Ireland - The Gathering

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Bru na Boinne – Newgrange Passage Tomb

Newgrange Passage Tomb

Bru na Boinne visitor centre interprets the Neolithic sites of the Boinne Valley including the most famous site, Newgrange passage tomb. We decided to visit Newgrange on our last day in Ireland as a last minute addition to our itinerary that required an early start in Ballyshannon for our drive to Dublin Airport to fit in a guided tour.

Passage tombs are found throughout Europe, and we saw several in The Orkneys including Maeshowe where the guide told us about Newgrange, a site not then on our itinerary. Whilst the tomb is largely intact, the outer walls are reconstructed to represent what it may have looked like in Neolithic times. I am always uncomfortable with modern reconstructions but the while the patterning may be incorrect the imposing white-walled structure is certainly a fitting place for our Neolithic ancestors to start their journey into the next life.

The passage itself is as it was three thousand years ago, a long narrow entrance opens out into six metre (20 feet) high dome that has withstood the elements for thousands of years and is testament to the ingenuity of Neolithic people that their stone structures endure into the modern age. The entrance is aligned to direct sunlight into the dome around the Winter Solstice and a lucky few visitors (determined by lottery) are allowed in those days each year. For the rest of us, the tour includes a short artificial sunrise to demonstrate how the tomb looks when the sun is aligned.

A visit to Newgrange takes an hour, and can only be accessed through the Bru na Boinne visitor centre guided tour. To make the most of your visit explore the visitor interpretive displays before heading out to the tomb.

Looking beyond Newgrange

Looking beyond Newgrange

Passage Tomb Entrance

Passage Tomb Entrance

Prehistoric Pictagrams

Prehistoric Pictagrams

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Filed Under: history, middle Tagged With: Ireland, Neolithic, newgrange, passage tomb

Irish Roots in Ballyshannon

Atkinson Family Home

Colleen joined The Gathering, Ireland’s call to expatriates and their descendants to return to the homeland in 2013, after our Rick Steves’ tour ended and we trekked back across Ireland to Ballyshannon and her family home Cavangarden House.

The Atkinson family moved from Yorkshire to Ballyshannon during the Ulster Plantation, and William Atkinson became one of 12 Burgesses who controlled the Ballyshannon corporation under Royal Charter from King James I. The family lived and prospered in County Donegal until 1968 when the last surviving direct descendent passed on leaving Cavangarden House to a friend. The Atkinson family had strong ties to Trinity College in Dublin, and successive generations practised Law in Ireland’s Legal system participating in many landmark trials as depicted in etchings that hung in Cavangarden.

With keen interest in her heritage, Colleen discovered that Cavangarden House had become a bed and breakfast and thus a stay in the ancestral home became a central aspect for our Ireland travel plans. Agnes, the current owner, welcomed us warmly and provided Colleen with many insights into her family’s history in Ballyshannon. We walked the grounds, thumbed through books once owned by Colleen’s cousins and marvelled at the etchings depicting their prominent role in Donegal and Irish history.

We journeyed out to the local Protestant Church to visit the Atkinson family plot, and walked through fields to the tumble downed remains of Kilbarron Castle tracing Colleen’s routes in the region. It was fascinating to watch Colleen as she joined the dots of her family history in the region, and while we only scratched the surface we know a longer stay in Ireland is in our future to dig deeply into that heritage.

Atkinson Dining Room

Atkinson Dining Room

Legal Proceedings

Legal Proceedings

Atkinson Family Chapel, Cavangarden

Atkinson Family Chapel, Cavangarden

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Filed Under: bottom, history Tagged With: ballyshannon, Ireland

A Titanic Memory

 Sue shares her Family Titanic Tale

Curiosity will conquer fear even more than bravery will.

James Stephens

In 1912, the greatest cruise liner of its day struck an iceberg and sunk with the loss of over 1500 lives. The headline story is well-known, and popular films have retold it until fact and fiction blurred into one for many people but the truth is captured in the individual stories of survivors and the families of the lost souls.

