Ireland Part X: Farewell to Ireland

A tourist in Ireland found himself seated beside an older man in a pub one evening as they were both enjoying a couple of pints. Not long into the conversation the tourist asked the old man if he was from around here? The old man responded, “No, I grew up about six miles down the road.”

In many ways the Irish perspective is entirely different than our own. But travel six miles in any direction in Houston County and you will find yourself in the next township over and probably saying the same thing to a stranger. “I’m not from around here, I’m from . . .” (Mayville Township, Jefferson Ridge, Swede Bottom, Cork Hollow, and so on).

In Houston County our culture is influenced by our geography. The hardwood forests covering the bluffs provide us a small lumber industry and ample room for hunting whitetail, turkeys, and morel mushrooms. The valleys and bluff tops leave room for pasture and tillable acres that give us a unique farming heritage distinct from the style of agriculture found elsewhere in the Midwest. The river inspires a lifestyle of its own, one of recreation, while the lasting winters nurture a population of hearty souls.

The Irish culture cannot help but be shaped by similar factors. The rocky ground, the rugged coastline, the rainy weather, all combine to form a country of wistful poets, resourceful farmers, imaginative writers, colorful pub owners, and Guinness-drinking musicians.

Traveling the country, it is easy to understand why the small island has produced so many world-famous writers and musicians, probably more per capita than most other places on Earth. The landscape inspires. One cannot visit the Cliffs of Moher on Ireland’s west coast without peering over the gusty edge with utter astonishment that such a landscape can exist. It is almost as if the island itself had been pushed heavenward straight out of the ocean floor, creating perfectly vertical cliffs rising seven hundred feet above the white-foam waves violently crashing below. There is no transition from land to sea. You are either in or you are out.

When you grow up with those sorts of forces at work outside your window reminding you daily of the power of nature, accented by 600-year-old castles reminding you of the storied history of the land, I imagine your perspective on life takes on a more reflective tone. And when you have the gift of gab or natural musical talents, as most Irish do, putting it all on paper or turning it into a heartrending fiddle melody comes second nature.  

Yes, the landscape is different. The roads are different, the accent is different, and so aren’t their sports, choices in beer, farming methods, weather, some of their music, and at times their politics. But beyond these differences there still exists a common kinship that was felt every time someone paused in the day long enough to engage in a little small talk, every time I was served a plate of food that looked just like something from grandma’s kitchen, every time we saw a farmer doing what they could with what they have, every time an Irish fiddle had my foot instinctively beating time on the worn pub floor, or every time when driving down the road I would see the oncoming driver toss me the one finger wave of which we are all so familiar. I confidently conclude the passing of six generations since our ancestors left Ireland isn’t enough time to unwind the traditions, legacies, habits, and culture that took centuries to cultivate.

Scottish and other Celtic musicians frequently perform a song titled “Caledonia.” This ballad speaks of a young man homesick for his homeland, the part of the United Kingdom the Romans called Caledonia, in what is present-day Scotland. The protagonist goes from reminiscing about Caledonia to deciding that tomorrow he is going to return, as “Caledonia has been everything he has ever had.”  

Though perhaps more than a little ironic I would conclude a column all about Ireland by referencing a Scottish ballad, it does seem fitting considering that we were returning home to Caledonia ourselves. While once our Celtic ancestors would have thought wistfully of Ireland as they departed with uncertainty set out before them—probably having never been more than a few miles from home—six generations later we turn with gratification in the same direction, west. Thanks to their bold decision to make this journey 150 years prior, as we depart Ireland this time it is Caledonia, MN we already call home.

“Will you go back?,” is the question I encounter most often. It is a long plane ride and an expensive ticket. Perhaps, too, I dare not push my luck driving on the left side of the road any further. But finding another traditional jam session in a small village pub in rural Ireland—this time with my own fiddle in hand—will make it worth it all over again.

I offer a sincere thanks to everyone for reading these past few weeks. If you are interested in hearing more of these types of adventures, write the Caledonia Argus and request they sponsor me to go on assignment and I’ll even travel to a country of your choosing. Perhaps an even better idea, do what you can to save enough money to embark on an adventure abroad of your own. I am living proof that even a novice traveler like myself can get there and back with little more than a sense of humor, patience, a halfway decent GPS, and a broken umbrella.

Happy Trails. 

Ireland Part IX: The Leftovers

As I wrap-up this column this week and next, I have a few leftovers worth mentioning that didn’t make the cut on previous editions, as well as some final observations. It has been about 150 years since a bulk of this regions first Irish settlor’s arrived, and in that time many components of our respective cultures have diverged despite the common origin, as I have described all along. Therefore, sometimes it comes as a surprise when you find such striking similarities.

