Chasing Leprechauns

In the end, the one thing that really defines our trip to Ireland -- more than castles, ancient druid sites, pubs, or sheep -- is hunting leprechauns. When she was around four, Gigi used to construct elaborate leprechaun traps at our house in the States. Now she's old enough to laugh at the futility of that, and seven-year old Pippa joins in since she sees the humor in trying to trap leprechauns in San Francisco. Now that we're in Ireland, though, all bets are off, and throughout most of the trip Pippa is convinced she will capture one.

 

 

Our first close encounter with a leprechaun is on our hike in Connemara. On the road, Pippa is convinced she sees a flash of a tiny white leprechaun shirt as we drive quickly by. Then, on the hike, we see off in the distance the tip of a hat running away from us. I see the tip of the hat, too, and it does look extra tiny because the child wearing it is on a sunken path. I say child, but could it be a leprechaun? Pippa is convinced that's what we've seen, and she checks out all the likely secret hiding spots for one of their homes. She is a detective, hunting for clues: the inside of this bush looks recently disturbed. They've been here and run away when they heard us coming!

Between hunting for leprechauns and a strange "Gangnam Style" dancing game that Anthony invented, the girls are cracking up for most of the hike.

It's hard not to believe in leprechauns when we see something like 15 rainbows over the course of our trip (literally, we stopped counting).

One day we see the most glorious rainbow and can't help but chase after it. We pull off the road, into a private drive, where we see the end of the rainbow clearly landing in the middle of a farmer's cow field. Admit it: You see it, too, and you know the pot of gold is just behind the ridge. So we do what any sane American leprechaun hunters would do, and we climb over the fence and chase after it.

But of course where this is a rainbow there has been, recently, rain. And where there is a cow field, there has been, recently, a herd of cows. Together that makes for some very squelchy, squishy, mucky walking. We just can't get to the end of the rainbow, especially since that pesky end just keeps moving further and further into the field the closer we get.

After we begrudgingly admit we can slog no further, Pippa bursts into tears, and we have to console her. Uh-oh. Perhaps we've gone too far. We have to start on a new campaign of talking about how much leprechauns hate being found. They're hard to catch, those wily, tricky, mischevious leprechauns! According to Pippa, that means we may just be the most successful leprechaun hunters around -- having seen their home and hat and all. According to me, we already found the pot of gold: It's the memory of trespassing in this farmer's field, chasing through the mud and muck after the end of the rainbow on an impromptu family adventure while the cows look on, bemused.

This is important enough to us that we make a pilgrimage to the National Leprechaun Museum in Dublin where we learn interesting factoids, like that leprechauns are originally Scottish. And that they used to wear brown coats and red hats, and the point was to steal the hat in order to get the pot of gold. Credit for the current image of the leprechaun -- with green clothes and red beard, slightly mischevious but not downright nasty, guarding his pot of the gold at the end of the rainbow -- goes to...... Lucky Charms and Disney. Yes, really. They are magically delicious! The king of the leprechauns in Walt Disney's film, Darby O'Gill and the Little People set the standard in America for their current look, and it was the film and Lucky Charms that brought that image back to Ireland.

 

 

And so we say good-bye to Ireland. Pippa writes a song about the trip, with a little help from me and her guitar teacher, that pretty much sums it up perfectly (Her spelling in italics. Translation follows):

 

We sreached for lepercon's on the maintins. In the wilooold's of Kanamra.

We searched for leprechauns on the mountains, in the wilds of Connemara.

We sreached for lepercon's in the cow feld's at the end of the ranbo.

We searched for leprechauns in the cow fields at the end of the rainbow.

 

We hunted hi and low.                                                               We hunted high and low.

Wer did they all go?                                                                  Where did they all go?

I gost d'ont no.                                                                           I just don't know.

 

We sreached for lepercons by the clear strem's in the would's of Klarni.

We searched for leprechauns by the clear streams in the woods of Killarney.

We sreached in the fairy glades and gardin's at the castole of blarni.

We searched in the fairy glades and gardens at the castle of Blarney.

