about St. Brigid made our patron saint one hell of a dame.

I’d like to pay tribute to the one and only Declan Forde

A man in a million, of whom you’d never get bored

Long may your songs and stories bring laughter and joy

What can I say but “Boys a boys!”

Last, but not least, mine host and seanchai supreme, Liz Weir

To say she’ll make you more than welcome is the understatement of the year

She’ll give you endless cups of tea, biscuits and sometimes tray-bakes

And tell lots of stories and recitations from “ Marble Halls” to “St Patrick and the Snakes”.

 

To those I’ve forgotten to mention and whose names I don’t know

Please forgive me, the old grey matter’s getting slow!

So if you want to listen to music, you don’t need to sing or tell a yarn

You know you’ll be more than welcome at Ballyeamon Barn.

 

As You Do

             A phrase that really caught my attention this summer in Ireland was “as you do”.  I first encountered it in a newspaper article in, I think, the Irish Independent. I wish I’d cut it out, but alas, I did not. The article was entitled something like, “Mystery Solved”. It described how the strange hairless animal corpse that had washed up somewhere on the east coast of America last summer had finally been identified. Turns out some young men admitted finding a dead raccoon, setting it on a rubber raft in the ocean and then setting it on fire.  At this point, the author added the phrase, “as you do”.  Really, who wouldn’t do the same when stumbling upon a dead raccoon! It made me laugh so hard and I told everyone about it.  Was it a jab at Americans?  Or just at idiots in general? It doesn’t matter; it was funny. Danielle was still teasing me about it last night in Dublin.  When I said that Mark and I had driven from Killarney to Dublin in one day with a stop for lunch in Cork to meet my colleague Niall McCarthy, she quickly inserted “as you do”. Meaning, of course, that most people would not do that. On the clock-f ace of the island that would be driving from 7:00 to 3:00, more than a quarter of the way around.

            Anyway, here I am in Chicago writing a blog post or two during my six hour layover, as you do.  I was reviewing my pictures and came upon a few from a barbecue that our friends Mary and Frank threw for the SAI faculty and students.  You would be hard pressed to find two more enjoyable people anywhere on the planet. Mary and Frank are a big part of the reason that we even have SAI.  They are two of Barry Vaughan’s oldest and dearest friends from the University of Oklahoma where he completed hid PhD.  He got the idea for the program when he was visiting them in 2002.  The rest is history - or 'mystery' as I like to say.

            Barry and I shuttled the students out to their place in the heart of the midlands of Ireland the Wednesday of the third week in June for the barbecue. We were celebrating a couple of birthdays so he and I had both made two batches of cupcakes.  His were perfect and uniform, blue and pink with sprinkles.  I had overfilled mine, as you do, and they overflowed their cups and I had to trim them before they could be frosted.  They were lumpy and irregular, chocolate with the royal icing (Martha Stewart’s recipe) slowly sloughing off them.  Despite the disparity in their appearance, both batches were delicious and devoured.

            The students capered on Frank and Mary’s fairy hill. Evea Morrow found an audience for a story.  Tommy and Ryan learned how to wield a hurl.  We all ate lots and lots and visited and laughed.

            As you do. When you are in Ireland, and lucky, and surrounded by friends and loved ones.

            The picture at the top shows several of the young women of this year's program enjoying cupcakes, the second is of me and Barry. The third is Evea holding forth, and the fourth is Frank, Barry, and Mary.

 

An Chailleach Bhéara – The Hag of Beara

            The point of our drive to the Beara Peninsula on Monday was to see An Chailleach Bhéara, a rock shaped like a head facing out to sea with her hair blowing out behind her.  The legend is that this is the head of the Cailleach, turned to stone, as she waited for her lover, the sea god Mannanan Mac Lir.

Although I’ve been to several places associated with the Cailleach, this is the first time I’ve visited a physical representation of her.  The place, and the rock were impressive.  People have placed coins, photographs, and necklaces on the rock like a clootie tree. Someone had placed a long tall rock on the rear of the rock, and under it was a photograph of two children.

