Dublin's Dusty Books to Old Music in Killaloe

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The focus for this couple of days in Dublin was chasing family history at the National Library, buying Irish sims for our phones and organising a rental car for the rest of our time in Ireland.

The Irish sims were very simple. Have an unlocked phone, walk into a shop – we chose 3 this time because they had a good deal – buy the sim for 20 Euros, they fit it and walk out with all you can eat data and plenty of phone and text credit for a month or so. We had to produce a passport and hand over the cash. All done.

The car was a little more interesting. Online you can only get prices on cars for about a month. Any longer and the web sites have a conniption. We needed one for longer so decided to walk to the company that seemed to have the best deal to have a chat. The reason for the 30 or 35 day periods is taxation. Ireland has a pretty high VAT/GST on some things. One of those seems to be rental cars rented for more than 35 days. So we hired one for 35 days and then did another deal to get one for the remaining time. We will need to get back to Dublin to make the switch but, first of all, nothing here is very far away and, second, we have to do our democratic duty and vote before 2 July so need to make the trip anyway. Should work out.

The National Library of Ireland is next door to the parliament house in what you would have to describe as a grey part of town, a short walk from Grafton Street. Entry to the Library seems to be open to all and, if you want to consult a genealogist you join the queue. We had previously spoken to the genealogist and moved past the basics. Now we were into the more difficult, sometimes interesting and often tedious stuff of working through tenuous leads to remove them as options, develop them further or obtain background so we could develop new leads. For all of this we needed to go to the Reading Room. That required a Readers Ticket – formal identification, production of yet another photo ID – this time with photos that made us look just a little weird.

The Reading Room of the National Library is an impressive old room. High domed ceilings, polished woodwork, desks with individual reading lamps and absolutely no chatting anywhere. You whisper here if you do need to communicate and do that only when absolutely necessary. We ordered up suitably dusty old books that we handled very carefully and pored our way through, looking for some reference that would take us a step or two further.

We now know quite a lot more about the emigration of young women from Ireland to Australia in the early 19^th Century. I hit a rich vein of a debate in the Times of London and the Irish Times and learned quite a lot about the considerable concerns that the good citizens of the two countries had about the practice of assisting young women to sail to Australia. Emigration Committees were formed by the Colonial Secretary in London and in Dublin and Cork, to find women who were 'educated, skilled and, to meet colonial requirements, they had to be healthy. They were poor but not destitute; they were not the “poorest of the poor”, too weakened by debility to take advantage of the opportunity offered to them.' (From the Report of HM Inquiry 1833-36 into Condition of the Poorer Classes in Ireland). Women had to be of 'unexceptional character', between 15 and 30 and preference was given to 'strong country servants'.

We have, we think, reduced the options for the location and identity of the ancestors of my great-great grandmother by closing some lines of enquiry. The French – or perhaps Norwegian – name is still a mystery. Not that there weren't French wandering about the place. The Huguenots of course were around but no remotely similar name is on any of the lists of those families who lived in the general area where Susannah was born. More research is now needed on where the Janvins who were Huguenots ended up, but that is a much larger task. French troops were in the area too, during the 1798 revolution/war in Ireland. Some settled in Ireland but, unfortunately, only the officers names were recorded in the places we have found, and nothing relevant appears in what we have found so far. Perhaps we need to spend some time in France – after learning French, of course?

I have to say that one of the most interesting parts of the day was a visit to the toilets in the National Library. To say the gents was ornate just doesn't do it justice. Large – we are talking about a place the size of a small house here – a lounge area so that you can sit and contemplate, brass taps and porcelain everywhere. Not modern at all and impressive. The ladies was as impressive.

Anyway, enough of the old books and pondering, it was time for a break. We have found that it is useful, when travelling for a while, to occasionally find places where we can relax. Doing things all of the time is great but you need a couple of days off now and then. We have been travelling for two months so far and Lough Derg was to be a place where we sit for a few days.