 

We hunted hot and cold                                                              We hunted hot and cold

For that pot of gold.                                                                     For that pot of gold.

We hunted hi and low,                                                                 We hunted high and low,

Wer did they all go?                                                                    Where did they all go?

I gost d'ont no.                                                                             I just don't know...



  

 

Irish Hospitality

At the Blarney Castle, we are told the (possibly apocryphal) story of invaders who tried to take advantage of famous Irish hospitality to gain access to the castle they wanted to attack: "Knock, knock, may we come in?"

Well, we haven't tried to invade any strongholds, but we can testify to the warmth of Irish hospitality. We spend the first night living the vida local by staying at the Dublin home of my friend Brendan, whom I first met 21 years ago in a bar in Tokyo. And now look at us. All grown up, with spouses and kids and glasses of wine at the table.

photo from Brendan's iphone, taken by the waitress

After Dublin, when we head out to the country, it's his family farm where we bunker down for the week in county Galway. The rooms are freshly painted for our arrival; in fact he greets us in paint-spattered clothes with a brush in his hand, literally. At first we feel guilty for driving them to spend their weekend doing house chores, but in the end they convince us it's been on their to-do list for a long time just awaiting the proper motivation. Well, I guess we're happy to oblige. If anybody else needs guests to show up at their lovely homes in order to motivate them to get house-chores done, just let us know! We're for hire.

You know how sometimes friends you really like marry spouses you really don't, and it's just a huge bummer? Well, I am pleased to report that Anthony and Brendan, and Brendan's wife Ashley and I, all seem to like each other just fine. As you can see by the fact that the children are mixed up on each side of the table at our dinner out in the photo above, the girls also get along like a house on fire.

On this subject, we are happy to report that we do not actually set Brendan's house on fire, despite lighting fires in the peat-burning stove. It's a real farmhouse, and we (and by "we", I mean "Anthony") bring in peat blocks from the barn and test out our (and by "our", I mean "Anthony's") fire-starting skills.

 

Brendan's parents live on a farm just up the road and his lovely mother, Bridie, comes to visit every once in a while. She assigns the girls the farm chore of feeding the kittens which, as you can imagine, is not much of a hardship for them. If only they would clean their room and clear their dishes with this much enthusiasm! It's the best chore ever and, frankly, one of the things they will probably remember the most about our stay in Ireland. I think it makes them feel important, useful, and distinctly not like tourists. Also, we refuse to buy them any housepets. Perfection.

 

Bridie brings us a homemade apple pie one afternoon which is both delicious and so incredibly thoughtful. To be entirely honest, my own mother has never brought me a homemade apple pie. Probably because my mother has never actually made a pie. So this kind gesture makes me feel like I'm at home -- but at somebody else's home, not the one I grew up in!

Thanks to Irish hospitality, we only spend three nights of our vacation in B&Bs, but these are lovely, too.

Two nights at the Earls Court House in Killarney means two breakfasts at the Earls Court House, and I have to say we are thrilled by this. The B&B is the 2004 winner of the National Porridge Making Competition, an award which we mock for the first 14 hours of our stay...until breakfast. Just how good can porridge be? Oh...my....God. Very, very, very good. I just can't figure out who won the porridge competition for the last eight years. We all want to eat this every day of our lives.

We ask the secret, and while they won't give us the recipe, they do tell us to think lots and lots of cream.

In the harbor town of Kinsale, we eat what is the best meal of our trip at the restaurant with the goofy name of "Fishy Fishy". You will only make fun of this name till you eat there. The chef, Martin Shanahan, is a celebrity chef in Ireland and, as you can guess by the name and coastal location, his specialty is seafood. It is creative, fresh, perfectly prepared, colorful, and full of zingy flavors. It reminds us a lot of the kind of innovative food we miss from San Francisco. And sure enough, I find out Shanahan spent time cooking in San Francisco. Well, I think it shows, and for the better.

