The Ring of Dingle, Part II

Continuing our Tour of the Ring of Dingle

Pictured at left, the ruins of a drystone tenant cottage on Dingle Peninsula. During the Potato Famine (the "Great Hunger") of 1845-52, tenant farmers who could not pay their rents were turned out and burned out of their cottages by their landlords. Many of these small farmers and herders were on land their families had held for hundreds of years, before the British crown gave large Irish land grants to English nobles, ignoring any claim to ownership by the native Irish.

During the famine years, up to a million Irish may have died of starvation and disease, while their landlords shipped tons of food the tenants had raised to England, Europe, and the Americas. Probably another million emigrated to escape starvation. It's estimated that Ireland's population fell by 25% during the Great Hunger. The ruins of their cottages dot the Irish landscape.

More highlights of our Ring of Dingle tour:

• Just off Dunmore Head on Dingle's southwest coast lie the Blasket Islands and the ships' graveyard of Blasket Sound. One of the largest ships of the Spanish Armada sank here in October 1588, after storms scattered the Spanish ships gathering off the coast of France for an attack on England.

The Blaskets are isolated from the mainland four months out of every year and the inhabitants were always a hardy and independent lot, with a strong tradition of oral history. In the 1920s, some of the islanders—poets and storytellers—began writing down the local tales and the resulting books offer a unique window into a pre-feudal, pre-capitalist society, where many of the old medieval ways endured into the 2oth century. Some of those books, written in Gaelic and translated into several languages, have become staples of Irish literature.

The day we visited Dunmore Head, the Blaskets were shrouded in fog. But the coastline of the mainland was starkly beautiful. And its menace to boats and ships was all too evident. The islands are reached by ferry in good weather and there is an interpretive center and ruins of old settlements on Great Blasket Island that, we were told, are well worth a visit. The last residents were moved to the mainland in 1953. The islands remain pretty much as the residents left them.

• Our next stop was a group of clochaun (beehive huts) set on a hillside overlooking the sea. These were probably built between 300 and 700 A.D. There are several single huts and one large double beehive with a passageway in between. The construction is all drystone, and one can only marvel at the craftsmanship of the ancient builders.

The photo above shows the stepping stones that were probably used to reach the top of the beehive, to remove the capstone and allow smoke to escape from the hut. Below is the interior of the double beehive (which has lost most of its roof), and the passage through the adjoining wall. The souterrain extends under the passage and the wall.As we drove along the coast road, we frequently caught glimpses of stone ruins—clochauns, forts, towers, and such, some dating from the Iron Age.

• The western coast of the Dingle Peninsula was a cradle of early Christian civilization and one sees its marks at every turn. Many Christian monastic communities thrived here from 500-800 A.D. and became centers of learning that drew Christian scholars and students from all over Europe. Besides the monasteries and churches, there were farmers and herdsmen living in this relatively fertile corner of western Ireland.

The Gallarus Oratory was built sometime between the 6th and 11th centuries A.D. It is a small drystone church built in the shape of an overturned boat, overlooking the harbour at Ard na Caithne.The stones are laid at a slight angle to the outside, allowing water to drain off—a method of building developed by Iron-Age tomb builders. That has kept the interior of the church relatively dry and well-preserved despite 1,000 years or more of North Atlantic gales.
The oratory has not been rebuilt. It stands as it was built a millenium ago, except for a very slight bowing in of the upper walls, visible in this photo:
Over the door is a stone lintel with holes for an inward-opening wooden door. At the opposite end, a single small window gives scant light. Beside the church is a cross slab in what might have been a cemetery for the priests (left).

Most tourists approach the
Gallarus Oratory through the visitor center. Dennis took us up a one-lane side road to the "Dingle Way,"

a pilgrims' path that winds for 130 miles around the peninsula. It's marked by signposts and stone stiles (right). In many places, there is no set path to follow—just strike out across a pasture 'til you see the next signpost.

