On Wednesday, 9/29, we left Dunquin and drove out of Dingle through Ballyferriter and over the Connor Pass. There is a bold goat on the pass who sticks his head in the car windows for treats and scratches his back by tilting his horned head back. We took the car onto the ferry and crossed the Shannon into Co. Clare.
Ballyferriter, the Gaeltacht, Eire
We sat outside in Doolin in the grand sunlight just after arriving. At a picnic table with a Smithwicks and a Ritz. The sun felt so good as to splurge on a huge meal at the Lazy Lobster later. We watched the cows graze in the field behind us as the sun went down.
Doolin Cows
Our room #4 at Killilagh House was conveniently located…next door to the post office, 30 seconds to McDermott’s pub, 40 seconds to the Lazy Lobster–and it had the best scones I’ve ever tasted…plus a shy Jack Russell in residence!
I would call home that night…and hear from a phone booth in tiny Doolin, the toilet of 523 Southcrest crash when it was dropped during renovation. From so many miles away, I could hear it, and the stress in my mother’s voice. She was beside herself with the mess.
Back to the pubs for some tunes. Music, ceol and craic…this is Ireland!
I’d hoped to go out to the Blaskets. But the weather did not permit the boats to make the effort.
Instead, I visited a graveyard where several of the Blasket characters are buried. Deep holes sinking into the graves and crooked old grave stones. Two magpies and rain.
Later I sat at the desk in the B&B Gleann Dearg (room #1) in Dunquin and stared out at the Blaskets–coming and going in the clouds and mist. Like some sort of vision that can’t quite get into focus. Sometimes, you could see the ruined cottages out there. Sometimes the sun would shine there.
The Great Blasket: some deserted homes barely visibleThe Blaskets: 3 miles and 50 years away
One day I would get out there. But it wouldn’t be this trip.
The Blaskets are a group of six islands…at one time, home to over 175 people. Now they are abandoned, evacuated in the 1950s for safety. An entire way of life, ended.
Why are the Blaskets semi-famous? In a span of seven years, a variety of autobiographies and stories came to life from the islands–detailing a fading community and culture. Translated from Irish to English–these were hard lives. Sometimes the three mile journey to mainland Ireland could not be made–and that was still true as I witnessed. There is no electricity, no trees. Only beautiful green slopes and deserted, collapsed stone cottages. Some descriptions I’ve read: “The Great Blasket looks so close you could reach out and touch its field walls and stroke the grass on its muscular mountain slopes. There are other days when the great island shrinks to half the size and withdraws itself far out into the Atlantic, aloof and infinitely untouchable. At all times, this island has an appearance of mysterious self-containment and otherness, totally at odds with the visible relics of human occupation and cultivation.” And in the words of Tomas O’Criomhthain about the culture and community there, “the like of us will not be seen again“.
At the heritage center, a letter said “I was inside with an old widow a few nights ago…well she had three lovely rooms in her house, her children are all in America now and only one son that’s a man here, but not in her house. Imagine her sitting in the corner alone, thinking and looking at her empty house which her grandchildren should be playing and she knows that she will never see her dear ones again…”
The islands were evacuated in 1953. Homes in Dunquin were given to the cast offs. It must have been hard, to look out to sea every day and see their past there on the Great Blasket.
A home in Dunquin for an evacuated Blasket islander
We left Dublin in our black Ford Focus around noon. It was the day of the All-Ireland Finals (Cork vs. Meath in Croke Park–Meath would win). It was a sunny day as we listened to Radio Na Gaeltacht and cut across the country through Laois, Tipperary and Limerick, arriving into Dingle around 5:30 p.m.
Our planned route in Eire
Of course, I longed to be studying Irish again. I daydreamed for the time to come here, immerse myself in the Gaeltacht, and study at this cute little desk overlooking Dingle’s harbor in our Alpine Guesthouse (room #6 again). Such a romantic notion.
We got out around town in the pouring rain. Got a phone call from Mark…”Ms. Sweet-i-cums” ripped open a pillow and a VCR tape cover…Riley, Riley. 🙂
We did a bit a of a pub crawl in Dingle, stopping our shopping to take advantage of toilets and refreshments.
Bryan was on the prowl for an “A” tin whistle and we both hunted for sweaters for our “mammies” as one shopkeeper called it. She told us she had six kids ages 11-24, and when we left after gabbing with her for a little while, she exclaimed, “Take the rain away witch-yas!” 🙂 Heard Tom Jones doing “Burning Down the House” and Sheryl Crow “All I Want to do is Have some Fun” throughout the day in various pubs. Also saw lots of dogs.
Probably the best scene was the herd of sheep coming down the street. I heard them before I saw them…lots of little hooves on pavement, tiny bells and their questioning eyes when they stopped in front of me–surrounding me–waiting for the whistling shepherd to guide them past the cars and sidewalks full of people.
Dingle Sheep
And the light of County Kerry. God bless that light! It’s like the light from heaven spilling onto earth.
