Forty Foot

This is skipping ahead in time a bit, but I was so excited to share this video that I thought I would go ahead and do it anyways. Yesterday, we went to the Martello Tower in Sandycove, Dublin 4. The tower is the location of the first episode of Ulysses: "Telemachus," where we meet Stephen Dedalus and stately, plump Buck Mulligan.
A bit about the towers:
 They were built all along the coast of Ireland (primarily in Dublin) to defend Ireland from an invasion by Napoleon and the French -- though the Irish would have preferred to be "liberated" by the French, and free of the British. Anyways, James Joyce lived in the tower himself for a while, before the fateful night that is almost exactly the same as the first part of the book. One of the men also sleeping in the tower, portrayed by the character Haines, has a hallucination of a black panther in the tower and wakes up the other two men (Joyce and Oliver St. John Gogarty) by shooting all over the room trying to kill it. Joyce never returned to the tower.
Outside of the tower lies the "Forty Foot", a swimming area in the Irish Sea that used to be a bathing pool for men up until the 1970s. It is still in use today, and I decided that I would jump in! It was absolutely FREEZING. Irish people were swimming around like it was just a nice, deep hot tub, but I barely lasted two seconds. On my way in, I asked an 8-year old girl who was playing around like it was nothing how it was. She told me, "It's cold but it warms up quick!" Well, I jumped in and then scrambled out. Here's the footage to prove it...

Worth a read...

A scandal has been sweeping Ireland since I arrived here regarding the recent discovery of 800 dead babies in a home for unmarried mothers run by nuns. This story is particularly fascinating, as it relates directly to Dubliners, a compilation of stories by James Joyce that I read before beginning Ulysses. In "Clay," one of the short stories, elderly Maria lives at one of these homes -- Protestant charities that house "troubled women." Truly horrifying.

Click here for the article!

Sligo Abbey

One of my favorite experiences thus far has been our impromptu trip to Sligo Abbey. Hoping to break away from the group of 20 that was so embarrassingly tourist-y it hurt, a few of us took a right instead of a left and ended up outside the most amazing structure one hour before closing.

^Inside the abbey 

In the brochure I took, it gives a solid summary of the whole deal. "Known locally as 'The Abbey', this Dominican friary was founded in the mid-13th century by Maurice FitzGerald. The site contains a great wealth of carvings including Gothic and Renaissance tomb structure, well preserved cloisters and the only sculptured 15th century high altar to survive in any Irish monastic church." 

WOW! Well, I sure was excited about this. Dominicans have a reputation as being largely responsible for carrying out the Inquisition, but on the bright side, the brilliant theologian Thomas Aquinas was a Dominican. Additionally, after Henry VIII decided he was over Catholicism, many monasteries were destroyed. But here we were at one of the oldest remaining structures, in such great condition. 

^Selfie from a crumbling staircase

^Gravestones are all over the place. Interestingly enough, engravers were mostly illiterate in the time period, so you often find misspellings on gravestones.

^Some of the carvings in the abbey have remained in great condition. This is just one example of the many throughout. Unfortunately, I couldn't get a picture of my favorite carving -- the angel Gabriel with wings and a sword next to Peter, the Vicar of Christ, holding a key to heaven. 

^It was such a beautiful day when we were here. It definitely added to the effect, creating a truly spiritual experience!

Sligo Abbey was a dream. I don't think I've ever been inside a structure so old -- the 1200's! I'm sure the history is terribly brutal if I did enough research. But the remains are absolutely stunning. 

The Herlihy Name

One thing I hope to do over here is figure out some history behind the timeline of the Herlihy name. In a book of Irish names, I did come across a little bit of information that I'll share here now, before I make it over to the National Library.

(O) Herlihy O hlarlatha (iarfhlaith, underlord). A Ballyvourney erenagh family whose name is sometimes changed to Hurley. Cork.

If that definition isn't making any sense, don't fear!

"The Erenagh is often confused with the Coarb but there was a subtle difference. Like the Coarb they were normally married men and not ordained. The office was hereditary to this family. They were a family who were chieftains of the Tuath in which the monastery stood and very often regarded their role as a sort of Lay Abbot alongside the Ecclesiastical Abbot. An example is the family of O'Herlihy who were chieftains of the Tuath of Ballyvourney. They were also the hereditary guardians of the sacred relics of St. Gobnait's Shrine."

FYI - a tuath was a medieval Irish polity smaller than a kingdom. Does this make us royalty? Basically! 

And here's a bit more information about St. Gobnait that I've copy and pasted from Megalithic Ireland: 

St. Gobnait (aka St Gobnat. Gobhnet, Gobnaid or Gobnata, Abigail in English) Gobnait was born in County Clare in the 6th century. Traditionally it is believed she fled from Clare and took refuge on the Aran Islands. It is said she studied there under St Enda. Kilgobnet Church on Inis Oirr (Inisheer) is dedicated to her. While on Inis Oírr an an angel instructed her to go on a journey. The angel told her that when she came upon nine white deer, that would be her place of resurrection. Gobnait travelled through Waterford, Cork and Kerry. There is a Holy Well and a church named after her in Dunquin, County Kerry, a town near Dungarvan in Waterford. and also Kilgobnet near Killorglin in Kerry. But it was at Baile Bhúirne -Ballyvouney in Cork where she finally came across 9 white deer grazing. She is looked upon as the Patron Saint of Beekeepers and an anglised version of her name is Deborah meaning "Honey Bee". The bee is the symbol of St. Gobnait, when a pagan chief was attempting to rustle cattle, she pointed one of the convent beehives at the raiders the thieves all fled and the cattle were saved.