Susie Millar shared her family story with us, her Great Grandfather brought the great engines of Titanic to life in the Belfast shipyard and boarded her bound for New York to start a new life for his two boys. Before he left, he gave each son two new pennies and implored them not to spend them until they were reunited. Susie reached into her pocket and produced the two pennies her Grandfather never got to spend.

For decades, Belfast ignored its part in the Titanic story and it great ship building heritage. James Cameron’s Titanic film epic renewed interest worldwide and Belfast embraced the story to build the stunning Titanic Quarter on the shipyards that once produced Titanic and her sister ships. The structure is symbolic of the tragedy and houses displays detailing the events but the real drama is outside. Wandering the slipway, we imagined the thousands of skilled workers that once swarmed over the great iron leviathans that carried men and women across the world; immigrants, traders, workers and wealthy travellers all sharing the high seas seeking new adventures or a better life.

Titanic Centre - Belfast

Titanic Centre – Belfast

Remembering the Iceberg

Remembering the Iceberg

 

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Filed Under: history, middle Tagged With: belfast, iceberg, Ireland, ship, shipyard, Titanic

The Troubles

Bogside, Derry

Our patience will achieve more than our force.

Edmund Burke

The history of English oppression and Ireland’s struggle for independence is a key theme of any tour of the country but it comes into sharper focus once you cross the border into Northern Ireland. Despite a decade of peace, the old hatreds and prejudices are clearly visible in places like Bogside in Derry or the Shankill and Falls Roads areas of Belfast. I did not feel welcomed in these areas by the local community, and it seemed intrusive to thrust even our small tour group into this area of raw tension and passion.

Of course to understand Irish history, you must come to grips with these areas and the sectarian violence that forged their hatreds into steely resistance but the wounds are still raw and it seems wrong to turn their suffering into a tourist photo opportunity. Go by all means but step lightly into the community because its their home not our tourist destination.

 

Belfast Mural Sein Fein HQ, Belfast Falls Rd Belfast

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Filed Under: history, middle Tagged With: belfast, bogside, derry, falls, Ireland, shankill, troubles

Antrim Coast and Whiskey in a Jar

Carrick-a-Rede Rope Bridge

It is not the literal past, the “facts” of history, that shape us, but images of the past embodied in language.

Brian Friel

The Antrim Coast is stunning, whilst the Giant’s Causeway is the main attraction the coastline is littered with soaring cliffs, abandoned castles, beaches and the Bushmills Distillery.

We enjoyed a pleasant day driving along the coast, gazing out across the Irish Sea to Scotland laying on the horizon so close it appears as if an extra low tide may allow you to walk there.

After a short hike, we reached the Carrick-a-Rede Rope Bridge and made the short crossing to a small island that houses a small fishing outpost. Who would keep the fishing boat on this small island instead of the nearby mainland? A question I asked a colleague who immigrated from Northern Ireland and he replied, ‘My Grandfather.’

Fans of Game of Thrones can check out a film location down to the left of the main car park.

Antrim Coast

Antrim Coast

Carrick-a-Rede Rope Bridge

Carrick-a-Rede Rope Bridge

Steve crossing the rope bridge

Steve crossing the rope bridge

Dunluce Castle is one of the finest castles in Northern Ireland but not nearly good enough for the Countess of Antrim who begged her husband for a new home away from the coast and finally left without him when the kitchen disappeared into the sea during a dinner party. According to legend, taking the heavy dessert and most of the staff with it.

Happy to be at Dunluce Castle

Happy to be at Dunluce Castle

Dunluce Castle

Dunluce Castle

The History of Dunluce Castle

The History of Dunluce Castle

 

 

 

 

 

Old Bushmills Distillery has produced fine Irish Whiskey since the 17th Century, and every year hosts 120000 visitors on an intoxicating tour of their facility. The air is literally steeped in whiskey, and the distillers only spend two hours tending to the distilling process at a time to ward off the effects. It’s a fun tour, a chance to indulge in some history and distilling folklore before exiting into the cafe where you can sip a free sample over lunch. You can buy  a 12 year old bottle of Bushmills at the distillery (not available elsewhere) but buyers of the widely distributed 10, 16 and 20 year old Bushmills may well find a better price at Duty Free than the distillery.

