Tynanwoods Day Five

October 18, 2006
Day Five: Spotted Dick is spotted; insatiable ketchup fiends

[Note: Xtina hasn't uploaded pix from Bunratty yet, so I uploaded a gorgeous shot she took of the Cliffs of Moher at sunset.]

We set out for Limerick and King John's Castle, but ended up making a detour to Bunratty instead, where there is a restored 14th century castle surrounded by a theme park. Bunratty is one of those places where tour buses disgorge their passengers so they can pay 48 Euro a head for an "authentic" medieval feast every night at 5:30. I had visions of a Disneyeque faux medieval experience with disgruntled minimum wage employees dressed in Renaissance Faire garb, but was pleasantly surprised.

Bunratty is a real castle with real period furnishings. A scary stone spiral staircase in each of its four towers leads up from the great rooms on the first and second floor and into the various bedroom chambers, kitchens, meeting halls, and the like on the third, fourth, and fifth floors.

In one of the third floor bedrooms we met a nice older gent with a feather duster who was filled with all sorts of fascinating information. For example, the incredibly narrow circular staircase that lead off the master bedroom and up to the castle keep was an escape route for the children of the castle's Lord. If the castle was under siege, the children could scamper up the staircase and then use rope ladders to climb down the walls and hide in the tall grass next to the River Shannon. The staircase was too narrow for anyone wearing armor to follow them. He offered to let our kids try it out, but they passed.

The furniture was not part of the castle (which was in ruins until fairly recently) but was donated by Lord and Lady Gort, local British nobility (after whose family name comes the nearby city of Gort, I presume). They apparently had scads of the stuff. It was all 300 to 700 years old -- poster beds and rotting dressers and huge French tapestries and such -- except for the stag's heads mounted on the walls in the great room, which were found in the bogs around the castle as it was being renovated and were 10,000 to 15,000 years old. It was surprisingly comfortable looking, given the stone walls; it seems even then the rich knew how to pamper themselves.

The castle was surrounded by thatched huts also furnished to late 17th/early 18th century period. In one of them we met an older women dressed in period garb cooking Spotted Dick over a peat fire. Turns out Spotted Dick is a raisen bread not dissimilar to classic Irish soda bread. She was quite nice and had a thick Clare accent -- which became thicker any time someone new entered the hut.

Next door was Bunratty Folk Park -- a recreation of a 17th century Irish town with actual 17th century Irish buildings. It featured a woolens store, a photo shop, and a fine pub called MacNamaras where, naturally, we stopped for a pint.

On our way home we passed briefly through Ennis and ate at a SuperMacs, the Irish equivalent of McDonalds, only they also serve fish and chips. (They are extremely stingy with the ketchup, these Irish; we had to go back and ask for more three times. I think we are now known there as 'the Americans who love ketchup.') We got back to Corofin around 9 pm and stopped at Boffey Quinn, the biggest pub in town and one that featured 'trad' music on Wednesdays. We'd yet been to listen to any music on the trip, so I was really looking forward to it.

We sat in the front room near the bar, huddled in a corner on a bench, not exactly sure what would happen next. After a few minutes a guy showed up with a drum and sat forlornly by himself for 20 minutes. Then a few more musicians showed up and filled in the spaces around him, right next to us. Then a few more musicians joined in, and a few more. There were guitars and banjos and flutes and accordians and drums and recorders and piccolos and even a woman who carried only a purse into the bar but produced from it a set of spoons, ready for action. A couple were in their 20s but most had gray hair if they had hair a'tal. By my last count there were 17 musicians, packed in all around us. If one more had joined the band we'd have been trapped in the corner for the duration.

The music itself was heavenly. Someone would start -- usually one of the flutes -- and a few more would join in, and pretty soon the whole crew was wailing on some song hundreds of years old, foreign and new to my ears but also achingly familiar. That would go for a while and gradually end, and someone else would start another song. It's hard for me to put this into words without sounding completely stupid, but I began to understand how important music is to the Irish, how indivisible it is from life itself. Between the music and the Guinness I could have stayed all night, but after an hour the kids were passing out and we needed to leave. So we did.