Driving around the countryside we had ample time to scan the Irish radio stations. A couple of times we stumbled upon some traditional Irish music, but more frequently the stations were playing American music, including John Denver and Bob Dylan interspersed between more contemporary artists like Katy Perry and Miley Cyrus.

There are a few Irish “country/western” performers, including the young and popular Nathan Carter, performing a combination of Irish country music and covers of familiar American Pop and Country tunes like “Fishing in the Dark,” “Delta Dawn,” and “Eighteen Wheels and a Dozen Roses.” Featuring electric guitar, fiddle, and accordion, he gives these tunes a modern/Irish spin, but most of his music might better fit with 90s country music than that heard on American country radio today.

He also does a cover of “Wagon Wheel,” a tune originally recorded here by the folk band Old Crow Medicine Show (OCMS) and recently brought to widespread popularity by Darius Rucker’s version on country radio. It is equally popular in Ireland as we heard it played on Radio Kerry at least half a dozen times.

Most surprising, however, is when the traditional guitar/accordion/spoons trio in a small town pub transitioned from a rowdy pub song to “Wagon Wheel” late one evening. Even the 70-year-old man sitting next to me was grinning ear to ear and singing along to every word between sips from his pint. I found this Irish obsession with “Wagon Wheel” humorous for a few reasons. First, the entire song is about a hitchhiking journey from New England to Raleigh, North Carolina, with lesser-known American destinations in between. Secondly, the chorus makes little sense and that’s because Bob Dylan wrote it long ago. The guys from OCMS wrote the verses around it but the simple lyrics and catchy instrumentation was enough to perk up ears. Most impressively, this song grew to international fame out of complete obscurity, entirely by word of mouth from college students across America long before it first received radio airplay once Rucker cut it. Now even the pub bands and country singers in Ireland are getting significant mileage out of it.

While describing the driving experience, I didn’t say much about roundabouts. Because they are quickly becoming more common in the Midwest, and are likely to increase in prevalence, I briefly mention them now. To the amateur they seem silly and confusing—like how you end up taking the long way counter-clockwise around the circle only to make what would have been a simple left hand turn. But once you understand how they work and how to properly navigate them, it suddenly seems silly to waste time constructing traditional signal controlled intersections, not to mention the time motorists waste waiting at red lights thereafter.

Getting to the point to where you understand them, however, can take some practice. I was honked at three times by my count for improper signaling, lane changing, or other blunders I still don’t know I made. One can assume that for every honk drivers politely ignored two or three other incidences in which honking was merited. Regardless, by the end I no longer broke into a sweat upon seeing one approaching and suggest we would be wise to continue to take a tip from our European brethren on this one by incorporating them into more of our roads.

Fuel for our small diesel cars averaged about €1.50 at the pump. At first glance that seems like a bargain until you consider one Euro is currently equivalent to $1.33, and more importantly, that fuel is sold in liters rather than gallons. 3.79 liters in a gallon multiplied by €1.50 multiplied by $1.33 for the exchange rate equals approximately $7.56 per gallon of diesel.

Travelers must be careful, as sometimes fuel stations can be few and far between, or even closed. Driving the motorway back to Dublin I miscalculated the amount of fuel we would need and eventually realized we weren’t going to make it. We consulted the GPS for the nearest gas station and I took the next exit. As the directions continued to lead us down narrower and narrower roads, my skepticism we were going to find a station at trail’s end widened. Concern grew as I saw the digital readout continue to tick off the remaining kilometers of fuel left while we continued to pass cattle and sheep, but little else.

When we did come to our calculated “destination,” I turned the car around in the driveway of the small farm we were facing which probably didn’t even have a fuel barrel and, of course, showed no resemblance of ever serving as a fuel station. Luck has it that I did eventually find a small country store before we had to thumb a ride. In this instance, small means one pump, a display cooler that had for sale fewer items than found in my fridge on an average day, and an old lady attendant crocheting to pass the time between infrequent afternoon sales.

Finally, speaking of leftovers, what do you do when you clean out the rental car while packing your bags for the trip to the airport only to discover there are still three pints of Guinness and half a bottle of Baily’s Irish Cream left? You shove them in your already bulging suitcase and hope the FSA agent who randomly searches your bag doesn’t decide he or she need a drink after work—and with a job like that, they probably do.

Ireland Part VIII: Irish Roots—Family and Potatoes

After bouncing around between one Bed and Breakfast to another for the first few days, we spent a week residing on the small peninsula jutting into Castlemaine Harbor, south of the Dingle Peninsula and north of the small village of Cromane. For a reasonable sum, a person can rent a “cottage” in Ireland. The one we inhabited wasn’t as quaint as I would imagine an Irish cottage to be, but instead was a very spacious newly built home. It was also a symbol of the rise and fall of what is known as the Celtic Tiger economy. A surge in the technology and pharmaceutical industries created an economic boom prior to the new millennium, the effects of which continued until the Great Recession in 2008. Our cottage was built on the tail end of the Tiger. After the real estate bubble burst it never sold.

