By the way, pictures from Killarney are here. There are only two of them. Killarney wasn’t all that inspiring, I guess.

So anyway, Quin Abbey started out, originally, as a castle for the MacNamara clan, until it was burned out during one of the innumerable invasions that England inflicted upon Ireland. Afterwards, it was turned into a Franciscan abbey — or, technically, a friary, since by that time the monastic lifestyle was no longer as popular — and was used for many years until King Henry VIII dissolved the monastic system in Ireland and England in, uh, 1341. It’s the largest, most complete abbey of its time and size still in Ireland, and it’s remarkable primarily because it’s mostly intact, to the point where you can even walk around in the upper level. As always, just about every inch of floor space on the ground floor was littered with grave stones; as one of the tour guides earlier on said, “You can’t step anywhere in Ireland without walking on some dead guy.” I quote him verbatim. The graveyard outside and the tombs inside featured some remarkable carved high crosses. Some of our pictures from Quin Abbey are here, but not all; there’s a bizarre and annoying little permissions issue going on with the pictures, so I can’t seem to get them to upload to our server. Blast. And I had such a great picture of a Celtic high cross, set beautifully against a window in the sacristry. I’ll post it when I get these pictures sorted out.
Off, then, to the Craggaunowen Project, which, as I’ve mentioned, wasn’t as impressive as the Irish National Heritage Park. The folks at the Heritage Park, I think, did a better job of recreating the stone age and iron age dwellings and making them look more authentic. Both Jennifer and I are pretty sure, for example, that the Irish of the Iron Age did not use large wooden pallets to stretch and dry their animal skins.

Pictures from the Craggaunowen Project are here.

We made it into Ennis last night, as I mentioned in my previous entry, and found that it’s host to a traditional music festival this week. It’s an annual thing, so we’re going to make sure that when we come here again, we’ll make it here at this time of year. There’s traditional music playing over the PA system in the town, which is kind of haunting in its own way, and random musicians in the streets. The highlight for us was the ceilidh (or is it spelled ceili? I’ve seen it spelled both ways here in town) which we went to last night; a full evening of music and dancing in the ballroom of a large hotel in downtown Ennis. The fact that the sun doesn’t fully set until nearly eleven o’clock at night has definitely had an impact on Irish social life; the ceilidh started at ten at night, when the sun was still up.

I’ve been to a few ceilidhs in the US in the past, but I was expecting that this one would be different; it was in Ireland, after all, and not some college town in California. However, aside from the ages of the people involved (I’m used to seeing a pretty young crowd at these events, and this event had people of all ages but was heavy on the older side), it was pretty much the same as any other ceilidh I’ve been to.

I can’t do a jig or a reel to save my life these days, and I only remember one dance from the Irish dance class I took ten years ago; the “Siege of Ennis”. They danced that one at the very beginning, but we sat it out because I didn’t remember it was called the “Siege of Ennis”, and I wanted to get a feel of how the other people were going to do. I was about to ask Jennifer to dance for the next set, but she was swept away from me by some Irishman in a red shirt, who led her through two more sets. I was volunteered for the next couple of sets, because they’re always short of men at these events (which seems kind of strange to me, because you’d think that more men would figure out that these events are a perfect venue for meeting women). I was paired up with a high school girl from Texas, and we both stumbled our way through the set (I can’t remember what the dance was called, but involved a lot of stars and switches). After two more I excused myself and went and had a Guinness.

Jennifer was swept up by another Irishman and pulled into a couple more dances. I danced with another high school girl from Texas (there was apparently a whole troop of them there that night), and then excused myself from any more dancing because my asthma was starting to flare up. Damn lungs. I went and sat down, had a pint of Harp (because there’s nothing better for your asthma than Irish beer). I stood and watched the dancing for a bit, and was even more annoyed by my asthma when the girl I’d danced with earlier came up and asked me to dance with her again. There’s very little that can be more flattering to a man my age than to be asked to dance by an attractive girl about half your age, especially when she knows (from having danced with me in a previous set) that I’m a crappy dancer. I cursed my lungs and explained that I couldn’t dance any more. And I’ve set myself a new fitness goal: to be able to accept such an offer in the future.

Jennifer says she doesn’t mind. And I hope not, since she was being swept away regularly by other guys.

It was an exciting and wearying night. We walked back to our B&B after a couple of hours, exhausted and happy to have experienced part of the real heart of Ireland.