This Cailleach, the Hag of Beara, is the subject of a famous poem “The Lament of the Old Woman of Beare”.  Her lament is for her lost youth and potency, “Ebb tide has come to me as to the sea”.  She bemoans the fact that her arms are no longer fit to embrace handsome kings, and criticizes the youth of the day:

    It is riches 
    you love, and not people; 
    as for us, when we lived, 
    it was people we loved.

            When I first read it a few years ago I was dismayed.  But, Miceál Ross, a Dublin storyteller and scholar, explained to me that it had probably been written by someone in the learned class of early Christian times.  The writer  was someone who appreciated the Cailleach and understood her role as the other-worldly woman.  He said the poem could also be read as a lament for the passing of the time of the goddess, the otherworldly woman so crucial to sovereignty in early Irish belief and practice.  The poem is expressing that there is a danger that her time is over, and that a new religion, one with less humor and joy, is in ascendance. 

            But these days she's returning to public consciousness. Nuala Hayes has created a new show about her entitled The Wilder Wisdom of the Auld Ones. A young poet from the Beara Peninsula, Leanne O'Sullivan, has a new book out, Cailleach: The Hag of Beara. The stories I tell about her are amongst my all-time favorites, and they are well received by listeners. More and more people are hearing about her and becoming interested in her and what she represents.

            The ebb tide does reverse, doesn’t it?

            Mark took all the pictures.  The first one shows her up close and personal, moss warts and all with me in the proper perspective.  The second is slightly up the hill from her, looking out to the ocean.  The third is head on, and the last is the view of the bay behind her.

A Day of Beauty in Counties Cork and Kerry

            On Monday Mark and I left Killarney for the Beara Peninsula a little later than we expected.  When I tried to unlock the car with the fob, it wouldn’t work.  Mark thought maybe the battery in the fob had gone dead.  But when we got in the car, it was the car battery that was dead.  I’d left the lights on the night before.  Emer Moynihan, the owner of the Earls Court House Hotel, arranged for someone to come to the hotel to give us a jump and we were on our way 30 minutes later.

             Once on the road, we drove through some of the most beautiful countryside that Ireland has to offer. We drove south through Killarney National Park, past pristine lakes, and with Ireland’s highest mountains, the Macgillycuddy Reeks, to the west. The park is heavily forested, and it reminded both of us of driving through Oak Creek Canyon in Arizona; imagine Oak Creek on steroids with about twice the volume of vegetation.

            After we drove over the Kenmare River, we were on the Beara Peninsula.  For the first several miles we were still in forest. We stopped when we saw a sign for the Cashelkeelty Stone Circle.  We didn’t have the right shoes to tromp through the mud to find it, but we did walk in because it was just so beautiful.  The ground was completely covered with small shamrocks.  There was a stream tumbling musically over rocky outcrops. The whole place glowed green.  It looked so aggressively verdant that I could imagine being swallowed up by it if I stood still for even a few minutes.

            A few miles later, though, the landscape changed dramatically.  Beara is rocky, and the Irish consider it bare and stark, but dramatic. It’s still very green, though, and definitely not bare or stark by Arizona standards. 

             We stopped in Ardgroom for lunch, and asked for directions to the Chailleach Bheara, or the Hag of Beara, the great rock that was the point of our journey. We drove around all around Kilcatherine Point, a small loop on the peninsula. Here are the small villages and crossroads that we passed on the way: Faunkill, Ballycrovane, Gortgariff, Kilcatherine, Dreenamalack, Dreenacush, Derryvegal, Darrigroe, Cleandra, Drombeg, Ardgroom Inward, and then back to Ardgroom.

             At Ballycrovane, we saw the largest ogham stone in Ireland, about 17 feet high. Between Gortgariiff and Kilcatherine we found the Hag of Beara.  We stopped at the ruins of Kilcatherine church, windswept, atmospheric, and yes, stark.  We found a pottery studio between Drombeg and Ardgroom Inward.  The loop from Ardgroom and back is only 25 km, or about 16 miles, and it took us two and a half hours. Round trip, the whole drive was about 100 miles and it took us six hours.

            Mark took the first picture of the Killarney Lakes, the one of the ogham stone, and the sign of the hag (that's her down on the slope).  I took the other two.  Click on any of them to see them larger.

