"The one who travels is storied"    --Peig Sayers

Fresh cut turf.

In Ireland they do burn coal but more popular is turf, which is cut out of the bogs and looks like dense dirt. When you are out in the country you can see a piles of turf drying and being stored for the winter. 

Ireland now has huge machines that cut the turf and sell it in tight little rows of perfectly cut bricks in the grocery stores, but I was looking for the old time farmers that still cut it by hand. 

After being there for a few days I was able to identify the sweet smell of a turf fire. Before entering a town, the wind would carry the smell and then you would see the smoke coming out of a stone chimney on a thatched roof.

I brought some turf home with me and burn a little chunk now and then when I am missing Ireland.

I took this picture in a  famine house.  I was able to step inside and see how the people really lived.   The fireplace, the bedrooms, the chairs, the thatched roof with beams made from wood they found from shipwrecks.  It was part of the woman's daily chores to search the base of the cliffs for shipwrecks.

I felt like I was stepping directly back in time.

Across the street and down the slope, we explored the Dunbeg fort (built in the iron age), which National Geographic says is one of the most well preserved forts.  It looked like a long man-made cave.

And here in the same field as the famine home were clusters of bee hive homes, people lived in these simple stone structures from ancient times to 1200AD

Both Dunbeg and the beehive huts were amazing, all that is left after these years is stone structures.

But here in the famine house there were signs of life, you get a glimpse of the family. As if they only left a season ago. I held the teapot and the photographs, I ran my hand along the fireplace and lifted the plates that belonged to another woman.  Multiple families lived in this particular stone house during the 1845-1850 potato famine and one family had six children all of whom died at birth.  It seemed as if the house had so much suffering so much death that after the famine was over they left the house just like this. I Had read about people doing this, leaving heirloom quilts and china behind because they wanted a truly fresh start.  Most of the people in this home died during the famine or immigrated to America. 

"It is easy to halve the potato where there's love."  

                                                                         --- Black potatoes by Susan Campbell Bartoletti (pg 29)

We did not know there was a famine house to explore--the tour books all talked about Dunbeg and the Beehive huts, but while we were there, we saw it.  A farmer sitting at a small table with his feet up, his hands behind his back, and a pipe dangling from his mouth, sold us a ticket.  His loyal border collie sat next to him, the man spoke to her in Gaelic and told us we could head on up, and there we were on his property alone, with free rein to walk through this house. 

I had read a stack of books on the famine which made this was a meaningful visit for me.

Steve...not so much: it was more meaningful for him to be outside talking to the hairy Irish donkey he found.  When I finally came out after my long time alone in the house, I was looking for him and found him with his arm around the donkey's neck and this very big proud smile as if to say "Look at my new friend!"

"It was my wish that somewhere there should be a memorial of it all...for our like will not be there again."

                                                                                                                               -Tomas O Crimohthian

*Steve's buddy

Inch Beach which is famous for surfing

The windy twisty roads that reminded me of sports car commercials

"Look at this I mean can you take it all in?!" 

We took turns saying things like this to each other

Places like this do exist, and when you are there feeling the wind and the smelling the sea and grass and earth and all the shades of green green green, you swell, it is too much beauty, too much poetry and history all at once.

I will be washing dishes or pumping gas and my mind will be far away, back on this road, holding Steve's hand.

Great Blasket Islands

This is so very intriguing to me.

The population on these islands was seriously declining and during the winter the people were not always able to make it over to the mainland.  The government in 1953 had everyone move off the island.  One storyteller Peig Sayers published a book about her life there--also Tomas O Crimohthian, I found both of their writings to just stir up more curiosity.  Peig was illiterate but known all over Ireland for the stories she dictated. 

There is a rumor that one man refused to leave the Island, he hid,  and lives there still.

Maybe I like stories like that because my Dad would do something just like that.

If the weather permits and the waters are not dangerous you could take a day trip over to the islands.  The homes are still there: eerie curtains and things still hanging in the window, waiting for their owners to come back.  We did not go--the boats were not going that day and we had so many other places to see, but I had read so much about them that it was great just to stand on the shore and look out at them.

If I could choose one place to go back in time and visit this would be it, not the Blasket Islands, not the ring forts, or Dunbeg, this place would be it.  It is called Gallarus Oratory and is about 1300 years old.  There is much talk about early Christians coming over to Ireland.  So many of the stories in Ireland and the structures are of pagan people, but here...here is our people.   The little handout said "The oratory was built by early Christians who lived a simple life and understood God and His ways."  

Steve and I went inside the Oratory sang "Be Thou My Vision" and held hands and prayed...how can you do otherwise?

The pink on its back is paint the farmer uses to identify it as his own.  He was one of  a small group of sheep looking out over a fantastic view called Conners Pass with us.

The picture below is taken at the same place as the one above, I used the longer lens to show some of the ring forts that dot the landscape.

This photograph is for my friend Fwren and my Grandmother who love birds.  This is a European robin, she was singing to us while we were at the Oratory.

"The more intense the pain, the greater the possible effect on the singing mind: the greater the song. A history of Ireland could be written in the light of that idea."  (Pg 120) The Irish Countryman