Walking a quarter mile along the Dingle Way, we entered the Gallarus site "through the back door." Those who enter through the visitor center pay a modest entry fee, but tradition prohibits charging entry fees to a pilgrim, so entry by the Pilgrims' Way is free.

Nearby, we visited the site of a 6th-8th-century Gallarus Priory—a small, walled monastic community with remains of a stone church and several small stone huts. The photo below shows the remains of the church with its two rooms—oratory and sanctuary. The walls are drystone, the remains of a double beehive.
Within the boundary wall of the priory, this six-foot-high cross slab bears Celtic symbols at the base, rising to an early form of the cross at the top. Carved about 1,200 years ago, it represents the triumph of Christianity over the paganism of pre-Christian Ireland.

• In 1968-69, Hollywood came to Dingle for the filming of director David Lean's Ryan's Daughter. We stopped at a beach that was featured in the film. We've since seen the film and the beach and cliffs and offshore islands are beautiful in good weather.







When the movie company came to Dingle, there were no hotels or inns to house the cast and crew for months at a time. Local people opened their homes to the foreigners, who left behind them a new and thriving Bed & Breakfast industry, that soon spread all over Ireland.

• The western tip of Dingle Peninsula is also the westernmost tip of Great Britain and of Europe. Kruger's Pub, located on that point, is famous as the westernmost pub. It's a long side trip and we didn't stop there, but from the main road, you can't miss the sign.

That night, the rain let up and we walked back to Dick Mac's Pub, formerly a combined leather repair shop and pub, located across the street from St. Agnes Catholic Church. At each end of the bar is a small cubicle with a door on it. These are where the women would traditionally sit, while their men drank at the bar. That's Christal on the left and Emily on the right.

I learned in Gallway that it is only in the last 10 or 15 years that it is considered proper for young people, and especially single women, to frequent pubs in Ireland.

Dick Mac's sports a plaque on the outside wall proclaiming it as a recipient of the James Joyce Award given to "authentic Irish pubs."
The cramped, crowded, noisy, and smoke-free interior of Dick Mac's Pub, Dingle:



We did some shopping that evening; I bought the Aran sweater and Irish cap I'm wearing in the photo at the top of this blog.

We had dinner—fish & chips—at Paul Galley's restaurant, off the beaten tourist track, up the hill from the harbor. After dinner, we attended mass at St. Agnes. (Peter is Catholic, Emily Methodist, Christal and I, Lutheran.) Peter said afterwards that it was the shortest mass he'd ever attended—no sermon, no hymns. The priest went through the liturgy of the sacrament at 90 mph with a thick Irish accent. When the congregation recited the liturgical responses, there was no unison, just each person reciting at his or her own pace. Peter said later, only his lifelong familiarity with the mass gave him any clue to what the priest and congregation were doing.

After mass we walked around the walled former nunnery behind the church, now a boarding school. We saw the gardens and the nuns' graveyard. Then we walked through the upper town where the locals live and saw lots of new houses in European style overlooking the bay.

Next: The weather improves, sort of.

Cheers,
--David

The Ring of Dingle

In Dingle town, we stayed in a very nice B&B—the Heaton Guest House—with rooms overlooking the Dingle Estuary. Dinner that first night was at Danno's Pub and was very good. Dingle (pop. 1,400) is a market town and fishing port and is well-supplied with pubs—about 50 of them, some so small that only a half-dozen people can fit inside. We visited several and enjoyed them all. There is a complete ban on smoking in Ireland wherever people are employed, including all restaurants and pubs. That makes visiting the pubs very pleasant for non-smokers like us. And it doesn't seem to hurt the trade; all the pubs we visited were busy.

Breakfast was included with our rooms and cooked to order. Our hands-down favorite from the menu was "Heaton's Treat"--porridge (oatmeal) topped with brown sugar and drizzled with Drambuie and fresh cream.