 

           

A Find on the Beara Peninsula

            Mark and I drove from Killarney to the Beara Peninsula yesterday.  Our specific mission was to find the Cailleach Beara, and we did find and meet her.  I’ll write more about that later.  As we drove back along twisty, narrow, fuchsia-laden Ring of Beara road, we saw a sign that said, “Pottery”.  We drove up the even narrower road to the studio.  Just as we were rounding the corner onto the property, Mark said, “I hope she has her blues right”.  He was referring to the Cailleach’s winter blue hue.  And then we came upon the sight above: beautiful blue pottery gleaming in the sunlight.

            It’s the studio of Marianne Klopp We met another potter there.  I think her name is Barnett, or Burnett.  I didn’t write it down, because  I figured I’d google it later.  Mistake. When I did google it, I got Marianne Klopp – not the person we met. 

             The woman we met asked what we were doing on Beara and when I told her we’d gone to meet the Cailleach we got to talking about storytelling.  She had heard Liz Weir before and said she was planning on attending the Cape Clear Festival in September.  I’m going to contact the studio to see if I can figure out who the potter we met is.   We had a good visit about the Cailleach, and she also told me about a local artists’ retreat called Anam Cara.

Two Sheela-na-gigs in Athlone Castle

             Mark and I went to Athlone Castle on Saturday, on our last full day in Athlone, to see the Sheela-na-gig. I read in Sacred Ireland by Cary Meehan that there was one there, right in my Irish backyard. Imagine our surprise when we were let into the musty, dusty museum in the castle’s round tower and found two of them. 

        The one from Athlone that I’m sitting next to has a large head, but I really can’t distinguish with any certainty much else about her. Her left arm is more distinct and the right one is either worn or otherwise damaged.  It almost looks as if her feet are at her genitals.  She was salvaged from a 12th century Cluniac Monastery in Athlone on what is now Abbey Lane.

            The other is from Rahan Church in Co. Offaly.  If you didn’t know about sheela-na-gigs you might think she was holding her knees.  Let me assure you, those are not her knees she's clutching.

The Irish National Stud - and Japanese Gardens?

How do these two things go together? Well, it all started with a wealthy English man, Colonel William Hall-Walker, who had a stud farm in Tully, just outside Kildare.  In 1906 he arranged for a famous Japanese garden builder to come to his stud farm and build a garden.  It was completed in 1910.  The colonel evidently saw the writing on the wall, and left Ireland in 1915, one year before the revolution. He gave his stud farm and gardens to Britain, and the farm became the British National Stud.

The garden fell into obscurity until the farm was returned to the Irish Government and became the Irish National Stud in 1943.  The garden got a horticultural supervisor in 1946 and has been lovingly maintained ever since. The garden is designed as a representation of the path of life, from the soul’s beginning in oblivion to its eventual passing into eternity.  

We were there on a mostly sunny day and the light filtered through the dense screens of multicolored foliage.  The garden’s design is intricate, and the signage whimsical. The plantings are sometimes wild, sometimes carefully manicured.  There are ingeniously designed changes of elevation that take you up small rocky hills and down through dark grottos. Water is integrated throughout and on this day provided us with opportunities for reflection.

We actually saw a couple of horses, too. We learned from white tags on their bridles that one was called Patience and the other Smiley. They were very small.  We couldn’t tell if they were young, or just small.  Actually, one was surely young, but the other one didn’t seem so young – just small.  So, that’s about as much ignorance about horses as I could fit into two sentences.  I’m pretty sure they weren’t studs either.  Evidently we were seeing the Irish National Colts, or the Irish National Pre-Studs. Or maybe they were mares, because who would call a stud of any variety Patience?

Another point of excitement: Mark found an Arizona Iced Tea in the café.  Woo-hoo!

Mammy, Where's Me Tay?

Mammy, where’s me tay?

Mammy, where’s me tay?

I’m your pride and joy, your blue-eyed boy,

Though me hair is turning gray.

Mammy, where’s me tay?

Mammy, where’s me tay?

Your love for me, given tenderly,

Made me what I am today.

Mammy, where’s me tay?

