Ireland! (Cork, specifically)

"So be my God and guide me/till I lie beneath these hills/and let the great God of my fathers/be the great God of my children still." --God of My Fathers, Andrew Peterson

"On the fourth of July, eighteen-hundred and six/we set sail from the sweet Cobh of Cork" --Irish Rover

 Ta, lovelies! How's it going? I've gotten to the point in this trip (which, to be honest, happens to me not infrequently) where I have more posts that I want to share than I have weeks in which to share them! Which is a good problem to have, since it allows me to stockpile posts for later, but also a bit of a bad problem to have, in that the timing of some of my travel posts is going to be a little off. Part of that is that I'm doing a lot of travelling, hence two travel posts in a row! (And probably more to come for several weeks, because I'm blessed enough to be going a lot of fantastic places!) 

Anywho! I went straight from Scotland to Ireland, just because that's the way the time between commitments worked, and it was a bit of a funny experience, because Scotland looks actually quite different from England (especially in the Highlands, with all the high hills and lakes) and Ireland looks largely similar to England, especially the Peak District (which is where Sheffield is, more or less). Although, granted, Ireland has quite a few more cows than England does. And is, perhaps, a tad more green. But not so much as I was expecting! (Compared to many parts of the US, of course, both Ireland and England are quite green, which is why it has the reputation of being the Emerald Isle. I, coming from the Evergreen State, am perhaps slightly less impressed than I should be.) 

Please don't take any of this as badmouthing Ireland--I liked it right away, and was a huge fan of Cork, which is where I spent all four-and-a-half days of my trip. (Well, that and surrounding towns.) 

I was blessed in getting to stay right in the middle of Cork, in a hostel over a pub. Said pub was open for those staying in the hostel at all times, and they had a coal fire going, which made for a very cosy environment for reading or working on blog posts/emails/research projects. I was a big fan of that. :) 

Cork was probably my favourite city of the trip (more so than Edinburgh and Glasgow), and one of my favourite cities I've been to so far in the British Isles! It has a river running right through the middle of it, a beautiful old town with brightly coloured houses and winding streets, multiple bookstores within walking distance of my hostel (this was honestly a bit problematic, lol) really excellent transit, and a multitude of Catholic churches! 

There was actually a Dominican parish within walking distance of my hostel, where I got to go for Mass twice, and they had just celebrated 800 years of the Dominicans being in Cork. (800 years! That's crazy! The Dominicans arrived in Cork only, what, eight years after the Order became a thing? Insane.) 

But even Dominicans aside, I just loved being back in a country where I could assume that any church I saw was a Catholic one. I get very tired of all the Anglican churches in England. Very, very, very tired. 

One of the main reasons I actually went to Ireland (aside from The Vibes) is that about 1/8 of my ancestry is actually Irish, and for most of that ancestry going back to about 1850 or so I actually had town names. Meaning that I could go see the places where said ancestors lived. They were all from the Cork area, and thus, I stayed in Cork to give myself a central spot from which to launch my investigations. :) I didn't find any directly ancestral tombstones (as far as I know...one of my two main expeditions was undertaken when it was raining super hard, so I didn't stop to think too hard--I took a bunch of tombstone pictures and then got back where it was dry, and I still need to analyse those pictures), but in each town, I found a whole bunch of tombstones with the family names I was looking for on them--probably distant cousins of some sort. It was actually super interesting how 'segregated' the towns were in terms of last names. One would expect a lot more overlap, but other than the ubiquitous 'Murphy' (not one of our family's names), there really wasn't. 

There were two specific towns I went to, the first being Macroom, about a forty-minute bus ride west of Cork. It's a relatively small town, but big enough to have a nice main street with a bookstore, and also a falling-down castle, so that was cool. :D The church in Macroom was old enough that my ancestors would probably have gone there for Mass, which was amazing, and there was a bar named after one of my ancestors, as well. 

Grenagh, the other town (well, and Rathduff right next door, but Rathduff is truly Barely There and has no cemetery, and it was raining so hard that I didn't go) was absolutely tiny, with one gas station, a church, a bar, and a cemetery. But I found quantities of family-name gravestones in the graveyard, which was cool. (Those are the ones I still need to analyse, because I was soaked and slightly miserable.) It sits at the top of a hill overlooking a valley, in a really beautiful spot. 

The last spot I went that had some connection to ancestry of sorts was actually Cobh, referenced above in the "The Irish Rover" lyric. Cobh (pronounced "cove" or "cahv") is the main 'port town' of the Cork area and is where the Titanic docked--it was her last port of call before the disaster. As the main port of the Cork area, it was almost certainly there that my ancestors embarked on their way over to the US from Ireland. I mostly went for a choral concert at their AMAZINGLY BEAUTIFUL Cathedral, but also enjoyed learning some about the history of the port (including the hotel that would host 'American Wakes'--as the folk who were staying at home bade farewell to those who were leaving for America) and sitting by the water reading and feeling contemplative and maudlin. :P

One of the things that I really appreciated about the trip was (and this is going to sound really cheesy) getting to embrace and identify more with my Irish heritage. Because I definitely take more after the Jewish part of my family (I look more like the Jewish part of the family than any of my siblings do) and have a name that sounds very Jewish, I tend to mostly think about that part of my ancestry. Which isn't a bad thing! I'm very proud to have Jewish heritage! But I tend to forget that I also have similar amounts of Irish, Swiss, French, Belgian, and English heritage. And that especially my blue eyes are very Irish. :D (With help from the English side, because one can't get blue eyes from just one side of the family, of course.) It was especially cool while combing through the cemeteries to see how many people bearing our Irish family names actually also had my first name. As much as I think of it as being a 'Jewish' name, it's also an Irish name. (And really, an English name, too. Not so much Swiss, French, or Belgian, lol.) It was cool to situate myself within my Irish Catholic heritage (getting to go to the same church that my ancestors would have gone to was a definite highlight) and think about how my ancestors went away so long ago, but now I'd come back. :) (Granted, quite briefly.)

Last, fun, thing: on my last full day there, I took the bus up to Blarney Castle, and kissed the Blarney Stone! (The legend is that if you kiss the Blarney Stone, you'll have the "gift of the gab", aka eloquence.) I distinctly remember from when I was little my mom telling us stories about her kissing the Blarney Stone when she was young, and I partially wanted to do it because of that, partially because I knew it would freak Galadriel out (she thinks it's totally unsanitary, and, granted, isn't entirely wrong), and partially because, by the time I got up to the top of the castle and was ready to go for it, I wanted to not be a chicken! Because it's not just a rock that you kiss that's somewhere random on the ground. No. That would be too simple. It's at the very top of a huge castle tower (probably four or five stories up), and the way the top of the tower is constructed, there's an open gap (like, all the way down to the ground) between the edge of the top of the tower and the crenellations. You have to lie on your back and dangle upside down and backwards into that gap in order to kiss the stone, which is at the bottom of the suspended crenellations. Granted, there is a grate over that bit so that if you fall on your head, you won't fall four or five stories, but it's just a couple of bars, and it doesn't stop you feeling terrified when you glimpse how high up you are. But hey, I did it! (And hypothetically I now have the gift of the gab.) 

Mostly, though, I went to Blarney Castle because of the gardens, and those didn't disappoint--it's basically a whole entire botanical garden around this castle, which is also the castle-y-est castle I've ever had the pleasure to see. So, even if you're afraid of heights and don't want to kiss the Blarney Stone, I'd recommend going. :) 

And that was Ireland! It was great fun, and I'd definitely go again. :) (And yes, I had a drink almost every night. What are you supposed to do while staying above a pub? XD)