Weeks ago I started this column by referencing my Irish ancestry. Quite a few branches trace back to communities across Ireland. It is probably not much of a coincidence, therefore, that our primary place of lodging, we later learned, happened to be near the town in which the McKenna branch purportedly originates—Killorglin in County Kerry.

Despite my failure to adequately research our family history in advance, we thought we would wing it and see if anyone knew of any locals with the last name McKenna. The inebriated patron we consulted at the nearest pub in town hadn’t heard of any, until he thoughtfully pondered it another couple of minutes and then remembered his wife’s maiden name was McKenna. Without our prompting he dialed her up on his cell phone and then handed it over to allow us to do the talking. I’m not sure what that says about the status of their marriage. Regardless, she was friendly and suggested we stop by the church office and page through their records.

The next day we did exactly that and found the church secretary, like most Irish, was very accommodating. She pulled out the books and quickly gave us the Genealogy 101 lesson I am certain she is accustomed to giving tourists like us searching the country of 4.5 million people for a relative from six generations back.

We began scanning the relevant pages for McKenna when she interjected and warned us that it would be improper to only search for the spelling we were accustomed to. Variations of McKenna could also include Kenna, McGenna, Genna, MaKenna, MacKenna, MacKennagh, MacKinna, MacKena, or even Ginna. We would have to search them all. 

As we narrowed it down by name we began to look more closely at dates when again she interjected and urged us not to put too much faith in the accuracy of dates either. If you can’t rely on the spelling of the names or the accuracy of dates, then you don’t have much to go off of, in my estimation. We did have one thing playing in our favor—we were searching for McKenna rather than O’Sullivan. The inflection in her voice took on a sober tone when she stated that the hair on the back of her neck raises high when someone walks through the door announcing they are searching for an O’Sullivan. Our survey of the local cemetery confirmed the frequency of the O’Sullivan name—nearly one in every three stones appeared to bear that moniker.

Despite these inherent challenges, some folks are able to successfully place the pieces in order, but it became clear we weren’t going to do so that morning. Never mind that anyway, as she then came forth with the most critical information of the day—these exact records are all online at www.irishgenealogy.ie/en/ and paging through the books, as romantic as it might seem at the time, was completely unnecessary. Just then the office phone started to ring so we quickly thanked her for her time and assistance and departed.  

I also started the column by giving a brief history of the infamous potato famine. I can assure you the famine is no longer, and potatoes persist in abundance despite the absence of widespread poverty that originally made potatoes a staple in the diet many years ago. Dining at a pub one evening I ordered some species of local fish of which I was not familiar and can no longer recall. Like any good Irish meal, it came with some mashed potatoes and a vegetable as advertised on the menu. I was a bit surprised when the waitress delivered a side of French fries with the rest of my meal. This happened again later in the trip. It wasn’t an extra side I had requested, nor had it been indicated on the menu they were included. Bonus fries, I call them, and they seem to be given away like water.

To be more accurate, these fries are technically called “chips” in Ireland. Meanwhile, what we call chips are called “crisps.” Pudding as we know it is nothing like pudding in Ireland. Irish pudding is a breakfast food composed of pork meat and fat, suet (beef or mutton fat), bread, oatmeal, and sometimes blood (from what, I didn’t ask). Pudding is an essential component of the traditional Irish breakfast served by most B&Bs. Soup in Ireland doesn’t have chunks. It is puréed. Stew is more like our soup. Chicken goujons are chicken strips. The Irish do not say they are “hungry.” Instead they announce they are feeling “peckish.” The list goes on.

When it was our turn to get served at the table or the bar, consistently the wait staff would ask, some with genuine concern, “Are you okay?”—almost as if initiating a little friendly small talk. My instincts were always to respond, “Yes, I am doing fine.” But when I did this while waiting to order a drink, of course, they would pass me on by and hustle off to the next customer who wasn’t “doing okay.”

By the time we were done pestering the patient wait staff each night with questions about what unfamiliar words meant and what each menu item actually consisted of, they were probably ready to present us a basket of fries and say, “take it or leave it.” Tipping is generally unnecessary in Ireland. Nevertheless, I usually found myself adding extra, hoping it would serve as an informal apology for our unfamiliarity, indecisiveness, and delay.

Unlike places like Italy or India, you don’t go to Ireland to indulge in great or exotic food, since most of their fare can be found right here at home. Nevertheless, we never went hungry, thanks to those generous servings of potatoes.