Our B&B in Kinsale, called the Rivermount House, is a true family operation, but very luxurious. Other than the family that owns the home, we have the place to ourselves, since we're so off-season. The breakfasts at an Irish B&B are enormous, and we find we never even need lunch. The bread baskets alone are so lovely I could weep. Here, the owners also serve us smoked salmon covered eggs, sausage, bacon, pancakes, and the list goes on.

 

  

Though we have many, many quaint meals on the road, I would like to send a special shout-out to the Conyngham Arms Hotel in Slane near Newgrange, where we stumble across not only excellent food but also the most charming ambience imaginable. Small parlors in the old hotel have been transformed into dining areas, still with their soft couches and cozy armchairs. Even the library has dining tables, and this rooms wins as the room I will most fantasize about writing in -- with a basket of brown bread and a cup of tea by my side -- for the rest of my life.

 

 

We finish off our trip by staying a few days based in Dublin with another Irish friend, Anna, whom Anthony and I met 11 years ago when we were all backpacking around South America. We spent a memorable week together, first on a gut-churning ferry across the Gulf of Penas, then hiking around the incomparably beautiful Torres del Paine. One day, we all went ice climbing together and in a moment of youthful (but sober!) silliness, we all partially stripped for a wacky on-glacier photo. Evidently, Anna has had this picture of us in various stages of mooning/flashing/undress (which I have edited out, because the Internet never forgets....) on her dresser for the past 11 years. When her family asks her who's visiting, she tells them it's the American asses from the photo, and they all know instantly who we are. Or, at least, who our asses are.

 

 

Even though we haven't seen her in 11 years, she is exactly the warm, bubbly, funny person we remember, and the girls are completely enchanted.  Besides making our stay so comfortable, she also throws an impromptu Irish dance lesson for the girls, even roping in a former dance-champion neighbor. Gigi, in partucular, loves this, as she has started her own blog called Amikuku, introducing kids to dance from around the world. You can bet she will be writing about Irish dance soon.

 

 

In the end, having friends here has made the whole trip so special. Though trips to Morocco or India were more exotic, we feel like we have a connection here that we don't have in those places. We are so looking forward to reciprocating and hosting our Irish friends in Paris and maybe someday in San Francisco. But I'll have to prep for weeks ahead of time to compete with those Irish breakfasts.

 

We're Number One!

We have visited the #1 most-visited site in Ireland! At least five of them!

The Guinness Storehouse in Dulbin claims to be the most visited tourist site in Dublin and, as my Irish friend Brendan points out, they have the turnstyles at the entrance to count the proof. On the other hand, the Cliffs of Moher have existed and been famous for, well, millenia. So they have a pretty good claim, too, especially if you think of it as cumulative. The Blarney Castle claims #1 status; it's a cliche practically, but with steady streams of visitors for the past two hundred plus year, it seems vaguely plausible.

Even the Kylemore Abbey, which is remote, built in the 19th century, and only recently opened claims, to be the #1 visited site in West Ireland, in which the Cliffs of Moher and Blarney Castle are also located; clearly it does not stand a chance of actually being the #1 most visited site anywhere (except at Kylemore Abbey itself. Slogan: "Kylemore Abbey's #1 most visited site is...Kylemore Abbey!")

This morning, leaving our B&B in the coastal town of Kinsale, we stop at Fort Charles, where we discover it's the women who are No. 1. A stone placard makes it official. Yeah, women!

 

 

And then there is the Rock of Cashel, which you've probably never heard of unless you are really familiar with Irish history, but which, nevertheless, claims to be the most visited tourist site in Ireland this past year. I must say that this seems like the most dubious claim of all, and methinks somebody here has kissed the Blarney stone one too many times. The guide boasts that the new found popularity is due to the visit of Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh in May 2011.

 

 

queen/prince photos from www.zimbio.com

The good news for us is that while there is, frankly, not a snowball's chance that the Rock of Cashel is Ireland's most visited tourist site -- and we're here at low season on top of it all, so we practically have the place to ourselves -- it is at the very least a worthwhile stop. Even if one is not wearing a fetching hat.