Strokestown Park House and the National Famine Museum

To get in the spirit of writing the essay I'm about to begin, I thought I'd post about last weekend in Sligo, a town that provided a nice change of pace from Dublin.

^Bus selfie 

This year, our group decided to make a pitstop at the Strokestown Park House on the way into Sligo. Essentially, it is a giant mansion that has been around for hundreds of years. (The link can fill you in a bit more!) It's absolutely beautiful but it has a rocky history, associated with the ascendancy in Ireland, where Protestants from England moved in and took all the land from the Irish who were already settled there. Thanks, Oliver Cromwell. Anyways, the family who owned this mansion at one point owned 3,000 acres of land, making their money by charging rent to the peasant farmers who also did all of the work for the family.

^This is a picture of the exterior (without the two outer wings, which I was unable to capture without stepping in sheep poo!) 

^This room is the children's play room. When the family finally was forced to sell the property in the mid-1900s, all the furniture went with it. Of course, it's pretty creepy! But they sure had a lot of toys...

^This is the kitchen, the oldest of it's kind in all of Ireland. Behind where I took the picture, there was a balcony where the lady of the house could watch the servants below and tell them what to do. Dad, in the bottom picture, there is a spit for roasting whole sheep or pigs. Thought you'd like that -- old school!

In stark contrast to this amazing house, the stable has been changed to the National Famine Museum of Ireland. The famine is (obviously) a touchy subject here, so much so, that it is rarely discussed. The museum was opened to help keep that history alive and relevant. After seeing how the landowners lived, the lives of the peasants is heartbreaking. People were eating 14 pounds of potatoes a day when the blight struck (largely because landowners did not distribute enough land to each peasant family, so the potatoes were easily effected). 

To help describe their living situations, aside from starving, the museum had a quotation from Isaac Weld, from the Statistical Survey of Roscommon in 1832 (before the famine took full effect):

"The hovel's which the poor people were building as I passed, solely by their own efforts, were of the most abject description; their walls were formed, in several instances, by the backs of fences; the floors sunk in the ditches; the height scarcely enough for a man to stand upright; poles not thicker than a broomstick for couples; a few pieces of grass sods the only covering; and these extending only partially over the thing called a roof; the elderly people miserably clothed; the children all but naked."

During the famine, a ton of peasants were forced to emigrate (which could explain how our family got here, perhaps? I'll be looking into that at the National Library next week!). If they didn't emigrate, they were forced into work houses, where death was a sure bet. 

All the food that the peasants were harvesting was being sent to England, so this was just a horrific time. How kind and generous of the wealthy English to hold a fundraiser to donate some of their hard-earned cash to those plebeians in Ireland! Queen Victoria herself donated 2,000 pounds. You go, Queen Victoria! 

Another English genius, Soyer, invented a soup that could be made for 1 shilling and 4 pennies. Go Soyer! Here's the recipe: 

2 gallons of water

A quarter pound of leg of beef

2 ounces of dripping

2 onions and other vegetables

A half pound of flour

A half pound of pearl barley 

3 ounces of salt

A half an ounce of brown sugar 

And there you have it! The peasants in the workhouses would be given one bowl of this soup and a piece of cornbread a day. Let's just say, it's highly effective to start a tour in a beautiful mansion and move into the most depressing museum of all time... Really makes you think about the painful wealth gap that existed in Ireland. 

^"Angel of Death" 

"He Wishes For The Cloths of Heaven"

As I am on the topic of Yeats, here is a poem I saw at the gift shop that I found especially lovely. 

"He Wishes For the Cloths of Heaven" 

William Butler Yeats

Had I the heaven's embroidered cloths,

Enwrought with golden and silver light,

The blue and the dim and the dark cloths

Of night and light and the half-light,

I would spread the cloths under your feet:

But I, being poor, have only my dreams;

I have spread my dreams under your feet;

Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

Now, back to James Joyce!

The Emerald Isle

Hello, all! I assume if you're reading this, you are either family or a bored friend. I have now been in Ireland for one week, and so much has happened. I finally figured out how to create a blog. The hardest part is coming up with a URL that isn't already taken. Fortunately, my recent visit to the grave of W.B. Yeats inspired me. The inscription on his stone reads:
"Cast a cold Eye
On Life, on Death.
Horseman, pass by!"
Feel free to make whatever you'd like of that, but to me, it suggests a response to an attitude that prevails in Ireland. I read a quotation by Daniel Moynihan that states: "To be Irish is to know that in the end the world will break your heart." I've seen The Wind that Shakes the Barley and Michael Collins in the last week. I have to say, Ireland is a beautifully melancholy place, still deeply shaken from years of oppression. The command Yeats has left on his gravestone seems to suggest one take a more apathetic view on existence. How fun!
Anyways, I will be posting several more times today, hoping to catch up on everything that has happened so far! But before that can happen, I must get through The Telemachiad in Ulysses.