Enjoying a Whisky at Bushmills.

Enjoying a Whiskey at Bushmills.

Old Bushmills Distillery

Old Bushmills Distillery

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Filed Under: bottom, history, landscape Tagged With: antrim, coast, rope bridge, whiskey

The Great Hunger

Great Hunger Memorial

The safest road to hell is the gradual one–the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.

C.S. Lewis

In 1845, the Irish potato crop failed and the country entered a period of unending hardship and famine that they call the Great Hunger. Travelling through western Ireland, we saw hills scarred by abandoned potato farrows that once produced the staple diet for the Irish people. Productive land that never again produced a sustainable potato crop and is now turned over to sheep and cattle, and remains devoid of the families that once lived here.

Throughout the Great Hunger, the poor died in their thousands and many thousands more chose to immigrate to Australia, Canada and the United States to seek a better life for their families. Even on these voyages of hope, sickness spread rapidly in the cramped and stagnant living conditions and these deaths led many people to call their vessels coffin ships. A bronze sculpture in Murrisk gives graphic voice to their suffering, skeletons flying from the tall masks a reminder that famine still exists in our ever richer world.

In the Doo Lough Valley, 600 starving Irish tenant farmers walked 12 miles to Delphi Lodge seeking food from their landlord. Angry at the interruption to his fine meal, he sent them home and over 200 perished on the return march some literally blown into the bog by the strong icy wind. How an educated and enlightened gentry looked out on deprivation and suffering without pity or remorse for their tenants and fellow humanity is unimaginable to me. Yet similar conditions exist throughout the world in our own enlightened times.

History always repeats if we let it.

Great Hunger Memorial

Doo Lough – Great Famine Memorial

Coffin Ship Memorial

Coffin Ship Memorial

Coffin Ship Memorial

Coffin Ship Memorial

Ballyshannon Work House

Ballyshannon Work House

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Filed Under: history, middle Tagged With: famine, Ireland, potato

A Literary Journey in Ireland

Oscar Wilde Statue - Dublin

A great artist is always before his time or behind it.

George Moore

If tragedy, suffering, bigotry and depression create the fodder for great literature, is it any wonder that Ireland produces so many great writers, poets and playwrights?

During the Dark Ages, Ireland shielded the written word against the barbarism of the Roman Empire’s decaying ruins and became a haven for scholars seeking knowledge and enlightenment. They travelled from Rome itself to learn from the St Edna on Inishmore, and hundreds like him spread throughout the furthest corners of this Celtic island. A candle of hope that flickering behind the dark curtain of ignorance but once pulled aside its light flooded into the empty space to illuminate the known world again.

The great Irish writers shone that same light on their Nation’s struggles from the searing satire of British colonialism in Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels to the brutal poverty in Frank McCourt’s memoirs, Angela’s Ashes and ‘Tis. Most famous of all is Oscar Wilde; the flamboyant writer lampooned British upper-class snobbery, and delved deep into the darkness of man’s heart with equal skill and attention. Widely revered and quoted, his works are largely unread by the modern populace but Oscar’s words reach out from the past to skewer the facile existence of many modern lives.

One’s real life is so often the life that one does not lead.

Oscar Wilde

James Joyce gave us his opus, Ulysses a rambling retelling of Homer’s Odyssey through his Dubliners’ trials through the pubs, libraries and brothels on one notable day. Many readers lift this mighty tome but few put it down read much less understood. People employ guides, maps, lists and annotations to follow the complex plot through its 700 pages (Gabler Edition) making it their own personal odyssey and I must confess this novel defeated me at my first attempt (a second is pending).