On Saturday, our first full day in Dingle, we hiked around the town in the morning. The afternoon turned wet. We had planned to take a bus tour of the Ring of Dingle, a driving tour that takes in several medieval and neolithic sites around the outer end of the peninsula. Instead, our host lined us up with a local tour guide who stuffed us into his little sedan and gave us a wonderful tour full of history, local characters, and interesting places. It was misting or drizzling during much of the four-hour tour. (The Irish call that a "soft day.") But we were dressed for it and enjoyed the day in spite of the damp.

The Dingle Peninsula has been occupied for more than 6,000 years. In its archaeological remains, it is one of the richest areas on the west coast of Europe, with almost 2,000 sites, including the largest collections in the world of clocháns or beehive huts, of the stones with the unique ogham writing, and of dúnta or ring forts. Among the high points of our tour were:

• An Iron-Age (500 B.C.-500 A.D.) ring fort built around 400 A.D. — These forts were built to protect the inhabitants' cattle from thieves. The builders dug a round ditch enclosing an acre or so. They piled the dirt in two concentric walls up to ten feet high. Between the walls, the ditch could be 30 feet deep. Some ring forts show evidence of wooden palisades on top of the inner ring. Others are topped with drystone (unmortared) walls. Many appear to have been occupied for 500 years or more.

Today local tradition says the ring forts are home to the spirits of the people who lived in them—the "faerie rings" of folklore. To tear down a ring fort is said to bring several generations of bad luck on the culprit's family. So they remain. In some parts of Britain, locals leave gifts at the ring forts on the winter solstice. Some 45,000 ring fort sites have been identified in Ireland, alone.

• Ogham Stones — Ogham script was the first written language of the Gaels and Picts in Ireland, Scotland, England, and Wales. It was used between 300 and 700 A.D. The script uses various marks on a central index line, often on the sharp edge or corner of a stone, to form a 25-letter alphabet. The inscriptions are names of people or places and may have marked graves or boundaries of land. Some inscriptions in Pictish and ancient Gaelic have not been deciphered.

The ogham stones we saw were gathered by the local laird — Lord Vestry — and placed as decorations near his "big house" in the mid-1800s. The standing stones are the more common type, and use an edge as the index line. The round stones lying flat, may have been grave markers. The chap in the floppy hat is Dennis, our guide. He was great!

• An Dún Beag - Dunbeg Promontory Fort — The most common Iron-Age relics in Ireland are hill forts and promontory forts—large drystone walls enclosing a considerable area of a hilltop or cliff ledge. Dunbeg is a small but impressive fort on a sheer cliff promontory projecting into Dingle Bay. The defenses face only the landward side, since the cliffs provided natural and imposing defenses.
At Dunbeg, an attacker would have faced four lines of earthen banks, five fosses (defensive ditches) and a drystone rampart with a complex entrance flanked by guard chambers. Behind the rampart is a single largish clochaun (beehive hut).
The photo above looks into the gate through the rampart. (The wooden bracing is modern, to stabilize this heavily-visited site.) There is a souterrain (cellar) under the beehive, and a tunnel extending up the promontory that may have been an escape route. Both were built as a ditches and covered over with large flat stones.

Very little dateable material has been found at Dunbeg. The few traces that can be carbon-dated suggest that the site was occupied as early as 580 B.C. and as late as the 11th century A.D. Parts of the site, including one end of the rampart, have fallen into the sea in the ensuing centuries.

The photo below looks across the clochaun, away from the sea. This beehive is unusual in that it is round on the outside, but with square corners in the inside space. The souterrain is underneath the doorway and extends under the wall. You can see the souterrain's capstones just inside the doorway. The near wall shows typical drystone construction, actually two faced walls with the space between filled with rubble. The wall thickness at this height is about five feet.

Next: More Ring of Dingle
Cheers,
—David

All photos, Copyright 2008 Sakrison Communications, All Rights Reserved.
You're welcome to copy them for your own use. A photo credit would be appreciated.
No publication or commercial use is allowed without written permission. Sorry.

