A Spring Visit to Ireland, a Writer’s Paradise
Enniskerry, Glendalough-the names roll off my tongue as I recall my favorite Irish tunes. More wonderful names: Kilkenny the town, Kilkenny the castle, Waterford the Viking city, Waterford the name for crystal now manufactured in Poland. I may not have Gaelic blood running through my veins, but I’ve always felt a psychic connection through the music and stories to the Emerald Isle. Finally getting a chance to visit, as soon as our car sped beyond Dublin airport, I could see all that lush green. Frequent rain showers, mist, clouds, punctuated with bursts of sunshine; despite the chill, late April was a fine time to visit Ireland. The island nation was not too crowded with tourists.
My husband Peter and I joined forces with our friends Fred and Susan, to share a car for an eight day/ seven night tour that included admission to : Kilkenny Castle, Blarney Castle, The Ring of Kerry, Cliffs of Moher, and Dublin’s Irish Immigration Museum. To this basic itinerary, which included accommodations at Kilkenny, Waterford, Tralee, Clare, and Dublin we added visits to Powerscourt Gardens, the early monastic settlement at Glendalough, the Medieval Museum in Waterford, Dublin Castle, Guinness Storehouse, Jameson distillery, Trinity College and the Book of Kells, as well as visits to the towns of Tralee, Killarney, Ennis, and Galway. Each visit is worthy of a separate write-up, a poem, bit of flash prose. This is why writers like to travel, luxuriating in the opportunity to soak up new ideas.
So I will focus on just one afternoon, our walk along the Cliffs of Moher, dramatic sharp edged cliffs located on one of the peninsulas jutting from Irelands west Atlantic coast. The mist was heavy, the rain fell and abated, the winds blew and I was happy to be wearing several layers of clothes topped off by a red slicker. But oh how the sights were breathtaking. The hard gray rock on one side of the path, and over on the other side wide expanses of bright green fields and grazing sheep. As the path was narrow and beyond a certain point were Caution signs and signs posted by the Good Samaritans with a phone number to call if you needed someone to talk with, as many have intentionally chosen these cliffs as a place to end their life, tourists brushed up against each other trying to stay on the path while not touching the electrified fence. Due to all the rain, steps were slippery and mud caked the bottom of my shoes. I held onto the wooden railings when climbing and descending. Seagulls soared on the oceanside and occasionally someone stepped off the path and closer to the ledge to take pictures. Below we could see two passenger boats ferrying tourists to give them a view of the cliffs from the sea.
The Visitor Center is cleverly built into the rock and provided a respite from the weather and contains short movies, exhibits, and the requisite gift shop.
If you were to ask me, what was my favorite place visited on this particular trip, it would be difficult to answer. Each day had its charms and surprises. Did you know that the term Drawing Room is not a room for the creative activity of drawing, but a room in which to withdraw from others, primarily the ladies withdrawing from the gentlemen and their cigars after dinner. And did you know that in Ireland, the lovely Rhododendron is considered an invasive species, a terrible pest that is taking over their national parks?
I will close with a few lines from one of my favorite poems by the Irish Poet William Butler Yeats. Down By the Salley Gardens was partially inspired by a traditional Irish ballad and subsequently was set again to music. But here is the Yeats poem. Salley Gardens are willow gardens and weirs are nets in the water used to trap fish. The poem has no mention of green in it, but somehow I can see colors of Ireland in the scene he constructs.
Down By the Salley Gardens
By William Butler Yeats
Down by the salley gardens
my love and I did meet;
She passed the salley gardens
with little snow-white feet.
She bid me take love easy,
as the leaves grow on the tree;
But I, being young and foolish,
with her would not agree.
In a field by the river
my love and I did stand,
And on my leaning shoulder
she laid her snow-white hand.
She bid me take life easy,
as the grass grows on the weirs;
But I was young and foolish,
and now am full of tears.
Thank you for reading, and if you haven’t made any travel plans for the summer, visit some place you’ve always wanted to visit and write about it! To read more of my work please follow me on Substack, Medium, or WordPress at Nadjamaril.com.
Originally published at http://nadjamaril.com on May 5, 2024.