The mostly 12th- and 13th-century remains were once the traditional seat of the Kings of Munster. The history of the place goes back before that to the 5th century, when it was the site of the original conversion of the first King of Munster by St. Patrick, himself, thereby bringing Christianity to Ireland.

Though legend has it St. Patrick rid Ireland of snakes, it turns out Ireland never actually had a snake problem, and that this is probably more metaphorical (meaning, he rid Ireland of paganism). We also learn the origin of the shamrock as a symbol of Ireland; it was here that in order to explain the tenets of Christianity, St. Patrick was supposed to have picked up a clover and showed how out of one stem (religion) came three leaves (Father, Son, Holy Ghost).

 

Traditions with this very old Celtic cross (actually, because of the deterioration, as you can see, the original has been moved inside and an equally-deteriorated facsimile has been left outside). Anybody who can hop around it in 9 hops (or is it 7?) will be married within the year. Naturally, the girls try and, I am happy to report, only get about 10% of the way around in 9 hops. So we're safe till they hit the double digits. Also, the reason Pippa is hugging it is because legend has it that anybody who can hug and get their arms to touch around the backside will never suffer from hangovers. I think it's a bit premature for the girls to be worrying about marriage or hangovers, but the Rock of Cashel is a wild and rockin' place. It's practically Las Vegas, as you can clearly see.

The cemetery outside the church ruins had a burial just last week, but there will only be a handful more. About 50 years ago, they decided that only people living in the area at that time whose parents were buried here could sign their name into a book and have the right to be buried here themselves. After that, no more descendents could ever claim this right. Over the years, of course, those whose names are inscribed have been buried here, with just a few remaining.

 

 

It's a beautiful place to be buried, with a stunning view over the sheep-filled fields and, of course, in the shadow of Ireland's number one most visited tourist site.

 

Kissing the Blarney Stone

It seems to me that no trip to Ireland would be complete without a visit to the 15th century Blarney Castle.

 

 

Kissing the Blarney stone is not just a saying but an actual tradition, and since it bestows up on the kisser the gift of eloquence, how can I resist? Of course, eloquence is the nice way to say it. Gift of gab being the other. In 1602, Queen Elizabeth I's Deputy in Cork demanded that Lord of Blarney Cormac Teige MacCarthy swear allegiance and hand over ownership of his land to the Queen. His responses were constantly flattering, florid, and long-winded and managed to hint of undying loyalty without ever actually committing to anything. A true politican, in any era. It was the queen herself who is said to have coined the term, exclaiming at the latest psychophantic yet empty letter from MacCarthey, "This is all Blarney!"

Kissing the stone may not have started as early as 1602, but it is not just a modern crass-commercial tourist trap either. The tradition dates back at least to the 1700s (famous kissers include Winston Churchill and Mick Jagger). It's just that nowadays you have to pay admission and a tip to the people whose job it is to help you get in kissing position, and there's a safety bar to prevent you from diving headfirst approximately 90 feet to the ground.



I've read reports that women utter around three times more words per day than men. Scientific American puts rest to this common myth -- of questionable origins and blown up by the media as a fun sound byte -- with studies that show that, in reality, women speak on average only slightly more per day than men: 16,215 words compared with 15,669. However, while destroying the myth, Scientific American has also provided me with a new explanation for the disparity in our household. While coming up with the averages (which are just that: averages), researchers discovered a range of verbosity from a highly taciturn 500 words per day to 47,000 words per day. I like to think the girls (particularly Pippa) and I are not at the upper extreme, but it's clear that we're people who are bringing the average up. And Anthony, who's a chatty Cathy compared to the 500 word per day guy, is still bringing, if not the national average, at least our family average down. Let's just say that it's a good thing I'm a writer and have some sort of outlet for all those words swirling around my head. It's one of the reasons I love foreign languages: words, words, and more words!

So kissing the Blarney stone seems a little redundant for us, at least for the loquacious segment of the household. Poor Anthony, he probably should spend some quality time making out with the stone if he wants to catch up to the voluble levels of his three female family members. But no, he just gives the stone a friendly little platonic peck. Meanwhile, Pippa accidentally gets the stone with her whole face, so now we're afraid that her nose will be as garrulous as her mouth.

