Thursday, October 27, 2011

Seamus the Seanachie

On Sunday we had our last tour this semester.  We drove around the Maynooth area with an expert on local history named Seamus.  He is an adorable man with a white mustache, and he has a real flair for story telling.  Seamus is a true seanachie!

The first of many stories Seamus told us was about the Barberstown Castle.  Long ago (but not so long ago that dinosaurs roamed the earth), this castle was leased to a family.  The lease stated that the family could live there until the man who signed it and his son had died.  At least, that's what the owners the castle meant when they leased it.  Unfortunately for them, the lease actually stated that the family living there had to leave when the man who signed the lease and his son were put into the ground.  When the son finally died, his family put his body into the walls of the castle so that they would not have to leave.  Loophole!  The owners ended up having to pay a large sum to get their castle back!  Barberstown Castle is now a hotel and rumored to be haunted! 


Our next stop on the tour was the site of the first international sporting match (according to Seamus, though I feel like there have been international jousting tournaments).  It took place in Donnelly's Hollow, a natural amphitheater in the Curragh plain.  A crowd of 20,000 people gathered to watch the Irish champion Dan Donnelly fight the British champion Cooper in the ultimate boxing match.  The match lasted 11 rounds until Donnelly finally broke Cooper's jaw.  The steps Donnelly took away from the ring were marked with lime and are still cut into the earth today because so many people want to walk in his steps.  I got to walk in his steps too!  Unfortunately Donnelly drank excessively in celebration and began to get huge.  His defeated opponent, Cooper, had unexpectedly won against another boxer named Tom Oliver to become the British champ, so Donnelly travelled to England to face Oliver.  The match lasted 34 rounds but Donnelly came out on top.  Donnelly spent the years following this victory drinking himself to death. After his funeral, a surgeon paid some thieves a lot of money to rob Donnelly's grave.  The grave robbers failed to cover their tracks, so all the mourners knew what had happened immediately.  They threatened to kill the surgeon, so he agreed to give back all of the body except for the right arm (Donnelly's arms were rumored to go down to his knees).  The arm was preserved in red lead paint and has been on display in a classroom, a circuses, a pub, and can still be seen in various exhibits (it even came over to America for a couple years!).





After Seamus regaled us with the story of Dan Donnelly, we made our way to the most famous holy well in all of Ireland, St. Brigid's Well.  It used to be a place where the Druids worshiped the water goddess Brigid but St Brigid blessed it and it became a Christian holy site.  People would take water from Saint Brigid's shoes which are two oval shaped stones with holes running through them where the spring water would pour out.  Back by the well is a rag tree that people would tie a piece of clothing to when they took water.  The rag tree was a leftover tradition of the pagan religion.

St. Brigid founded an abbey not far from the well.  Legend has it that a wealthy man offered St. Brigid land to build a church upon, but she could only have as much land as her cloak could cover.  When she spread out her cloak it covered the whole Curragh.  The man could not afford to give her all the Curragh, but he did give her enough land to build her abbey.  The abbey was built on a Druid holy site.  Besides water, the Druids worshiped fire and they had a fire that they always kept burning.  St. Brigid kept this fire burning when she built her abbey next to it.  No man could enter the space the fire was kept or they would go crazy or get a lame limb.  All of us girls walked into the room but Seamus didn't want to risk it haha!  There was also a rock in the corner of one of the walls of the abbey that had a huge hole in it.  You have to stick your arm through the hole and make a wish!









Our last stop was a castle.  It was in complete ruins with trees and vines growing all over it, but this made it by far my favorite.  I felt like I was in a book.  It was a long hike up to the castle through the muddy, wet grass (we also had to avoid pies made by our cow friends) in the pouring rain, but it was well worth it!

Tomorrow I continue my travels with a trip to Salzburg, Amsterdam, and Copenhagen!

Monday, October 10, 2011

Craic Is Wack

Allow me to sincerely apologize for the tardiness of this post, but I have been consumed with school.  I know, I know.  I'm in Ireland doing homework?  I must be crazy!  But the classes here require much more self-discipline.  There are no tests along the way.  You have one big paper or exam at the end of the semester and that is your grade.  So in the midst of all the fun, I've had to force myself to sit down and read my assignments.




