IRELAND IN TWO WEEKS: Part 2, From Killarney, Back to Dublin and Home (May 2023)

Killarney

We left Bearna the next morning for Killarney travelling along the coastline of County Clare, but it was very foggy. We motored beside a very interesting geological formation called the Burren. The Burren, as I understand it, is a 116 square mile karst, a landscape where the bedrock has been dissolved creating sinkholes, sinking streams and caves exposing the coral reef that lies under the bedrock. 

This seems to be cattle and sheep country with pastures of grasses where the animals graze during the warm months. But the grasses are also harvested and turned into fermented hay for the animals to eat in the cold months. The grasses are mowed down and allowed to partially dry out. Then they are chopped up, baled and sealed in polywrap and then are allowed to ferment, a process that apparently improves the digestibility of the grasses for the animals over the winter. I’m sure it’s more complicated than this but that’s the gist of the process. Fermented grass, who would have guessed!

We made an interesting stop at a site called Poulnabrone Dolman to see a megalithic monument constructed by neolithic farmers, i.e., a prehistoric monument made of large stones by late Stone Age farmers. Its precise purpose is unclear, but it was probably a ritual center and burial site. The people themselves lived in simple wooden structures, but they built stone monuments for their ancestors and their gods. 

We did stop at a small local farmers’ market to purchase a few souvenirs and then boarded a ferry to cross the River Shannon to Killarney.

After checking into the Killarney Royal Hotel, we were driven to dinner at a local family’s home. It was an absolutely delightful evening with great food and beautiful harp music played by the teenage daughter of the household. We had an interesting discussion with the father about education and professions. Ireland has lots of college-educated young people but it needs skilled tradespeople. He and his wife farm parttime, but most of their income comes from his trade as an electrician. They appear to live quite well.

The next day began with a visit to Muckross House, an elaborate manor built in 1843 by Henry Arthur Herbert, a wealthy Anglo-Irish politician. In August 1861 the Herbert family hosted Queen Victoria and her entourage at the manor with the expectation that she would grant Henry a title and significant money as apparently was the tradition when the reigning English monarch paid you a state visit, but she didn’t. Henry eventually went bankrupt. In 1899 the property was bought by Lord Ardilaun, a member of the Guinness brewing family. In 1911 an American named William Bowers Bourn bought the property as a wedding gift for his daughter Maud and her Irish husband. Maud died unexpectedly in 1929 and her widower and the Bourn family donated the estate to Ireland. It became the first Irish national park in 1933. 

Although the Irish state neglected Muckross House and its gardens for several years, the country eventually restored the property to its Victorian glory. A tour through the house gives the visitor a good sense of how the British ruling class lived. Extremely well, thanks to an army of well-trained servants. The next day we would see how the other half lived. The property has a really nice gift shop in the Craft House where weavers make beautiful scarves on looms that are nearly 200 years old.

After leaving Muckross House, we made a stop at the ruins of Ross Castle that was besieged and eventually occupied by Oliver Cromwell in 1652. It is located on the shores of Killarney’s Lower Lake, one of three lakes in the area that are totally rain-fed, no springs. We then returned to Killarney via a “jaunting cart,” a horse-drawn carriage with a “jarvey” driver, Killarney’s traditional mode of transportation.

On our last day in Killarney, we toured the Ring of Kerry, a 111-mile circular tourist route around the Iveragh Peninsula. The first stop was at the Kerry Bog Village, a recreation of a traditional peasant village from the mid 1800’s. This was also the time of the Great Irish Famine, 1845-1852. The servants who were employed in an English estate like Muckross House had roots in villages much like the one recreated at the Kerry Bog Village. The dwellings were one or two room houses built with stone walls on the coast, stucco inland and peat in boggy areas, all with thatched roofs. The more well-off villagers might have had flagstone floors but most would be mud. Windows were small and few because there was a tax on windows. Light was considered a luxury.