The Game's Afoot

Our very good friends, Peter and Emily celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary this summer. Way back in January, Peter told me he wanted to do something special for their 25th: He wanted to take Emily somewhere she'd never been before, and he wanted me and my wife Christal to come along. Peter suggested Ireland. I suggested adding a few days in Scotland.

We agreed to announce the trip as a surprise to the ladies on St. Patrick's Day. In the meantime, after an initial few study sessions with published travel guides, we divided up the planning: Ireland for Peter and Scotland for me.

On St. Paddy's Day, we gathered for drinks at Peter & Emily's house and Peter announced the trip. Emily and Christal were delighted, and it all went off winningly. Planning continued in earnest.

Jumping off date was Thursday 7 August -- a 6:30 p.m. flight from Chicago to Dublin. I spent most of the summer working long hours for the Experimental Aircraft Association's (EAA's) Government Affairs office and the last week of July working full time during the annual EAA fly-in at Oshkosh. (an outstanding event -- see www.airventure.org). I always come off that stint a bit shell-shocked, and the few days between AirVenture and Ireland are lost in fog. But somehow I got packed and ready and we were off: Drive to Milwaukee, bus to O'Hare, an eight-hour flight to Dublin, and a 50-minute flight to Shannon, arriving mid-morning local time.

The Irish drive on the wrong side of the road. (It might have something to do with their whisky.) And most of their roads seem to be about three feet wide. Our rental car was a "crossover" van/SUV about half again as wide as the average traffic lane, but our first driving adventure, from Shannon, west along the Dingle Peninsula, and across Connor Pass to Dingle, was accomplished without any misadventures.

In western Ireland, the driving lanes are, at most, eight feet wide, sometimes a bit less. Away from the few major highways, roads have no shoulder to speak of. They are mostly bordered by ancient, mortarless stone walls, overgrown with hedges. The effect is that of driving down a very narrow lane between hedgerows that come to the edge of the pavement. We didn't hit anything but we trimmed a lot of hedges.
Driving (and riding) on the left was interesting, accompanied by lots of loud noises from the ladies in the back seat.

We had lunch in Adare Village, at an open-air cafe across the street from the Trinitarian Abbey, built by Fitzgerald Clan for the Trinitarian order of monks in the early 13th century.
Up on Connor Pass, the weather was overcast and misting but still offered spectacular views.
The road over Connor Pass is winding and narrow, even by Irish standards. Some stretches are just one lane, with an occasional "layby" for passing vehicles. Trucks are rare, though buses are not. Courtesy prevails and we quickly picked up the formal and informal rules of the road.From the crest of Connor Pass, 1,300 feet above Sea Level, we got our first glimpse of Dingle town, where we would spend our first three nights in Ireland.
Next: The Ring of Dingle . . .

Cheers,
--David

All photos, Copyright 2008 Sakrison Communications, All Rights Reserved.
You're welcome to copy them for your own use. A photo credit would be appreciated.
No publication or commercial use allowed without written permission. Sorry.

Why "Ghostbird"?

You might be wondering about the title of this blog. Not too long ago, I wrote a book called Chasing the Ghost Birds--Saving Swans & Cranes from Extinction, published in 2007. You can learn more about that at www.ChasingtheGhostBirds.com. But that's not why I started this blog.

Up to now, I've been avoiding starting a blog. I have reasons: like a footprints-on-the-ceiling work load and the fact that "blog" sounds far too much like something Gollum would say.

But someone suggested I start a blog to share the tale of our recent trip to Ireland and Scotland. So, here I go, Jeanie. Of course, once that is posted (in installments), I'm sure the blank pages of this site will beckon to me, as any blank page tempts a writer. Thus I chose a title that will give me a little freedom.

Freedom, they say, is a more interesting game than power. Power is only about what you can control; while freedom is about what you can unleash. This could get way out of hand.

No worries,
--David