Advertisement
Geo: 53.8011, -9.52221
No banging and rattling last night! I think room 4 must have been occupied and they closed the window. And Sonja told me at breakfast this morning that Gary put a chair against their door because they like to sleep with the window open. That was so nice of him.
Still quite windy this morning, though not nearly as bad as it has been, and it poured like hell while we were having breakfast. But as we left Galway there was a rainbow, and we even had to ask Declan what the strange glowing light in the sky was. He said it was our closest star or something like that.
On the way to Cong, Declan told us about the Cross of Cong, which had been in Cong Abbey for centuries upon centuries. In the center of the cross was a piece of crystal, and behind the crystal was a piece of the True Cross. In the early 1800s, Father Holyguy sold the Cross of Cong to the National Museum in Dublin so that he would have money to reroof the abbey. The people of Cong were very upset because as far as they were concerned, the cross belonged to them.
Years later after Father Holyguy died, a Father Lavelle became the parish priest. Father Lavelle went to Dublin one day wearing a long raincoat, and he walked into the National Museum, went up to the display case that held the Cross of Cong, smashed it, grabbed the cross and ran out, concealing the cross in his raincoat. Well, the police were onto him pretty fast and got the cross back. To this day it resides in the National Museum. But the people of Cong absolutely loved Father Lavelle for attempting to get the cross back. They loved him even more during the famine when he used all of his resources to try to feed the people of his parish. We had a Father Lavelle at Our Lady of Fatima for a time; he was cranky and unpleasant.
The village of Cong lies between two large lakes, one of which reaches all the way down to Galway. During the famine, as a way of putting men to work the government decided to build a canal between the two lakes, thereby making the transportation of goods from Galway much easier. The government figured that no engineer in Ireland was smart enough to figure
out how to build the canal, so they sent to England for an engineer. The English engineer came and designed the canal, including a system of locks, and starving Irishmen were put to work building it. When the canal was completed and the time came to allow water through, they discovered that the limestone walls and floor of the canal were too porous: all the water instantly seeped away. And it has been a dry canal ever since. One more reason for the Irish to be not too fond of the English!
While riding along just about anywhere in Ireland, you will see large black bales of silage neatly arranged on the farms. Today, I saw one that had large white letters on the bale ends: FE OF CROWS. I can only assume this was originally “FECK OFF CROWS.” Hee!
We arrived in Cong. We walked around the abbey (ruined) grounds and saw the fishing hut the medieval monks built on the river. They could lower a net into the river, and when a fish was caught in the net, it would trigger a bell back in the abbey so that the monks would know supper was almost ready. The abbey
still has all its gravestones, some fairly recent, and the wall behind what was the altar is still remarkably intact. There is a rounded stone in the wall just inside the chapel area that, legend has it, if you rub it when you have a cough, it will be cured. Michelle rubbed it; we'll see if it still works.
We went to a modern church that has some beautiful stained glass windows by an artist called Harry Clarke. The main windows are on a wall behind the altar that isn't flush with the front of the altar. In other words, if you were in the front pew listening to the priest, the windows would be behind him but at a slant off to your right. This is because that wall was originally part of an older church that was demolished. They're really very pretty, and I think I actually got some decent photos. (Cameras need a “Stained Glass” setting.)
About a three minute walk from there is a viewpoint where you can see Ashford Castle. It's Victorian and was once owned by the Guinness family. Today it's an exclusive hotel. We could tell it was expensive just by all the luxury cars
going by us down the drive. Several scenes from “The Quiet Man” were filmed on the grounds of Ashford Castle. Indeed, “The Quiet Man” was filmed in Cong itself. There are a few structures that call themselves “'The Quiet Man' cottage.” I know I've seen TQM, but I don't remember anything about it other than that John Wayne seemed an unlikely casting choice.
After leaving Cong we drove by Lough Corrib, where Declan pointed out the crannogs offshore. These are small man-made islands built by people in Ye Olden Tymes as a way to protect their cattle from raiders. If you knew that raiders were coming, you would tie your cattle end to end in a long string, and tie the first cow to your coracle (a small boat with an animal skin hull). Then you would row out to your crannog and your cows would swim along behind you. Once the cows were safe on the crannog, you could keep an eye out for the raiders who would come in their own coracles, and you could repel them by throwing stones at them and yelling, “Feck off, cattle raiders!” If you were smart, you would also have built a wattle-and-daub
hut on the island, in case you had to stay there overnight. Once the cattle raiders were gone, you would tie your cows up again and go back to the mainland. This shows just how important cattle were to early Irishmen.
We stopped for a group lunch in Leenane at a pub. We were given vegetable soup (!) and sandwiches: ham and tomato; cheese and tomato; and egg mayonnaise. Leenane is just a tiny place with a few shops, a pub, and a petrol pump. There is also a large gift shop with a small wool museum attached. After fighting our way through the crowd in the gift shop (another tour bus had arrived in town), Katherine and I went to the little shop; I needed chocolate. Katherine bought a lottery ticket for this evening: 160 million euros. The shopkeeper (who was also the publican) jokingly asked what she would give him if her numbers came up. She said she would come back and live in Leenane. He said, “No, you won't do that. If you win, you can buy the whole town!”