 

 

  

Between the ancient, narrow stairs you need to climb and the fact that you have to contort yourself upside down about 90 feet off the ground, it strikes me that you'd have to be free from vertigo and claustrophobia to enjoy this experience. But really, in order to visit the Blarney Castle, you should also be free from:

Hibernophobia - Fear of Ireland, Irish culture, ect.
Atephobia - Fear of ruin or ruins.
Climacophobia - Fear of stairs, climbing or of falling downstairs.
Philematophobia - Fear of kissing.
Hypsiphobia - Fear of height.
Lalophobia - Fear of speaking.
Logophobia - Fear of words.
Mythophobia - Fear of myths or stories or false statements.

...and let's not forget:
Aeroacrophobia - Fear of open high places.
Agoraphobia - Fear of open spaces or of being in crowded, public places.
Altophobia - Fear of heights.
Ambulophobia - Fear of walking.
Androphobia - Fear of men.
Anemophobia - Fear of air drafts or wind.
Asymmetriphobia - Fear of asymmetrical things.
Batophobia - Fear of heights or being close to high buildings.
Cathisophobia - Fear of sitting.
Chiraptophobia - Fear of being touched.
Claustrophobia - Fear of confined spaces.
Cremnophobia - Fear of precipices.
Phengophobia - Fear of daylight or sunshine.
Pluviophobia - Fear of rain or of being rained on.
Sciophobia - Fear of shadows.
Sociophobia - Fear of society or people in general.
Stenophobia - Fear of narrow things or places.
Verminophobia - Fear of germs.
Xenophobia - Fear of strangers or foreigners.

(So exciting! In the course of my research, I learn that the word for fear of Halloween is "Samhainophobia", and now we know why!)

We are treated to a stunning rainbow over the castle, sort of like a divine benediction for all those extra words we're about to utter. Poor, poor Anthony.

 

The grounds of the Blarney Castle are filled with magic, myth, and legend. Not only are the gardens like a magical fairyland, they officially contain a fairy glade. With fairy slipper flowers. For the fairies, natch. The stairs in the middle photo below are the wishing steps, and we all dutifully close our eyes and walk backwards down the steps, then up again, in order to make our wishes come true within the year. The photo on the right is of a boulder called the Witch's Stone, for the obvious reason.

But when all the magic, flowers, fairies, rainbows, sweetness and light get to be too much, there's something for the boyish side...

First of all, the history of the castle also involves Robert the Bruce in Scotland. Cormac McCarthy, the King of Munster, reportedly sent 4,000 troops to support Robert the Bruce at the battle of Bannockburn in 1314. And legend says that in gratitude, Robert the Bruce sent half of the Stone of Scone. This is now the very stone we kiss high up in the battlements. Or not, since other historical accounts state the English removed the Stone of Scone (or Stone of Destiny) a hundred years earlier. So really, even this story could all be blarney.

The castle's history also involves Oliver Cromwell who finally managed to break into the King of Munster's stronghold only to find all the treasure and all the people save two servants had disappeared through underground tunnels.

 

Naturally, Anthony loves the slits for shooting out arrows (wait, I bet there's an official term for that...Yes, just looked it up, and they are called, cleverly enough, arrowslits, arrow slits, or arrow loops). Even better than the arrowslits is....cue ominous music....The Murder Hole. Like the trebuchets in La Dordogne, it's these sweet castle-y touches that speak to the twelve year old boy that still lurks (not too far) below Anthony's surface.

 

 

 

The Blarney castle has the added appeal of a poison garden. You know you're not in the US because some of the plants are enclosed in cages, protecting them from animals and animals from them, with nothing to protect the people. And many aren't enclosed at all. There's no waiver to sign and not even a placard warning you against picking, eating, or ingesting the plants. Basically, it's your business if you're stupid enough to taste plants in a poison garden, each clearly marked with a skull and crossbones and list of symptoms. Will cause nausea, dizziness, paralysis of the throat muscles, hallucinations, and death; want some?