Every place has a unique history which contributes to the magic of the location and the people, and Ireland is no different. You can see Irish history all around you, and also in the many museums in Ireland, too.
In today’s expanding Ireland where ancient sites are regularly paved over in the name of progress it’s nice to see some glaring exceptions.
In Galway, anyone building over a known historical site must both accept responsibility for maintaining the site and allow viewing access to the public. One of the more overt instances of this law is the huge Eyre Square shopping centre, built right over the old Galway town walls.
Rather than demolish them, the new shopping centre was built over them, like a giant warehouse. Shoppers entering the Eyre Square centre will stroll past modern glass storefronts and come face to face with the medieval entrance to the city: the old town walls, standing ancient and proud beneath the glass atrium.
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So a great big viking ship sailed into Dublin harbour yesterday.
6 weeks at sea and a bunch of salty Danes rowed up to Irish shores for the first time in centuries. Their ship was a replica of one built in Glendalough, Wicklow (Ireland) in 1042 AD. Rather than leap from the ship and begin a bloody campaign of rape and pillage, they instead formally apologised for the Viking invasions of Ireland.
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Some time ago I wrote a post on Athlone’s IRA Statue. In my limited experience such a thing is quite rare, certainly at the centre of a major town like Athlone. Well, I was driving north through County Roscommon recently and came across the statue you see there to your left. I simply had to get out a snap a photo.
The difference between this and the Athlone brigade’s statue is not just size (the Roscommon one easily dwarfs its Athlone twin), nor is it location (the Roscommon statue is well outside any major town), but the fact that the Athlonian statue is a revolutionary era statue, specifically commemorating the soldiers who died between 1916-1922.
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That’s right: 7,000 B.C. That’s before pre-history, folks. Apparently the findings from a dig in Abbeylara, County Longford has revealed a settlement of people long before humans were known to be settlers.
Among what they found at the Lough Kinale dig were a frequently used hearthstone which seems to have been the centre of the settlement, the first evidence of cattle husbandry, boar, deer and dog remains, evidence of frequent cooking, Wilma-Flintstone-like clothespins made from bone and unusually, for a waterside dwelling, an amazing lack of fish or bird skeletons. They scientists also found a “carpet” of hazelnuts.
Nuttella, anyone?
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You’ve seen the design, it’s an icon of Ireland herself: The Claddagh Ring.
The origin of the ring’s design has various stories, but its production can be traced to Thomas Dillon’s jewelers in Galway. There is a one-room exhibit on the history of the ring set up inside the shop and numerous examples of the ring for sale in various metals and designs.
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I love this old pub on Connacht Street here in Athlone. There’s something so poignant about its dereliction. Vacant shopfronts like this are fading fast - Athlone is a growing metropolis. Across the street from the old Shamrock Bar is a brand-new shopping/apartment complex.
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I was reading a newspaper article in the Westmeath Independent the other week that stated, “More than one in seven of Athlone population is now non-Irish.”
In the article it delineated the major groups of foreign nationals and stated that there were 91 “Americans” (although I’m sure the paper meant “United States citizens” and didn’t mean to include people from Canada, Mexico and all the countries of South America) and I realised that wifey and I wouldn’t be counted among them as, although we are indubitably from the states, we are registered Irish citizens.
What would have been more interesting, I think, would be to have reported on Athlonians’ places of birth. I know of a German Athlonian, for example, who was born in Saudi Arabia.
This got me to thinking about “Irishness” and being Irish.
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This novel was reccommended to me when I began talking to a friend stateside about Eamonn Kelly’s book.
“Ireland: A Novel” is an epic tale of young Irishman’s coming of age and his fascination with a mysterious seanchai (seanchai is Irish for “storyteller”). The novel is peppered with enjoyable narratives as related first-hand from the seanchai and other characters.
As opposed to colloquial stories about rural life (what one might expect from a typical Irish stories), many of the stories told in the book are concerned with pivotal events in Irish history. From a story about the man who built Newgrange to a firsthand account of the 1916 uprising, the seanchai depicted in Delaney’s novel seeks to, in his own words, “tell the story of Ireland”.
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Seanchai is Irish for “storyteller” or “old talker” to get closer to the actual meaning. In Ireland, a seanchai wasn’t just something someone did, it was something someone was. Eamonn Kelly was perhaps the last authentic seanchai.
Known in Ireland as “the seanchai” in the 1950s and 1960s for his RTE broadcasted stories, Eamon Kelly brought a tradition of storytelling to the masses both in his published works and for years in Galway where he ran a one-man show telling stories to enthusiastic, receptive crowds. Born in 1914, the man himself died in 2001, having traveled the world, been nominated for a Tony on Broadway and shared countless hours of stories with his Irish audience back home.
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I’m not aware that this day has any particular designation in the states other than “the day after Christmas,” or “the second biggest shopping day of the year.” I know the Canadians go into the street and hit people or something (”boxing” day, isn’t it?). Ireland is still a Catholic country and so here in Ireland, the 26th of December is Saint Stephen’s Day.
You may already know this from the line in the Christmas carol King Wenceslas, that reads,
“Good King Wenceslas looked about on the feast of Stephen”
St Stephen himself is the first of the Christian martyrs. He was stoned to death for heresy against the Jewish temple.
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