Scottish Trivia #1

ABERCROMBIE is a word of possibly (mixed) Pictish origin, which can be poetically translated as 'the mouth of the bendy river'.

Let's break that down:

ABER-
from Pictish (possibly a p-Celtic language) meaning: a confluence of waters, or mouth of a water way.

CROMB-
in the old Irish (which is a q-Celtic language) meaning: bent.

Therefore, the only question left to ask: Does the clothing company realize that they're name means bent river mouth? And why don't they sell more rafting equipment?

On a more applicable note:
ABERDEEN can be poetically translated as 'where the male and female river gods meet'. However, is this my own poetic translation and should not at all be considered relevant to any sort of academic scholarship.

The academic hints that lead me to this poetic translation are:
1) ABER - confluence of waters
2) The city is located on the joining of the River's Dee and Don.
3) W. F. H. Nicolaisen, a Scottish Place Name scholar and research fellow at the Elphinstone Institute (my school) says "River Don (Devana c. 150 AD Ptolemy), from devos 'god', cf. River Dee (Deva) - 'goddess'. " (W.F.H. Nicolaisen, The Picts and their Place Names (Rosemarkie: Groam House, 1996) p. 18)
4) Therefore Don is a male god, and Dee is a female god.
5) We can assume they mean water gods becuase they are attached to rivers.

Now a piece of poetry I just made up:

ABERDEEN
Where the River Gods meet
and dance without feet to the sounds of their waters
and songs from their daughters

Only an English man could write an essay about parody songs that's dull enough to put an insomniac to sleep.

The Silver Darling

Restaurant Review

My odyssey of learning about food started exactly two years ago today. That's the day I started working at The Little Owl, which, in my opinion, is the best I've every had and probably will every have, it is also the best restaurant food-wise in the world. And according to Facebook I've been to 8% of the world, which doesn't include the numerous Caribbean countries I don't remember going to from that cruise I took once.

Let's start somewhere I'm familiar with: Menus.
The menu presentation was nice. Shiny silver paper fit right in with the name of the restaurant. The descriptions of the dishes seemed right on, not overwhelming, but tantalizing. Unfortunately, my waiter had a hard time remembering the specials and attributed it to not have worked the night before. Not a good excuse.

The amuse bouche, was indeed fairly amusing. It was a trio of tuna & salmon tartar, pesto bruschetta and a soup shooter. I'd definitely had more interesting tuna tartar and this was pretty forgettable. The pesto was the consistency of a sauce and failed to work in that respect as an equivalent for the standard bruschetta tomato mixture. The chopped onions under the pesto overwhelmed the basil and thyme flavors pesto is supposed to have. However, the soup shooter was nice. It was creamy and warm, served in a clear shot glass. I think the favour was tomato, but since it was pleasing over all, I wasn't too fussing about figuring out exactly the flavour combination.

For a starter, I had the Sashimi, because I have an intense fondness for it and have not been able to locate any in Aberdeen. However, its appearance on the menu of an otherwise mostly Mediterranean influenced affair was curious to say the least. There was nothing overly exciting of disappointing about the slices of fish. However, the cucumber wasabi sauce was inspired, adding just enough heat to make the fish exciting, but it also cooled off the palate with the cucumber.

I had the halibut for a main. I enjoy halibut immensely and was not disappointed. The combination of fish and cheese is always a strange one for me, but the chief pulled it off nicely. Neither flavour overwhelmed the other. The fish was served over chopped beets and with a side of creamed leeks. The intensity of the flavours was equal and complimentary, but I feel the chief should have tried to put with creamy leaks onto the same plate as the rest of the dish, rather than in a separete sauce dish. I wasn't entirely sure if I was supposed to dip the fish, or pour the creamy leeks over the fish or eat them seperately. All three methods seemed to work, but I was a bit intimidated by the seperate dish.

The chocolate mouse for desert was lovely. A soft creamy mouse coated in crunchy chocolate bits, paired with a vanilla ice cream balanced on a pasty crust. Dessert was delightful.

I would go back to the restaurant to try the chief's other creations.

MORE IRELAND PICTURES

More pictures? How could there be more you say? Well there are. In fact I have a total of 444, but I'll spare you. I promise.
Cool stone statue out side a tourist info point. It reminded me of the statue of Prospero outside the theater in central park. It also looked like his face was melting

Stained glass window from St. Patricks Cathedral.

Awesome celtic knotwork on a chest in St. Patricks cathedral.

This is another pretty building on the grounds of the Blarney castle.

This is the entrance to the New Grange passage tomb. Look at those really really old stone carvings.

