Redemptorist Church, Limerick

ChoruS of East Providence had come to Ireland to sing.  We had worked for six months to learn the music. We had learned Irish folk songs.  We memorized the Irish National Anthem "Soldiers Song" in Irish.

Our first rehearsal and concert were at Redemptorist Church Mt. St Alphonsus in Limerick.  [Tour]

In all of our concerts there was no a large turnout.  Though the concerts were free, the friends-and-relatives who accompanied the choir often outnumbered the local attendees.  No matter:  we were there to sing.

The American Song concert was designed by director Beth Armstrong to reflect the great variety of American choral music from the 19th through the 21st Century.

At this performance in the front row to the far left was a very elderly woman, toothless, and decked out in a very pert knitted cap.  Next to her was a man maybe in his fifties, good looking and probably her son.  Both clearly enjoyed and appreciated the music.

When we got to the folks songs, though, she came sparklingly alive!  She sang the songs and beamed.

And then, the Soldiers Song.  Most people we are told do not know the Irish words to their own national anthem. But, my, she did.  It seemed impossible, but her smile got even bigger and brighter.  And the tears!

Talking to her after the performance, we learned the man was her son, that she was 92 and she especially remembered the folk songs from her girlhood years.  Wish I had a photo of her and her perky hat.

THIS is why we sing.

Day Two July 13, 2017

Bunratty Castle and Folk Park, County Clare

Ireland has a lot of castles.  This castle is a National Heritage Site and an attraction to many tourists and tour groups.  It sits on the Bunratty Estate.  A portion of the estate has been set up as a representation of country life in the 19th Century.  

The Castle

deer skull chandelier

 is 15th Century and has been nicely restored.  We met in the Great Hall is its eclectic collection of decor.  The chandelier came from a hunting lodge in Germany and the armor was from all over the place.  The Great Hall is the site of Medieval dinners and entertainment with actors in period costume.

The dungeon is below and the baron's chamber is above.   It is said that when Cromwell was here and defeated the castle he invited the vanquished to walk down to the dungeon.  The stairs were unlit and the bottom "step" was a 5 meter drop onto stone.  What an awesome place to die from a broken leg!

The Battlements are still in place and repaired.  The moat is dry.

The Folk Park features cottages and a small village such as might have been in the 19th Century (if you ignore the Great Famine!).  There were docents to teach about thatching, about roofs and peat fires.  Each and every road and crossroad would have a cross or Madonna and Child to mark the way.  The Celtic Cross is attributed to St.Patrick.  He combined the Christina cruciform with a circle to represent the sun, the principal deity for the non-Catholic Irish to whom he preached.

Glendalough.  Celtic Cross.

Crossroads Statue in niche, Folk Park

Peat Turf Fire

rope holding down thatch and amazing blue sky

spiders like thatch too

I enjoyed the waterwheel that ran the grindstone and listening to a young woman singing traditional songs.

Then it was time to pile back into the buses and head for a rehearsal for our first concert 

Bedroom of a farmer cottage

at Redemptorist Church.

Water and Stone

  Water and Stones

Ireland truly is green. A satellite view of Ireland shows its brilliant green. I certainly saw at least 40 shades of green as the bus took us around the southwestern counties. Ireland gets 29” of rain on average each year. That rain falls on the fields and meadows and forms the 40 rivers that flow through the country. That seems a lot of rivers for a rather small island. 
 

SHANNON is named for the river Shannon that runs for 224 miles and bisects the middle of the island.

We were told that it would be cold in Ireland and that we should pack warm clothes and rain gear. These bulky items stayed in our luggage as Ireland enjoyed unusually warm and dry weather during our trip. The only rain was in the second week after the COEP had left.

The temperate climate, rich soil and abundant rain result in all that green and really amazing flowers. Here, we nurse a fuschia plant in its basket through the summer. It seldom survives winter even indoors. There, fuschias formed hedges six feet high! Nationwide there is a “Tidy Towns” competition for cleanliness and for stunning plantings in public spaces and people's homes.