Ireland Part VII: Blarney v. Baloney

 The Irish are impressively good at stacking rocks. Fences, barns, forts, and especially castles showcase this talent over the ages. Fences divide the countryside into a gridded pattern of pastures and line most roadways. Forts that are older than European settlement of America still stand solid guard in Southwestern Ireland. Similarly, castle ruins can be found dotted along the rugged coast and other strategic locations inland. Even modern buildings and houses make significant use of rocks and for good reason—they are abundantly everywhere.

We passed by approximately two or three castles each day. Some are in partial ruin, on others the stonework remains well preserved, and a small number are restored with replicate woodwork and furnishings. Many are owned privately or by the government and charge admission, but yet a good number remain neglected relics of history, merely ivy covered obstacles in the middle of quiet cow pastures.

The Irish castle most familiar to Americans is Blarney Castle, made famous for its revered Blarney Stone and a popular pilgrimage spot for those yearning to lay a smooch on it in hopes they will be given the “gift of gab,” or “blarney” as some call it. What makes this particular stone magical, you might be wondering?

Legend has it the builder of Blarney Castle, Cormac MacCarthy, found himself on the wrong end of a lawsuit. He appealed to Clíodhna, a goddess in Irish mythology, for advice on how best to plead his defense. She instructed him to kiss the first stone he came upon during his travels to the court. He did this and as a result was able to plead his case with great eloquence, and of course, he won. As a result, legend has it that the Blarney Stone is able to impart “the ability to deceive without offending,” or in shorthand, the gift of eloquent speaking. He then incorporated the special stone into the castle structure. Of course this is only one of the many explanations behind the myth of the Blarney Stone. People from around the world, including many politicians seeking the power of persuasion and great oratory skills, have made the climb to kiss the stone (most notably Winston Churchill).

As a recent law graduate, it would have been a blunder to pass up this opportunity to endow myself with an eloquent tongue so I might find similar luck and skill as Mr. MacCarthy when in the courtroom. We drove to Cork to find this infamous bluestone. The Blarney Castle is one of the taller castles we saw and 131 steps up the tight spiral staircases takes you to where the stone is located on the top rim of the castle, cemented into the base of the battlements. 

Because it is perched in a precarious location, kissing it is an exercise in upper body flexibility. After a short wait in line you are guided by the grey haired attendant to lay on your back, grab a steel support bar with each fist, arc your back over the two-foot gap opening, and then lean back far enough to get your head low enough to kiss the stone. Meanwhile, the attendant is there to grab your jacket or legs should you start to slip backward and through the gap and plummet to the ground below. They hardly give you enough time for a peck before you are being pulled back up and shooed off to keep the line moving.

I can’t say I felt any different after my brief moment with the stone. I still stumble over my words, but hold out hope that in those moments of greatest need Clíodhna will bestow me with a little bit of that Blarney magic. At least she had better, or I fear I fell for the greatest tourist scam in all of Ireland.

Over the ages blarney has also developed into a useful adjective to describe a certain form of baloney, and I don’t mean the good stuff found at the New Albin Meat Market. An Irish politician described it best when he said, “Blarney is something more than mere flattery. It is flattery sweetened by humour and flavoured by wit.” A plaque at the castle gave a nice example. “Baloney is when you tell a 50 year old woman she looks 18. Blarney is when you ask a woman how old she is because you want to know at what age women are most beautiful.” Most Irish are naturally skilled in the latter.

Many of the castles have a similar layout. Tight spiral staircases stake out each corner. The stone slabs used to construct the steps are well worn from centuries of travel by knights, princesses, and more recently, Nike-clad American tourists. In the corners on various levels are the bedrooms while the center of the castle is reserved for the banquet hall. The roof is designed with castle defenses in mind. The more “luxurious” castles, like Blarney Castle, incorporated fancy waste disposal systems comprised of special, slanted windows on the downwind side—out of which one could do their business and expedite its deposit outside. Like most castles in Ireland, only the resilient stone structure remains and all wood components have long ago rotted away.

As an amateur in castle architecture, I suggest that once you have seen one you have pretty much seen them all. I often wondered what the locals think of all these picture-happy tourists stopping to take photos of castles along the roads or in a farmer’s back 40. To them I suspect these castles are about as commonplace as traditional dairy barns with gambrel roofs in the Upper Midwest. I might be exaggerating a little bit, but the day isn’t far off when that might be true.

I can imagine that any season now we will start to see busloads of Japanese, German, and New York City tourists kicking up a cloud of dust down Prairie Ridge Road or slowing down traffic on Highway 44 while they snap pictures from the side of the road and pay to take tours of the last of these wooden relics from an earlier farming era. First we will wonder with amusement and a little annoyance what all of the commotion is about, but after the dust settles we will eventually come to the difficult realization it is already too late and another chapter of our agricultural heritage will be over and in the books—just another nostalgic attraction exhibiting “the way things used to be.”

But let’s hope that’s all just a bunch of blarney.