On the bus, Declan talked some more about the potato famine, which is often referred to in Ireland as
“The Great Hunger.” When the Poor Laws were passed in London, they required landlords to either feed and look after their tenants or to get rid of them. There were certainly decent Irish landlords who did what they could for their tenants, but there were plenty of landlords who decided to simply get rid of the problem. They chartered ships and had their tenants removed to Scotland, Canada, America and Australia. They usually weren't very seaworthy ships and they weren't well provisioned, so by the time a ship reached its destination, most of the people on board would have died. Ergo, these ships were known as coffin ships.
The Anglican church sent missionaries over to Ireland to help the hungry people. Rather, they were sent to help the hungry
Anglican people. The missionaries set up soup kitchens and ladled out soup, but not to Catholics. If a Catholic converted, he could have soup. And, of course, many Catholics were hungry enough to convert. These people were pejoratively known as “soupers.” So what was the Catholic Church doing to help the faithful? Well. There were plenty of people in England who felt it was their Christian and humanitarian duty to help out their Irish brothers. They sent word to Ireland that they would be willing to take in Irish children until their parents were able to support their families again. England, of course, was mostly Protestant. The Catholic Church decreed that any Irish family that sent their children to live in England would be instantly excommunicated. The Church would rather see its people starve than see them living with “heathens.”
The potato famine lasted from 1845 to 1850. In 1844, the population of Ireland was 9 million. In 1850, it was 5 million. About half of the lost population died from hunger, and the other half emigrated. If the famine hadn't occurred and Ireland had kept pace with England population-wise, today it should have around 40 million people. Instead, it has around 6 million. It's clear why the famine is still treated as a recent event here.
We stopped briefly at Aasleagh Falls (pronounced “Ashley”😉 on the Erriff River. Declan's comment: “If you rode a canoe down the falls, you could say, 'I shot the Erriff.'” Then we stopped in the Doo Lough Valley so that we could walk on a bog. It's very ... boggy. It's not muddy, but you do sink
a bit into the grass, and your shoes get quite wet. Declan had half of us stand on one side and half of us on the other. Then one side would jump up and down. The other side could actually feel the ground moving. This is called bog hopping. It was a very strange sensation.
The Doo Lough Valley is beautiful, and the sun was playing with the clouds and sending down shafts of light to enhance the different shades of green on the hills. During the famine, 600 people from Doo Lough walked eight miles to Louisburgh to beg Lord Brown to give them some food. Lord Brown refused to help them at all. So the people started the walk back to Doo Lough. More than half of them died of hunger on the way. Today there is a cross on the spot where we went bog hopping memorializing these people. Nowadays, a “famine walk” from Doo Lough to Louisburgh is held to raise money to send to starving people in Africa.
We stopped at the National Famine Memorial in Murrisk. It's a bronze sculpture of a coffin ship, and the figures on it are skeletons swirling around the ship's masts. There is a sister sculpture in New York that depicts skeletons walking down a ramp off of a ship.
We got into Westport around 3:00 and are staying at the Clew Bay Hotel. My room is a decent size and has the loudest bathroom fan known to man. Katherine, Michelle and I walked around the town, which would take less than ten minutes if you didn't stop in at any shops. We
did stop in at several shops, and in one souvenir shop the shopkeeper could be the poster child for the gift of gab. He could talk for Ireland in the Olympics. Katherine brought something to the counter and put her money down to pay for it. The guy didn't even touch the money for a full five minutes. And then Michelle bought something, and it was roughly the same thing. He was awfully nice and told us where we would find the craic tonight. (Have I mentioned craic? It's pronounced “crack,” and it more or less means “good fun.” So, you might ask someone, “Where's the craic tonight?” Which just means you're looking for a fun evening out, probably with good beer, good music and lots of laughs.)
We were walking along Shop Street and I noticed up ahead two heavily armed guards ... like army men. And a few shops down from them were two more armed guards, as well as a guard out in the street watching traffic. We were a little afraid to walk by them (not sure if it was okay to do), but we did and were very careful not to make any sudden moves. Turns out, the guards were escorting two other people who were delivering money to a bank. Apparently, robbing the money truck got to be pretty popular a few years ago, so now the Army escorts the truck and guards the area.
Since Michelle still isn't feeling well, we had dinner in the restaurant attached to the hotel. I had penne with tomato sauce and grilled chicken. It wasn't bad, but I think even I could cook a better version, and that's really saying something. The profiteroles, on the other hand, were the best yet!
Tomorrow we're off to Northern Ireland.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.199s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 8; qc: 50; dbt: 0.0596s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb
Mom
non-member comment
I suppose you had egg mayonnaise for lunch.....again! Do they serve good potato dishes with your main meal? Have you seen an Irish Starbucks yet? I wondered if you remembered Fr. Lavelle from Fatima!