Besides schoolwork, I've been busy going to ultimate Frisbee practices.  We won our very first match on Thursday!  I am not very good but I am proud to say that I assisted scoring one of our points!  I also signed up for archery club so that I could live out my childhood Lord of the Rings fantasy but I have yet to hear about practices.  Sad day.  There is also MUCK club!  It's for kayaking and canoeing down rivers in Ireland.  Unfortunately the trips are on weekends so I don't if I'll be able to go on any since I really want to use my weekends for traveling abroad.


I must say that I am truly surprised by the amount of American things I see around Ireland.  Everyone here wears Abercrombie, Aeropostale, Hollister, or a combination of all three.  I have yet to watch one Irish television show.  My roommates mostly watch MTV.  And most importantly, they can understand my accent and all of my American slang but I still have to ask them to repeat themselves more slowly or to translate what they just said.  For example, my roommate needed a plaster for her thumb.  What is a plaster you ask?  Excellent question!  A plaster is a band aid.  I have developed quite the Irish dictionary over here.  The worst, yet funniest, case of me not understanding went a little something like this...
My roommate: "How's the craic?"
Me: "Did you just ask me my opinion on the quality of the crack?!?
My roommate: "Yes."
Me: "Why are you asking me about drugs?"
My roommate was not able to reply because she was too consumed with laughter.  My mistake was that my roommate asked about craic not crack.  I can only describe craic as another word for fun, but it's a little more complicated than that.  My roommates always describe a night out as "wild craic" and when they talk to their friends they ask what the craic is at a certain pub or apartment.  I am still learning and all my Irish friends take extreme delight in my naivety and funny way of pronouncing things.






But on to other subjects!  Last weekend I went on an overnight trip to Killarney with all the SMC girls.  We left on Friday afternoon and got there that night.  I roomed with three of the girls in a cute little B&B called Earls Court.  Our room had a huge canopy bed and some single beds, so we pushed them all together to create one giant bed and had a magnificent slumber party.  The next day we all go onto the bus and drove around the Ring of Kerry.  It was gorgeous!  We had cloudy but otherwise great weather for the first half of the day which was lucky since we picnicked on the beach.  I walked out on one of the masses of small boulders that reached far out into the water and I had to be careful not to crush any of the snails or other shelled creatures that absolutely covered the rocks.  Unfortunately the weather did not hold and so we missed seeing the most beautiful view of the Ring of Kerry (Queen Victoria traveled to Kerry specifically to see this view so it is named after her).


On our journey around the Ring we made several stops.  The first was at the Golden Mile.  We got to walk part of the path of the old railroad that passed through.  We saw cut little huts and a small waterfall too!


















Our second stop was Derrynane House, the vacation home of Daniel O'Connell.  O'Connell wan an Irish politician who was successful in fighting to allow Catholics to sit in the UK's Parliament back in the 1800's.  He also fought to repeal the Act of Union which combined Great Britain and Ireland.  He wanted to bring about these changes through the government instead of revolting against the government. I'll probably be learning more about him next semester when I take a course on Irish history.
Our last stop around the Ring of Kerry was the Staigue Fort.  It was the home of some rich chieftan back in 300 or 400 AD.  It is one of the largest stone forts in Ireland and it was built entirely without mortar.  In other words, the stones are simply piled on top of each other so there really isn't anything but friction holding them together.  I'm glad that I was told this after I climbed it and skipped around the top!



There is tiny Mouse Island in the middle.
On our way back to the B&B there was some sort of semi-truck rally going on, so we had to pull over as exactly 49 semis drove past us honking their horns!


























Our last day in Kerry consisted of a horse and buggy ride through the Killarney National Park (home of Ireland's only native herd of red deer) and a boat tour around Muckross Lake.  That day there happened to be about 50 fishermen out on the lake, but all the ones I talked to said they hadn't caught anything.  I think our large boat passing through may have had something to do with their bad luck!  All in all it was an gorgeous trip!