Feb 232014
These two sites are exactly what one’s minds eye sees when they think Ireland.
This would be more the case if photos showed up better.
Glendalough
About 35 miles outside of Dublin
Glendalough comes from the Gaelic Gleann da locha meaning the Glen of two Lakes
Glendalough is home to one of the most important monastic sites in Ireland. This early Christian monastic settlement was founded by Saint Kevin in the 6th century and eventually developed into a “Monastic City”
Once inside the gate and past the cross, you had sanctuary.
Kevin, a descendant of one of the ruling families in Leinster, studied as a boy under three holy men, Eoghan, Lochan, and Eanna. During this time, he went to Glendalough. After traveling around a bit he returned with a small group of monks to found the monastery where the ‘two rivers form a confluence’. Kevin’s writings talk about his fighting “knights” at Glendalough; scholars today believe this refers to his process of self-examination and his personal temptations. His fame as a holy man spread and he attracting many followers. He died in about 618. For six centuries afterwards, Glendalough flourished.
Around 1042, oak timber from Glendalough was used to build the longest (98.5 feet) Viking longship ever recorded. A modern replica of that ship was built in 2004 and is currently in Roskilde, Denmark.
The actual use of this tower is unknown, but it is assumed it was a lookout tower
The roof of this church is stone.
The monastery in its heyday, included workshops, areas for manuscript writing and copying, guest houses, an infirmary, farm buildings and dwellings for both the monks and a large lay population. The buildings which survive probably date from between the 10th and 12th centuries.
The Cliffs of Moher
The Cliffs of Moher or Ailte an Mhothair in Gaelic, are located at the southwestern edge of the Burren region in County Clare, Ireland. They rise 390 feet above the Atlantic Ocean at Hag’s Head, and reach their maximum height of 702 feet just north of O’Brien’s Tower. The cliffs receive almost one million visitors a year, making the cliffs one of Irelands most visited sites.
O’Brien’s Tower
O’Brien’s Tower was built in 1835 by Sir Cornelius O’Brien who was certain that tourism would help Ireland come out of its financial troubles. O’Brien was a descendant of Brian Boru, the High King of Ireland. Unlike many other landlords during the famine, O’Brien was a member of the Liscannor Famine Relief Committee which allocated relief work to impoverished tenants as a means of providing for them when their crops failed.
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The stack of rocks to the left, called Branaunmore, was originally part of the cliffs, it shows you how amazing the coastal erosion is and how powerful the sea is.
The cliffs take their name from an old fort called Moher that once stood on Hag’s Head, the southernmost point of the cliffs. I could not find exactly when it was built but the fort still stood in 1780 and is mentioned in an account from John Lloyd’s a Short Tour Of Clare (1780). It was demolished in 1808 to provide material for a new telegraph tower.
The day was clear enough for us to see the Aran Islands in Galway Bay, but not clear enough to get any decent photographs. There are approximately 1200 people living on the Aran Islands, it must be a very cold a desolate place to live judging by the cold and wind we were experiencing while looking out over them.
The Aran Sweater
We were told by the guide that the stitches of the sweaters were each individual to the fisherman, so when they fell overboard and their body was retrieved they could be identified. Well, …that is a myth.
This “misconception” is thought to have originated with J.M. Synge‘s 1904 play Riders to the Sea, in which the body of a dead fisherman is identified by the hand-knitted stitches on one of his garments. However, even in the play, there is no reference to any decorative or Aran-type pattern. The garment referred to is a plain stocking and it is identified by the number of stitches, the quote is “it’s the second one of the third pair I knitted, and I put up three score stitches, and I dropped four of them”. There is no record of any such event ever having taken place, nor is there any evidence to support there being a systematic tradition of family patterns.
Most historians agree that Aran knitting was invented as recently as the early 1900s by a small group of enterprising island women, with the intention of creating garments not just for their families to wear but which could be sold as a source of income. These women adapted the traditional Gansey sweater by knitting with thicker wool and modifying the construction to decrease labor and increase productivity.
So after all that Irish beauty of the last two days, we retire to our simple little hotel just outside of Limerick, the Adar Manor.
The Manor was built in 1832. There are some fun little curiosities about the hotel such as the turreted entrance tower at one corner rather than in the center, 52 chimneys to commemorate each week of the year, these chimneys service 75 fireplaces and there are 365 leaded glass windows to represent every day of the week.
What really blew my mind when I took a stroll outside was the parapet, it took me a while to make it out, but it says: Except the Lord build the house, then labour is but lost that built it”. (Psalm 127:1)
The Manor sits on 840 acres and yes a golf course.
The interior is bedecked as you would expect with a myriad of castley things. There are tapestries, crests and lots and lots of carved animals on the beautifully carved stairways. Long tables in the dining room with tall candelabras, and faces of family staring out at you from gilded frames.
*****
Fairies and Leprechauns
So dinner conversation was about Irish Fairies. A fairy tree is a Blackthorn or Hawthorn or even an Oak, and no one will mess with them, in other words, if one is standing where the highway is supposed to be built, they will put a bend in the road, if a farmer has one standing in the field, it stays and he plows around it. It is believed that if you tie on a piece of cloth as it disintegrates your wish will come true.
The leprechaun is the cobbler to the fairies. The fairies would come out and dance the night away, so of course, they would need new shoes, they paid the leprechaun in fairy gold.
Everyone knows the leprechaun hides the gold at the end of the rainbow but did you know they really are cranking little buggers because all they care about is their money.
That’s all, I don’t have any other story
Sin sin, níl aon scéal eile agam
For now anyway – more tomorrow.