Ireland day 5

         Today we tearfully said goodbye to Longueville House.  At least, one of us had tears in his eyes, after paying the bill for last night’s dinner at checkout time this morning .  Relying on our map, we headed down the back roads to Blarney Castle.

         The Blarney Castle and its famous stone are among the best known symbols of Ireland.  The third castle on the site, it was built in 1446 by Dermott McCarthy, called by some historians the King of Munster and by others an Irish chieftain.  Dermott, you know, was a descendant of Cormac MacCarthy, who rallied 5,000 men to go to Bannockburn in 1314 to support Robert the Bruce in the whipping he gave to the English that year.  Any memory of whipping the English brings a smile to an Irish face, of course.  In any event, it seems half the people in this area have the last name McCarthy, so his family was quite prolific.  But we tourists aren’t interested in the castle Dermott built, are we?  It’s the Blarney Stone that we all want to kiss, to bring us good luck for the remainder of our lives.  And as you are dying to recall the history of the stone and what causes all the fuss about it, you will now be told.

 At the Blarney Castle

         The Blarney Stone was the stone that Moses struck twice with his rod, according to Numbers 20:11, and water gushed out, quenching the thirst of the community.  Or, it is the stone Ezel near where David was directed to hide in 1 Samuel 20:19 after he fled from Saul, the stone having been stolen during the Crusades and brought back to Ireland.  Or it was the pillow upon which Saint Columba laid at his death on Iona in 857 (Would you like to hear the history of Saint Columba?  No?).  Or it was Jacob’s pillow, which the prophet Jeremiah brought to Ireland for some unexplained reason, and which ended up in Scotland.  Take your pick—all of these legends are told from time to time, and the local tourism council steadfastly denies any part in creating the stories.  Part of the stone, whatever its true origin, was given to the aforementioned Cormac MacCarthy, and it ended up in the third incarnation of the McCarthy family’s Blarney Castle, in a place where the tourists have to bend over backwards to kiss it for luck.  After we were told over dinner last night that local ruffians have fun urinating on the stone at night and laughing at the tourists who kiss it, we decided we had enough good fortune and would pass without kissing this particular rock.
 
         You should know before your visit there that Queen Elizabeth I is credited with coining the word blarney.  One of her ministers spent months trying to convince a local chieftain  to pledge his loyalty to the crown.  Upon hearing the long list of excuses being made by the chieftain, she remarked, “It’s all just blarney.”  You should also know that Blarney Castle is privately owned, unlike so many of the historic landmarks in this country, and that there is a stiff price for admission to the grounds.  You should also know by now why the word blarney is synonymous with baloney, horse feathers, rubbish, nonsense, claptrap, drivel, babel, and bulls..t.  It makes you wonder why so many movie stars, rock stars, and political leaders have come here to kiss the blarney stone.

         After being ejected from the park for refusing to bend over backwards and kiss the stone, we headed for a really special stop.  We had decided that since we would be on a tight schedule today, we would put our faith in TomTom; so we set him to take us to a certain street in Cork (“Kahrk”, for our Irish readers), and the little genius took us directly there, to the site of Saint Fin Barre's Cathedral.  Legend says this is the site of a monastery established in the seventh century by Saint Fin Barre.  A settlement developed around the monastery, and successive churches served the City of Cork.  The current cathedral took 14 years to build, beginning in 1865, but there has been continuous Christian worship on the site for more than a thousand years.  It is a massive and impressive structure, with spires reaching toward the heavens.

                                  Saint Fin Barre's Cathedral in Cork
         Here, on Easter Sunday, we attended the 11:15 service of the Church of Ireland (Anglican), Diocese of Cork, let by the Bishop himself.   The Right Reverend Michael Mayes, formerly Bishop of Limerick, Ardfert and Killaloe, and now Bishop of Cork, led the Festival Choral Eucharist, and what a service it was.  The pomp and ceremony, steeped in tradition, made you feel a bit like you were attending a royal wedding.  It was one of the most impressive services we have ever attended.  The Bishop spoke at length of the departure of the Titanic from the nearby port of Cobh on Good Friday, April 11, 1912.  It was the last port from which the Titanic sailed.  He tied the loss of life resulting from that sailing to the even more infamous Good Friday.  You had to be inspired by the service, whatever your religion.  And the congregation itself might have brought some faith, with the surprising variety of faces and shapes.  The family sitting next to us might well have been from India, or Pakistan.  You might have guessed other people there, if you had seen them on the street, to be hindu, or muslim, or Buddhists.  You would have been wrong.  Or perhaps you might have reflected a bit on what a different world it would be if all those who claimed to profess one of the world’s major religions actually practiced them as they were intended.

                                Choir practice inside St. Fin Barre's
         In any event, at the end of the service was a communion, in which believers of all Christian faiths were invited to participate.  The Anglican Church is one of the churches where each person drinks from the same cup.  In this case, it was a large silver cup, and at this church, it was not grape juice, but the real thing.  It was such a surprise for me to taste wine in church.  So I want to apologize publicly to Tricia for the disturbance that was caused when the reverend tried to take back the cup before I had finished drinking.

         After the service in Kahrk, we set TomTom for an address in Shanagarry, along the southern coast.  Old Reliable took us straight to the Ballymaloe House Restaurant and Country House, where we had a reservation for late lunch. In the midst of a 400-acre estate with beautiful gardens, golf course, and fine dining, this estate has been in the Allen family for more than 40 years.  We ate and ate and ate at the Sunday buffet.  They even had homemade vanilla ice cream to go with the rhubarb tart.

         Midafternoon we skirted the port of Cobh, where survivors from the Lusitania sinking were brought in 1915, and where more than 2.5 million people emigrated to the United States, beginning in 1845.  If your ancestors came from Ireland, there is a good chance they left from here.

 En route to Kinsale
          We have ended up in the coastal village of Kinsale, where we took a long afternoon walk before enjoying music and seafood chowder        the Blue Haven pub.  More about Kinsale tomorrow, while I try to make this paragraph align left instead of center.

Charlie and Tricia

©2012