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Week In Pictures
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Mystical and magical, passionate and poetic, Ireland might well have been created by the wave of a sorcerer's wand. The island has a surreal quality; its fields really do seem greener, its mists more diaphanous and its people, wonderfully winsome. Ireland gave the world the potato, the jig and a sinfully rich coffee — not to mention leprechauns, four-leaf clovers and an excuse to drink green beer every March 17.
The gateway to this enchanting island is the West Country — the counties of Clare, Limerick, Galway, Kerry and Tipperary — a region where medieval castles and ancient abbeys crown emerald hills; thatch-roofed inns offer a respite for afternoon tea; unusual stone crosses mark the country's Celtic past, and villages of pastel-colored cottages drip with roses and honeysuckle around every bend of the twisting country lanes.
Castles galore
It would be hard to imagine a more perfect fairy-tale castle than Dromoland in County Clare. The 16th-century castle, now a luxury hotel, was the ancestral home of the O'Briens, direct descendents of Brian Boru, Ireland's beloved 10th- century monarch.
Visitors will want to check out the portrait of one member of the O'Brien clan, Maire Rua (Mary of the Red Hair), in the castle's Grand Salon. As legend has it, during Oliver Cromwell's 17th-century invasion of Ireland, Maire Rua offered herself to one of his officers to ensure her children's' hereditary rights. After the wedding, the less-than-enamored bride drugged her unfortunate groom, strapped him to a blind stallion and sent him hurtling over the nearby Cliffs of Moher. Maire, being a good Catholic, naturally considered divorce out of the question.
In County Limerick, Glin Castle, a series of Gothic lodges overlooking the estuary of the River Shannon, holds a particular fascination for Americans. It was built in the 1820s by the Fitzgerald family, whose most famous member, Rose, married a Boston Irishman, Joseph Kennedy, and spawned an American political dynasty.
But perhaps the most noted of the area's castles is Bunratty, built in the 15th century by a local chieftain and later owned by the ubiquitous O'Briens. Every evening, the merriment and revelry of the Middle Ages echoes throughout the ancient fortress as guests arrive for a Medieval banquet.
Glasses of mead are raised in toasts, and costumed harpists and minstrels serenade diners who literally tear into their meat course with daggers — there were no forks in the Middle Ages. Go early and stroll through the nearby Folk Park, a collection of cottages re-creating Irish village life at the turn of the last century, or stay late and join locals for a glass of Guinness in nearby Durty Nelly's Pub.
On to Dublin
Dublin, on Ireland's east coast, is a city whose heart is the River Liffey, which flows through the city center, and whose poetic soul is defined in the writing of native sons Oscar Wilde, George Bernard Shaw, William Butler Yeats and Sean O'Casey.
You can cross the Liffey on the delicate ironwork Halfpenny Bridge or stroll St. Stephen's Green just as Leopold and Molly Bloom did in James Joyce's novel Ulysses. Lovers of Gulliver's Travels will want to make a pilgrimage to Jonathan Swift's grave at St. Patrick's Cathedral, which dates to the 11th century.
History buffs can check out the General Post Office on O'Connell Street, which was the stronghold of the 1918 Easter Uprising, and art lovers will enjoy a visit to the National Museum, with its outstanding collection of Celtic art, as well as a chance to examine the 8th-century Book of Kells, the illuminated manuscript housed at Trinity College.
For a look at Dublin's past and future, visit Merrion Square and the Temple Bar neighborhood, respectively. Merrion Square, lined with elegant 18th-century Georgian townhouses, looks much as it did when its most famous resident, the future Duke of Wellington, was born in a house on Upper Mount Street in 1769.
Temple Bar, originally a Celtic settlement, is now Dublin's spruced-up bohemian quarter, whose star began to rise in the early 1990s with the opening of both the Clarence Hotel by the Irish rock group U2 and the headquarters of the Irish Film Institute. Temple Bar's focal point is Meetinghouse Square, the site of live musical and theatrical performances.
Just south of Dublin, in County Kildare, and of particular interest to Lexingtonians, is the Irish National Stud. The Irish are just as horse-loving as Kentuckians, and the National Stud is home to the nation's finest thoroughbreds. Guided tours are offered daily and include not just the horse barns, but also the famed Japanese Gardens; the Irish Horse Museum; and the ruins of the Black Abbey, a former monastery destroyed by Henry VIII during the Reformation in the 16th century.
Magic to the north
On Northern Ireland's rugged Antrim Coast, the magic is not merely that of the little people. The coast's lore also encompasses warring giants and ghostly apparitions, vanishing lakes and unexplained rock formations.
In the case of the rocks, scientists offer a theory — volcanic activity — but most who visit the Giant's Causeway, the unusual pyramid of fluted rocks cascading into the sea and the country's No. 1 tourist draw, prefer the Irish explanation of how the stacked rocks, in all shapes and sizes, got here.
Gaelic legend has it that the rocks were a walkway for a Scottish giant who had come from his homeland just a few miles across the water to do battle with his Irish counterpart. When you stand on the boulders while angry waves pummel them, it seems easy to scoff at science and imagine instead the two titans squaring off in combat.
Surrounding the causeway are the Glens of Antrim — lovely rolling green valleys, which wrap themselves around the sea like emerald serpents and which, over the years, have been contested by Irish and Scottish clans.
The sense of eerie mysticism that pervades the Giant's Causeway also prevails in the glens, particularly at Loughareema, the vanishing lake. There's probably a scientific explanation as well as to why the lake is full one day and bone dry the next, but locals will have none of it. Over a pint of bitters at the village pub, they'll tell you it's the work of the devil, and then launch into a tale as to how it's haunted by the ghosts of a squire and his coachman, who crossed over a dry bed but upon their return were drowned when their coach was engulfed by swirling waters.
Legend and lore aside, author William Makepeace Thackeray summed up why so many feel a kinship with Ireland, even those who have never landed on its shores. In his Irish Sketch-Book, Thackeray wrote: ”It is clear that for a stranger, the Irish ways are the pleasantest, for here he is at once made happy and at home.“
I'd go Thackeray one better and say that in Ireland, no one is ever a stranger.
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