Saturday 6/27/09 Irish Literature Field Trip

Saturday I went on a Irish Literature field trip. We ventured off to the first castle I’ve ever seen. Yeats lived there for about 3 years to be close to Lady Gregory. The castle’s name is Thoor Ballylee. It was built in the Norman-Anglo design which means it’s basically a big rectangle. Not the prettiest of castles. Since then I’ve seen a few more of similar design. It seems the Irish are not fond of these castles because they represent the British rulership of their country. Many of them were burned out during an attack at one point or another. The rest are being left to fall to ruin unless they are of significant importance or a tourist attraction. I’m pretty sure the only reason why it still stands is because Yeats once lived there and composed poems like the “The Winding Stair”.

The stairs by the way were very winding and very scary. I took a video of me going down the stairs, will be uploaded shortly. Yeats lived there with his wife and two young boys. I can’t imagine thinking that the castle would be a good idea for children after seeing the staircase.

Anyway, after that we went to Coole park. The Coole property is where Lady Gregory used to live. She founded the first Irish National Theater. She was well known with the famous and powerful- she had a fan with famous signatures as well as a tree that had the initials of famous writers carved on it. She was part of a highly wealthy land owning protestant population which wasn’t much liked by the native Irish. The native Irish had to pay fees to farm on the land. Anyway, she lost much of the land and power due to reforms in Ireland. Eventually the after her death the Irish government owned the property, sold it to a private contractor, who tore down the house and used the materials in other building projects. They felt they were doing the country a favor by getting rid of it.

However the house foundation is still there, as is the deer park (these are rather special because the English killed off all of Ireland’s deer), the gardens and the tree with all the signatures. It’s now owned by the Park Service who fixed it up as a tourist attraction. It also had the only water fountain I have seen in ALL of Ireland. I took a picture. I’ve been told by other students that campus does have water fountains they are just especially hard to find.

After that we went cill mhic dhuach, which were old monastic ruins. They had a large tower that was probably used for two purposes- 1) so people could find the monastery and 2) so the monks could climb into it for safety if someone tried to plunder the monastery. It had many old graves. Some of the graves are new because if their other family is buried there then you have a right to be buried near your family, so some are new. There were lots of cows wandering around the site. Also I took a video of a man herding a lot of cows with a stick.

So that was the Saturday trip and I will write about the Cliffs of Moher a little later, which was the Sunday trip.