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.