This is a really really old Celtic Cross. The image in the center is 'Jesus being marked', not really sure what it means. Looks like they're poking him with sticks. The celtic knotting around the circle part is cool. And the knotting on the other sides, but the pictures didn't turn out too well. Legend has it that the Celtic Cross has a circle around it because when St. Patrick was meeting with the High King of Ireland (whose name escapes me, but might have been Murrough) the King asked Patrick (he wasn't a saint yet) to incorporate imagery that was familiar to the celts of Ireland. So he put a circle around the cross. And said 'Tada! I give you the Celtic Cross. The symbol of the Celtic Church'. And so the people of Ireland said 'ooooooh, wow! What else can you do with your monothesism?' And Patrick said, 'ummmmm, I'll get rid of your snakes.' The Irish were sold. They've been Christian ever since.

This is a sideways picture of a Church in Cork.

These are really really old stones with writing on them. It's an Ogam script, which is basically a bunch of lines cut onto the corners of the stones. It was only really used in Ireland (a wee bit in Scotland), but it was from the Romans.

This is more Blarney castle.

This is St. Kieran's College. Nothing special about it. I thought it was pretty. It's in Kilkenny City.

This is the Callan Priory and its well (foreground).

Blarney Castle. The wee bit of sky between the top layer is where the stone is. Notice the iron bars. A person has to lie down, and bend backwards to kiss it. Mind you a very nice old Irish man holds you and no, he doesn't hold you inappropriately at all.

The legend of Blarney is legended to have come about after Queen Elizabeth the First, said something to the effect of "Lord Blarney sure can talk your head off!". Lord Blarney ( Irish Lords were called after their land holdings, his name was something else) was supposedly a great talker, so much so that when the Queen's envoys were trying to get him to agree to things, he could talk in circles and never agree to their terms, but make them feel like they had accomplished something. In turn, the Queen never got what she wanted and Lord Blarney never gave up what we wanted to keep. Smart man.

How did the gift of gab get associated with a stone on the castle that's very difficult to access? Other than the official story that has something to do with a stone of destiny being split into pieces, etc, if you really want that story google search it. My theory is:

Blarney was associated with fast talking - due to Queen Elizabeth or otherwise. A stranger to Blarney castle asked someone at the castle, perhaps the Lord, perhaps a steward or the kitchen maid, how the Lord Blarney learned to talk such a good story. Since all the people of Blarney have this skill, the answerer of the question said "Oh, there's a stone we all kiss and it gives us the gift of being able to spin a good yarn". The stranger took this story with him (or her) when he (or she) left Blarney and that circled around the country with this stranger on their travels and slowly spread until lots of people believed it. Then much, much, much later someone different came back and asked a different kitchen maid about this stone and she - because of her gift of gab - said "Oh, that's a hard stone to kiss. It's up on the roof." Then later someone picked an actually stone. Now, the owners of Blarney caslte make lots of money from more gullible strangers every year. And that's the true story of Blarney.

Yes, I've kissed the stone, so the above could be complete blarney.

Blarney Castle from afar.

I also saw bog men. They're really really really old dead guys, who ended up in bogs at the end of their lives - or after death. Anyway, they're really cool. All collapsed and dried out. Creepy but cool. I have a tendency to decide how creepy something is by how intense my desire not to put it in my mouth - yes, I know this is an amazingly infantile way of judging things, but at least I'm aware of it and I don't judge more important things, like friends, in this manner. So I decided that not only do I NOT want to put the bog men in my mouth, I don't even want my mouth open while in their presence. Truly creepy, but historically fascinating. They were actually able to tell that one of the bog men has wearing a type of ancient hair gel imported form the Mediterranean. His hair was combed up on to the top of his head and then gelled in place, before he was killed and put in the bog. Researchers have bets on him having been scarificed. But why did he have fancy imported hair gel? I don't think we'll ever know, but it does point out that this bogman was rich when he was alive. Or that the people who scarificed him were rich. Either way.

Ireland

I was in Ireland. PICTURES:
Background: Limerick Castle.

This is on the grounds of Blarney castle. Yes, I kissed the stone.

This is Obama's Irish hometown.

This is at Tara, the Irish Hill of the Kings. The stone in the lower left, it the Stone of Destiny (Irish Edition). Its supposed to roar when the true King touches it. Sadly for me, I'm female, so I'm out of the running.

These are the doors to a lawyers office in Dublin. Shouldn't more doors be pink and purple (it looked more purple in real life).

These pictures are from the town Callan in Kilkenny. I took a lot of pictures of this town. Like, seriously, way too many. Here are a select few:

This is me in front of the Priory. It's falling down.