One of the most interesting dwellings recreated in the Kerry Bog Village is the stable dwelling. In this house an animal stable is located on one side of the house and the human space on the other. In the winter months animals were kept in the stable side to help warm the human side of the house. A cozy arrangement.

In the 18th and 19th centuries the infant and maternity mortality rates in Ireland were very high with an average life span of 45 years. During the famine the Irish population declined by 20-25%. A village like Kerry Bog would have been nearly deserted from famine and emigration.

We also saw a couple of the renowned Irish wolfhounds in their pen. They seemed like nice dogs, but I was much more impressed later in the day when we witnessed an Irish sheepdog, also called a border collie, herd sheep. The dog and the sheep seemed to have worked out their roles in the choreography of herding. Having owned a puli, or Hungarian sheepdog, for a number of years, we loved witnessing the dance of these two animal species.

We also stopped at a thousand-year-old ring fort called Caher Gheal. The purpose of this stone structure is unclear but it does offer great photo ops. There is a dozen of these forts in Ireland. Their circular stone shapes traditionally associate them with fairies and leprechauns, so they are often called “fairy forts.”

Blarney and More in Kilkenny

On the road to Kilkenny we made two of the most important stops of our Irish tour – Blarney Castle, home of the famous Blarney Stone, and the Rock of Cashel. The line up the tower to kiss the Blarney Stone was very long amounting to about a two-hour wait. We passed. I guess we’ll never have the gift of gab. However, the gardens surrounding Blarney Castle are extraordinary, both cultivated and wild. I was absolutely delighted to see fields of yellow buttercups that I hadn’t seen since I was a child in Bangor, Maine, when our house was surrounded in the summer by fields of grass, wildflowers and strawberries. Every spring firemen would burn the fields to make way for new growth. The construction of Interstate 95 put an end to these glorious fields when houses displaced by the highway were moved into them.

One of the more interesting gardens around Blarney Castle is the poison garden. It even includes cannabis sativa, aka marijuana. The pot plants are in a cage so visitors can’t easily make off with some. The Irish, at least the Irish government, classify cannabis in with wolfbane, rhubarb, and jimson weed. It’ll be a while before pot is legalized in Ireland. In addition to fields of buttercups, the gardens around the castle are graced with huge Indian azalea bushes, whitethorn trees, and yellow flowering laburnum. Blarney Castle and its grounds are definitely worth visiting even if you pass on kissing the Blarney Stone. However, the young engaged couple did buss the stone.

In the afternoon we arrived in County Tipperary and the Rock of Cashel. The fortress on the rock dates back to 432 CE and was the seat of the kings of Munster for several hundred years before the Norman invasion in the late 12th century. Christian missionaries arrived in the early 5th century including St. Patrick who, contrary to popular myth, was not the first Christian to visit Ireland, but he is credited with converting the king of Munster. In 1101 CE another king of Munster donated the fort to the Church. Few of the really early structures have survived. Most of the buildings are from the 12th and 13th centuries.

Dick Krehbiel, an architect and one of our fellow travelers, called Cashel one of the most “layered” sites in Europe along with the Acropolis. By “layered” he meant the many centuries (over 1000 years) of occupation and building that occurred at Cashel, from 432 CE up to the mid-1730’s when Arthur Price, the Anglican Archbishop of Cashel, destroyed the cathedral roof. Brian Boru, the legendary king who is credited with driving the Vikings out of Ireland, was crowned in Cashel in 978 CE. I should mention that we had an extraordinary guide named Mary who made the stone buildings come alive with her stories of the historical events that occurred at Cashel.

The next day we toured Kilkenny Castle that was built in the 12th century and evolved over the centuries into a Victorian mansion. The castle was once owned by the Butler family, the same Butler family that participated in the Door of Reconciliation on display in St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin. The name Butler is an anglicization of the French word for “bottle,” bouteille. In 1391 James FitzWalter bought Kilkenny Castle. He was the 9th Chief Butler of Ireland. The “butler” to the English king meant that he was in charge of the king’s wine, an office he passed down to his heirs. At some point the family adopted the name “Butler.”