Nothing is very far in Ireland. A few hours in any direction and you are in the water. We drove out of Dublin down the expressway but tired of that quickly and moved off on to lesser roads. The Sleive Bloom mountains were interesting. It would be good to walk through some of them. The road that we selected took us on a meandering track through them (the Slieve Bloom Way) and down into the flat lands towards Limerick. They are one of the oldest mountain ranges in Europe and once had peaks 3,700 metres high. These days those peaks make it to just 527 metres. Even mountains get old and a little tired. We enjoyed the changing colours and difference in vegetation as we moved through.

Mary's Air BnB is a little out of Ballina which is at the 'bottom' southwestern end of Lough Derg. The Lough is one of the large lakes on the Shannon River that makes it to the sea past Limerick in County Clare. Mary's place is just lovely. A studio on a rural block on the road into Ballina on the Tipperary side of Lough Derg. Well-cared for gardens, a comfortable modern studio and a very welcoming and friendly host. A great spot to spend some time.

Ballina and Killaloe are villages on either side of the Shannon. Both attractive villages, with Killaloe the larger (btw, the first is pronounced Bally-naa, unlike the town in Australia; and the second is Killa-loo). It was the birth place of the famous king of all Ireland, Brian Boru ,and there are signs that the community has used this as a selling point although there is not much in evidence at the moment.

We were keen on finding some traditional music sessions in the local pubs. There are plenty of options. A few pubs are rather large operations on the river banks. They seem to cater mainly for the boat and general tourist traffic and at nice, sunny times of the year, there is clearly plenty of this. There are also many more smaller establishments, more than you might expect in a relatively small place, that cater more for the locals but welcome visitors.

Traditional music sessions tend to start late, or rather later than we are used to. Some get going around 9.30 but it is not unusual for a session to get underway at 10.30. Of course, at this time of the year it is light until about that time in this part of the world. Though you do wonder how people get up for work each day.

Our host, Mary, found us a session at the Anchor Inn at Killaloe on the night we arrived. Things got underway by a little after 9.30 pm and away they went. A singer/harpist/flautist, guitarist, fiddle player/singer and a bodhran player. The early crowd was a few locals and what turned out to be mainly visitors (some from Canberra, with links to Darwin!). By 12.30 when it closed down it was all locals, and us. It surprised us a little that, while the musicians certainly took the chance to catch their breath and to have a sip of their particular tipple, they didn't take a break in three hours. Quite a session.

I counted the pubs as we wended our way back to our accommodation. Passed eight before we hit the dark stretches of the country road heading to our studio. This definitely looked like a good place to hang out. Not so sure about the resting up bit.

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Photos

River canal at Killaloe
Originally built to enable boats to bypass the rapids in the Shannon here, it became obsolete for this purpose when the river level rose after hydroelectric works were completed in the 1920s.

Washerwoman Bridge Ballina
The bridge was built in the 1860s after the washerwomen staged a protest here because the new railway track denied them access to the river.

Tipperary to Clare
This side of Lough Derg is County Tipperary and the hills are in County Clare.

Farm sheds
Noticed the curved roof on most of the sheds (although a lot of new sheds have gable roofs)

View from Slieve Bloom Nature Reserve
Somewhere between Cloghan and Kinnitty

Fun in the park Ballina
Really should be doing this daily!

Sunday Market Killaloe
Small and perfectly formed: a good selection of stalls

Slieve Bloom
One of the many trails

Hiking trail
Along the road - not unusual. To be fair, parts of the trail are off-road

Mixed message
Athlone

Good for cars both ways
but gets a bit squeezy when you add pedestrians or bicycles.

Not Smart but new
Our rented wheels

Typo
but probably too expensive to correct it.

Comments

[D MJ Binkley]

On the road again
We are really enjoying your trip. You done and seen a variety of things this time out. Glad you finally got things settled enough at home so you could take off again. Love all the music in Ireland.