Ireland: The Ancient Stuff

It is getting late, and we have a very early morning tomorrow, plus I am writing this on the hotel's one free computer, so I will make it quick. Last night the "modern" shower at the castle was a letdown, since it had temperature regulation problems, so I used the claw-footed bathtub. And that was great! Otherwise, staying in a castle is an amazing experience. I highly recommend it to everyone.

This morning we drove to a place called Bru Na Boinne (or "the Boyne riverbank") to see Neolithic tombs. Before that, our busdriver/tour guide took us off the route just a bit to see what some people regard as the finest high cross in Ireland. It was enormously tall and carved with Biblical scenes, and I took a bunch of photos of it. That was what I'd been hoping to see in Ireland - ancient Celtic crosses! Then we drove to Bru Na Boinne to see sights that made the cross look brand-new. We went to a burial site called Knowth, right near the more famous Newgrange, and admired the 5000 year old, very tall mound of the main burial site and all the smaller mounds surrounding it. Around its edges are rocks carved with all sorts of swirly designs. I took lots of photos of that too. We even climbed up on top of the mound, but then it began to rain on us really hard - bad juju from standing on ancient graves? The guide told us to climb it.

Since we were thoroughly soaked but we were going to take a walking tour of Drogheda, the town we are now in, I elected not to bother changing in case we just got rained on further. There aren't that many highlights in Drogheda, but two of them were fabulous: the head of the martyr Oliver Plunkett and an ancient Norman gate still towering over the city. After the walk, I did change into dry clothes for dinner. A number of amateur musicians played traditional Irish music for us during dessert, and after they were done, I struck up a conversation with them and played a tune I know as "Coleraine" on some guy's mandolin. He had an app on his phone that records a tune and then figures out what it is, and it said that it was indeed called "The Coleraine Jig." (They played a tune they call "The Cork Hornpipe" that my band calls "Harvest Home," but they were aware of that name for it too.) None of them knew "The Coleraine Jig," but they liked it and want to add it to their repertoire. It figures that I would go to Ireland and end up teaching Irish musicians Irish tunes.

Hopefully my famous hat will be dried out by tomorrow. It got quite waterlogged in the rain today. They say in Ireland it only rains twice a week: once for three days, and once for four.

Famous Hat