After his early work to renew the Celtic myths, William Butler Yeats spent his latter years writing about Ireland’s transition to independence that painful yet joyous path to freedom in their own Nation. An ardent nationalist, he joined the IRA in his early years but distanced himself from political life as he grew older perhaps wiser until 1920. In 1922, Yeats (57) became a Senator in Irish Free State and he became a great advocate for the separation of Church and State. His poetry grew stronger in his latter years and his transition from a classical style to 20th Century modernism are often compared with his fellow artist Pablo Picasso’s transition in painting. Whether he truly made that leap into modernity is an academic trite, his words reverberate through time and his epitaph left us one last riddle.

Cast a cold Eye
On Life, on Death.
Horseman, pass by!

Great Blasket IslandNo where is Ireland’s love of the written word more evident than the Great Blasket Centre on the tip of the Dingle Peninsular dedicated to the extraordinary literary legacy of a small island community on Great Blasket Island and their struggle for survival. Tomás Ó Criomhthain wrote two incredible books (The Islandman and Island Cross Talk) about his life on the island, thoroughly absorbing and vivid tales of his way of life and the people with whom he shared the hardship of their remote island community. His success inspired other islanders to write about their lives, Peig Sayers and Muiris Ó Súilleabháin are the best known but dozens penned their tales in frenzy of writing as their island community withered in the late forties and early fifties. The final Great Blasket Island residents were evacuated in 1953, and their tale is told by Tomás’ son Seán in his book Lá dár Saol. Baile Átha Cliath Oifig an tSoláthair 1969 or, in English A Day in Our Life. Translated by Tim Enright. Oxford University Press, 1992. The shear volume of work from a community that never numbered more than 150 ensured that they will not be forgotten, helped to preserve the Irish language and the stories of their unique way of life. As Tomás Ó Criomhthain wrote in his final chapter:

I have written minutely of much that we did, for it was my wish that somewhere there should be a memorial of it all, and I have done my best to set down the character of the people about me so that some record of us might live after us, for the like of us will never be again.

Oscar Wilde Quote

Oscar Wilde Quote

W.B. Yeats' Grave

W.B. Yeats’ Grave

Great Blasket Centre Stained Glass

Great Blasket Centre Stained Glass

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Filed Under: bottom, history Tagged With: books, Ireland, literature, playwright, poet, writing

A Kinsale Stroll

Kinsale Walking Tour

Where I am not understood, it shall be concluded that something very useful and profound is couched underneath.

Jonathan Swift

Kinsale played a pivotal role in European history, a deep sheltered harbour at the Atlantic gateway to control trade or strangle Protestant England into submission to the Holy Roman Empire.

In 1601, Spain landed 3000 soldiers and took control of Kinsale to await the arrival of 7000 Irish warriors to route the English Army. England held the high ground around Kinsale, and lay siege to the Spanish invaders with a small force while their main Army defeated the Irish. The French attempted to secure Kinsale in 1690 but England prevailed again, and built two great star fortresses to guard the harbour entrance. The best preserved is Charles Fort, the English Army occupied it until 1922 when Ireland became an independent Nation.

In 1915, a German submarine sank the Lusitania just 10 miles off the Kinsale coast with the loss of 1200 souls and turned the debate in the United States towards entering the war in Europe.

This rich history is brought to life for travellers by Don Herily and Barry Moloney on their Historic Stroll Kinsale, Rick Steves‘ must do attraction in this small port town. Excited to show us his town and his daily tour gig, Barry led us out into the cool morning air his passion for history evident in every fact and story that revealed the rich tapestry of Kinsale’s past. After a quick bus ride to Charles Fort, Barry handed us over to the local Heritage Ireland guide to delve deeper into the military history before a harbour stroll back to Kinsale for lunch. A wonderful day in this small but historic town.

Local Character

Local Character

Barry launches into a story.

Barry launches into a story.

