We leave for Ireland, the Emerald Isle, tomorrow afternoon.
I do believe I fell in love with the place after seeing Darby O’Gill and The Little People.
Or was it The Gnome Mobile? Well, anyway, both were Irish and dealt with leprechauns or gnomes or dwarves or some kind of severe mesomorphs that still baffle endocrinologists. If both were Disney films, which they were, then obviously I fell in love with props on a SoCal soundstage. All the fake greenery, heather and lavender on Ol’ Walt’s lot completely enticed me. FelL for it , hook, line and sinker. And moved close to the top of a six year old” sand pale list.
It’s a land of mystery to me. So old and stately. It’s lore is rife with ghostly goings on along with fairies and Banshee’s, who’s wail when piercing the night sky means your next up for ye olde dirt nap. Or if you hear her frightening screech someone close to you dies.
The Celts were some of Ireland’s earliest inhabitants. And their name is pronounced with a hard “C” sound ….like a “K”. Sorry Boston, that hahd K sound is the sound you’d hear as if you was orderin’ “a box of Dunkies”.
Neeuah the packy store where you’d buy a sixuh. The one one ovhu by the Lambah Yahd.
The Celts are considered a mystical people, very clannish, lived and died by the astronomy of agronomy, as most tribes ancient did, but they did it with finesse. And chanting, bonfires….
And hooded robes.
Samhain is one of its many traditions rooted in folklore, and are still in practice today.
Samhain, is Celtic for “End of Summer. And as we learned in the in the late 70’s, it was one of Michael Meyers favorite holidays and also the name an ambitious little band which that tried to make its mark in the genres of Death Punk or Horror Rock (depending through which sides of the ear you wore your safety pin). I think someone once gave it a 73 for the lyrics on ‘Bandstand’s Rate-A+Record.
Samhain marks the end of the lighter half of the world (summer), and the beginning of the darker half (winter). It is here where it was believed that the division between life and the after life was thinnest. It was believed that this thinning allowed spirits to move between this world and the other. Hence Halloween.
We are doing the important things next week, like taking private tours through the esteemed breweries of Guinness and Jamisons, watching molten glass blown into expensive crystal drink ware. As your mom about Waterford, March is birthing month for sheep, so we’re going down to the Irish equivalent of Yazgur’s farm, to watch these little babies born, we’ll feed them, watch their older cousins and aunts and uncles get shorn, we’ll try to be mesmerized by the antics of the Widders Fitzpatrick, O’Malley and Shannon knit ovens out of steel wool.
Then it’s off to a haunted castle (as if I could go to Ireland without touring one), the stunning Cliffs of Moher
and Blarney Castle and it’s famed corresponding lucky stone. Ultimately, I’ll seek a 500 thatch roof pub in done tiny village and pound back pints with the locals and getting very pissed drunk with them and calling everyone we don’t like, “damned thievin’ royalist bahstahd”.
Ah, good times.
In a few weeks, expect a trip review with photos, maybe even un film du Madame(Moiselle) Laurie de Kendrick, or a collection of pics, a book, if you will, with a two forwards written by Norman Mailer and Gore Vidal..
Slainte.
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