As we traveled around, I could not help but reflect on how hard it must have been during the Great Migration of the 19^th Century to leave beauty such as this and end up in New York, or Boston, or Chicago.

Ireland is blessed  also with stones. The geology ranges from volcanic (1.7 billion years) to drummlins from the last ice age. Because of abundant stone and centuries of deforestation, Ireland built and builds s stone houses.  The house below dates from the 11th or 12th Century and sits in Glendalough. After 800-900 years the mortar is beginning to melt on the upper parts of the wall.  If there were a thatched roof and it was maintained, the walls would still be solid.

Irish stone according to guide Seamus is in layers that lend themselves to forming cubic stones that do not need a lot of dressing. The walls are finished in and out with a thick heavy stucco formed of cement. The finished stucco lasts forever if the roof stays tight and intact. All of the walls shown in the photo of Ennis are of this method.

This layering was clearly seen in the Cliffs of Moher.

Limestone, clay, granite, karst, basalt, sandstone, chalk and flint. 

The richer farmlands are on the eastern part of the island. More of that later.

Day One in Ireland

July 12, 2017

Once upon a time flying was fun, even glamorous. A full flight on Aer Lingus, back row of the jet right in front of the galley. Even if I were able to sleep on a plane, sleep would have been impossible with the continuous slamming of the doors in the galley literally the entire time. It never stopped. The meal was served and after that was done, there was 90 minutes left in the six hour hop from BOS to SNN.

Sleepless we emerged to a bright morning at 6:30, cleared immigration and customs and were hustled immediately onto our parade of buses. Bus #2 with Seamus and Norman. Seamus is from the Dingle peninsula of Co Kerry. Norman is from Co. Tyrone in “the north of Ireland.” The interplay between these two would sparkle every day we were together.

Off to the Cliffs of Moher.

Tour groups are canned and inevitably will take

you to the must see places of your destination, whether worth seeing or not. Who defines must see is unknown. Fodor lists Cliffs of Moher in its list of “overrated” sights. It notes the enormous gift shop desgined so that you cannot get to the cliffs without a trip through the multi-euro visitor center/gimme more. Ireland does have a marvelously rugged and dramatic coastline.

The seabirds kited and called all along the cliffs. Like just about everything else, this once was private land and the playground of wealthy nobility. This photo of friend Elissa shows the cliffs and the scale of the people atop the bluff in the distance.

Time being up, we were back on the bus to head to our hotels. However we were early so the rooms were not yet ready. We went to the town of Ennis, a charming small place that is about as typical as any small Irish town could be.

Ennis in the 14^th Century was the home of a large friary of nearly 1000 friars and students. The ruins are still stunning.

Ennis

I enjoyed my first pub food there and then walked around town in search of a second outlet adaptor. Then off to the OakWood Hotel midway between Ennis and :Limerick.

We will not comment on hotel accommodations during this tour. Not worth the ink. When you are on a tour you get the deal that was best for the tour organizer. They all tried. Food was bland, either hake or some red meat. Every supper ended with a trio of little cakes/tarts/balls of three different colors. Coffee or tea.

 

Slept.

A Wee Bit o' Irish History

Ireland's Beginnings

I left here July 11 2017 totally ignorant of the place where I was going and the history of its peoples. Back here now, not much has changed except a whetted curiosity.

Ice Age and Pre-history

All but the southernmost part of the island was under ice with a land/ice bridge connecting Ireland with the adjacent land that would become England.

There is clear evidence of habitation from about 8000 BCE with hunter-gatherer communities continuing til about 4000 BCE when agriculture began and Neolithic culture started. There are many structures of stone that date from this time. I visited the great cairn near Sligo hiking the 1.6 km to the top with a rise of over 200 meters. Doesn't sound like much of a climb, but I felt the fact that I am 73, 20+ pounds overweight and out of training. The cairn is about 10 meters high and consists of stone brought from near and far to Knocknarea and what is fancifully called Queen Maeve's (Mab's) Grave.