            Last Saturday night, June 27, I was at the Ballyeamon Barn for the weekly session.  One of the special guests Liz Weir invited was Declan Forde from Omagh, Co. Tyrone.  Declan describes himself as “a teacher by profession, a poet by inclination, and a pauper by circumstance.” He’s also one of the most engaging performers, and persons, I’ve ever met.

            Declan is very well known in Ireland, England, and the US.  He writes much of his own material, and he is also an illustrator.  He produced a program for the BBC called A Sense of Place, which you can hear here. The program features Declan and other poets and authors, including Ireland’s greatest living poet, Seamus Heaney.  But the real focus, of course, is the subject: the relation of people to place which is so crucial to understanding Irish culture, life and art.  In the beginning of the program, Declan describes his grandmother’s house, now abandoned. “No roof on it. All you see are the tops of the trees just pointing like dead men’s fingers toward the grey Tyrone sky. It’s desolate looking then.  But when I stand here and look around it, what I think of are the people who lived here; the hearth where the people sat, and talked, and ate. There’s something timeless in it.” Give yourself a treat and listen, because to hear Declan speak it is much more satisfying.

            Declan sang and recited poems, and then someone called out for “Mammy, Where’s Me Tay?” which I’m thinking must be one of his signature pieces.  Just a few days earlier over dinner with Jackie Gorman and Brian Garvin of the Atlantic Corridor, Jackie had told us that Jesus was an Irishman.  “He didn’t leave home until he was 33.  His mother thought he was God. He thought his mother was a virgin.” So, to hear Declan sing this song just reinforced what I’d been learning about Irish men and Irish mothers.  In truth, a similar song could be sung about Jewish mothers and sons, and let’s not forget those mothers and sons from Skull Valley and Gilbert, Arizona.  The image of my brother in his early twenties dropping a dirty white shirt at my mother’s feet at 6:00 pm and saying, “I need this at 7:00”, is indelibly imprinted upon my memory.  Do I need to add that the shirt was clean and ironed at 7:00 pm?

            Declan’s song is not just about how Irish men are treated by their mothers, it’s also about how their wives take over the job once they marry.  He describes the woman’s plight as a life sentence, caring for two children – one with a beard and one without. It’s one of those songs that makes you wince even as it makes you laugh; such is the truth it contains.

            I’m very much looking forward to meeting and hearing Declan again in the future. “Tay”, by the by, is tea.

Three Dips, Three Sips at St. Brigid's Well in Kildare.

    

            One of my favorite stories about St. Brigid is about how she destroyed her beauty – long red-gold hair, big blue eyes, peachy skin – so that she wouldn’t have to marry and could devote her life to her faith.  Once she took her vows, her beauty was restored.  The way I tell it is that she went to the well at Kildare, filled her hands with water and poured it over her head and face three times, and she was as good as new.  I can’t remember where I learned that.  I don’t think I made it up, but I couldn’t find a reference to it. I hope it did happen that way, because I can see it very clearly.

            Mark and I visited the well yesterday. It’s large and well maintained. Near the entrance is a focal area with stone paving, stones across the stream, stone arches and niches, and a statue of the saint holding her flame, the flame being one of her primary links to the goddess Brigid.  Back against the far fence is the actual well. Next to the well is a “clootie” tree , on which people have tied pieces of cloth, photographs, shoes, and other items as part of prayers for healing.

            I decided to douse myself three times from the well.  I figured it couldn’t hurt.  And just for good measure, I took three drinks too.  Mark says my appearance improved noticeably!

            Brigid is known as the Mary of the Gael, and another of my favorite stories about hear is that she was Mary's midwife, divinely enabled to be present for Christ's birth four centuries before her own. This traditional Irish prayer for children reflects that connection.

May God bless you, child.

I put you under the protections of Mary and her Son.

Under the care of Brigid and her cloak.

And under the shelter of God tonight.

 

Another prayer, said as the fire was smoored for the night, links Mary, Brigid, and Brigid's sacred flame as it resided in the hearth. 

I will build the hearth,

As Mary would build it.

The encompassment of Bride and of Mary,

Guarding the hearth, guarding the floor,

Guarding the household of all.

 

Mark took all the photos.  The prayers are from The Life of Saint Brigid by Anna Egan Smucker.