Our Last Day in Ireland

We returned to Dublin for our last full day in Ireland. The highlight of that day, and, in my opinion, of our whole tour was our too brief visit to EPIC, the Irish Emigration Museum, an incredible interactive digital museum that tells the story of ordinary Irish folk, not just the rich and famous. We were only able to spend an hour there on our tour, but we could have been there for many hours, even two days. I had my doubts about a “digital” museum at the beginning, but they were quickly dissipated. EPIC is one of the best, if not the best, museum, I’ve ever been in. 

From the cover of the museum’s guide –

“EPIC The Irish Emigration Museum was created to honour the Irish diaspora abroad and recognize the vital contributions and monumental impact Irish people have made worldwide. By combining personal emigrant perspectives with social and cultural context, visitors can understand why a person left Ireland and the beliefs and heritage they brought with them.”

Much of the museum’s stories, of course, center on the Great Famine that occurred between 1845 and 1852 when the failure of the potato crops caused the deaths of more than 1 million people and caused an equal number to flee the country. On the eve of the famine the population was roughly 8.5 million. 6 million people left Ireland between 1841 and 1900. By 1901 its population had declined to roughly 4.4 million. Today 2023 the population is about 6 million.

I was especially impressed by the equal representation of women in the EPIC stories – women like Mary G. Harris, aka, Mother Jones, a very prominent American labor organizer and close comrade of Eugene Victor Debs, and Eileen Gray, an architect and furniture designer who was a pioneer in the Modern Movement and a colleague of Le Corbusier.

Moored outside the EPIC on the River Liffey is a replica of the Jeanie Johnston, a tall three-masted sailing ship, built to transport Irish emigres to North America and cargo back to Ireland. The boat made 16 roundtrip voyages between 1848 and 1855 and never lost a passenger or crew member. There were many other ships built like the Jeanie Johnston called “coffin ships” sailing between Europe and the Americas. The name comes from the horrendous conditions on board when death rates of passengers from hunger and lack of fresh water often ran as high as 20 percent. The dead were buried at sea. This was not the case with the Jeanie Johnston thanks to Captain James Attridge and Richard Blennerhassett, the ship’s doctor. In 1858 the ship became waterlogged and started slowly sinking. But after nine days the entire crew and all the passengers were rescued by another boat. The Jeanie Johnston never lost a passenger or a crew member in any of her journeys, even her last one.

A bit further down also on the banks of the Liffey is a very moving installation of life-size sculptures of famine victims. The installation reminded me of another sculptural monument on the Danube in Serbia to the victims of Nazi atrocities in 1942. 

Our hotel on our last night in Ireland was the Barberstown Castle Hotel once owned by Eric Clapton. One of his guitars is framed and on display in the sitting room off the patio bar. I would describe the hotel as grotesquely Victorian.

The next morning on the cab ride to the airport we had a most interesting conversation with our driver Steve. He told us about the role of George Mitchell, a former US senator from Maine, in bringing about the 1998 Good Friday Agreement that ended the thirty years of civil war in Northern Ireland between those who wanted to remain part of the United Kingdom and those who wanted to be united with the Republic of Ireland. He especially praised the bravery of Mo Mowlam, the Northern Ireland secretary of state, who participated energetically in the negotiations while undergoing chemotherapy for brain cancer in her office. She later died of the disease in 2005.

Departure to the US from the Dublin airport was a pleasant surprise. The US government has established a US Preclearance Facility that allows passenger bound for the US to clear all US immigration, customs and agriculture inspections at the Dublin airport prior to departure. We were actually able to use our Trusted Traveler status to avoid all the TSA malarky we had to go through when we flew out of Chicago two weeks before. We just debarked from the plane at O’Hare, hailed a cab and were home.