Queen Mazeve's Cairn

People were evidently buries in the ground at that time. Cremation was a later practice of the Middle Bronze Age. Near Knocknarea are the great stone structures of Carrowmore. This is also a cemetery of megalithic structures.

Carrowmore Grave

Iron Age. 600 BCE.

Between the start of the Iron Age and the historic period the archeologic record shows the arrival of Celtic Peoples with Celtic crafts and designs around 300 BCE. This and most other invasions or infiltrations seemed to start in the north of the Island. Ptolemy mapped Ireland's geography and tribes in 100 CE but Ireland was never part of the Roman Empire.

Historical Age begins in the 5^th Century.

By tradition, St. Patrick (Pádraig ) arrived in Ireland in 432. He was Welsh and a Romano-British

missionary. He had been captured by Irish pirates and was a slave in Ireland for six years until escaping and returning to his family. After he took orders, he returned to northern and western Ireland. Since he was sent by the Pope it is inferred that there were already Christian communities in Ireland. Pádraigh/Patricius is credited with organizing Irish law, introducing the Roman alphabet.

It is of course impossible to identify anything about the “real” Pádraigh since his mythology began in the 7^th Century.

It is clear that learning, scholarship and book illumination flourished from the fifth to the ninth centuries. The Book of Kells originates during this time, went through an arduous journey of kidnap, theft, burial and rediscovery, ending finally in the Trinity College Library in Dublin.

The Viking Era saw raids that continued for 300 years. The Normans found an Ireland divided into petty kingdoms ruled by minor kings. When King Dairmait was exiled, he appealed to Henry II to recruit Norman knights to regain his lands. That was fine until “Strongbow” Richard deClare was heir to Dairmait's kingdom and married his daughter. Pope Adrian IV permitted Henry to invade Ireland because Henry feared a rival Norman state in Ireland. Henry named his son John the Lord of Ireland. When John became king of England (1199) Ireland came under the English crown.

The Norman influence waned in the 13^th Century. When the Black Death arrived in the mid-14^th Century, the English and Norman occupiers of cities and towns were harder hit than the rural native Irish. As the plague passed there was resurgence of Irish language and customs. The War of the Roses diverted attention even further from Ireland. Gaelic and Gaelicized lords expanded their power and domain in the end of the 15^th Century.

Irish or Gaelic? Seamus O'Shea, our bus's tour guide, said it did not matter what we called it. “We are speaking Irish here” though a dwindling proportion of the population actually speak the language on a daily basis.

Beginning

Beginning 11 Jul 2017

CHORUS OF EAST PROVIDENCE (RI)

arrives at Logan Or, maybe Airport via chartered buses to start its "American Song" tour of Ireland.

Two years in the planning with many fund-raising activities and (no Or, maybe ) personal outlays from those signed on.  About half the chorus chose to make the tour, many traveling with members of their families.

Well, where should we set the beginnings of Ireland?

12,000 BCE.  

All except the southern-most part of the island was under glaciers in the Ice Age.

The first humans are thought to have crossed on a land mass from England to Ireland around 7,000-8,000 BCE.  

Or, maybe start with the legendary kings.  [http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~irlkik/ihm/]

Or, maybe, start with the arrival of Christianity in 400 CE.

Or, maybe, start with the tribes and territories of the "Golden Age" of 600 CE.

It is an old place.  It has a long, twisted and haunted history.  The pain and blood of that history would show themselves in the cities of the "north of Ireland" as the Republicans call it.

Me?  I started from Logan.

My plan was to enjoy the first week of tourism and singing and then to rent a car and explore the Isle on my own.  My hope was to find some connections with the legends of the McCloy Scotch-Irish roots and the Callahan (my mother's side) Irish roots.