Fort Charles

Fort Charles

Kinsale Harbour

Kinsale Harbour

Kinsale Restaurant

Kinsale Restaurant

Supporting Cork

Supporting Cork

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Filed Under: bottom, history

Kilmainham Gaol

Imprisoned

It is a maxim among these lawyers, that whatever hath been done before, may legally be done again: and therefore they take special care to record all the decisions formerly made against common justice and the general reason of mankind.

Jonathan Swift

Kilmainham Gaol, on Dublin’s outskirts, is reviled as a place of suffering and death for Irish patriots struggling to free their country from English rule. Yet to the English, Kilmainham was a model gaol for the health and well-being of its prisoners replacing the barbaric conditions of the previous age. Used most notably as a political prison, Irish revolutionaries imprisoned there are synonymous with Ireland’s struggle for independence. Its last prisoner, Eamon de Valera, became President of the Irish Republic and led his people to develop a socially and culturally conservative society shunning militant republicanism.

The prison lay derelict for decades until local historians sought to preserve it as a significant site in Irish history, and the restored buildings evoke unease as you listen to the guide’s stories of those incarcerated here. Of course, many petty criminals and brutal thugs also spent time in Kilmainham, and it would be wrong to impart on them the sympathy accorded the political prisoners although some were equally brutal in their pursuit of independence.

Kilmainham offers a glimpse of Irish history through the lens of political imprisonment, a stirring and tragic tale that only tells one side of a multifaceted history but a story any visitor to Ireland should understand before heading deeper into the country and its history.

Cell Block - Kilmainham

Cell Block – Kilmainham

Trust in Her

Trust in Her

Constrained Movement

Constrained Movement

A Republic in Waiting.

A Republic in Waiting.

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Filed Under: history, middle Tagged With: gaol, independence, Ireland, kilmainham

From Kells to Trinity College

Old Library - Trinity College

I bring to you with reverent hands the books of my numberless dreams.

W.B.Yeats

In 9th Century A.D. Ireland, Monks brought a richly illustrated copy of the Four Gospels to Kells and established a Columban Monastery. The Monks had created this masterpiece on Iona, Scotland but fearing its destruction they brought it home to Ireland for safekeeping. The Book of Kells is now held at Trinity College in Dublin, and is widely regarded as one of the finest examples of Dark Age art in Europe but almost no one remembers the small hamlet of Kells whose people kept the text safe for hundreds of years.

We visited Trinity College on our first day, a long wait in line, jostling crowds in the exhibit and an excited crowd of Freshers outside overwhelmed the actual experience of viewing this famous artefact. Housed in the Old Library, it is the most famous of thousands of manuscripts housed in this venerable place of learning. Not unlike the Mona Lisa in Paris, the Book of Kells is on everyone’s must see list for Dublin but most will file past the open pages swept along by the crowd, ticking a box on their list without really understanding the history or sacrifice required to create and preserve this beautiful text.

The Monks, great artisans and keepers of the Faith through the Dark Ages, created a text that evokes the majesty and splendour of Heaven and illuminates the Word of God for those privileged to be able to read the Gospels.

On our side trip to Ballyshannon, Colleen and I took a short detour to Kells and visited the village that preserved this copy of the Gospels for the modern tourist. St Columba’s Church stands on the site of the original monastery, and houses a copy of the book and a small historic exhibit of the site. Four great Celtic Crosses adorn the churchyard, and although the monastery is no longer evident in the grounds the history enveloped me as we walked through the graveyard and around the 16th Century church. The generations buried beneath our feet had protected the book for centuries but most would never see it, much less be allowed to read the Holy Gospels for themselves. Their sacrifice allowed us a glimpse into the luminous artistry of an age known for darkness and evil, and I’m glad we had the opportunity to visit the Book of Kells true home.

St Columba's Church - Kells

St Columba’s Church – Kells

Celtic Cross Relief

Celtic Cross Relief

Trinity College

Trinity College – Freshers Week

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Filed Under: history, middle Tagged With: book, Ireland, kells, religion, Trinity College

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