At the Edge of Ireland Read online

  And then, as summer moved on, there came the lighting of great bonfires on St. John’s Eve to ward off disease and entice blessings, and the furious flurries of semi-erotic singing and dancing for the Lughnasa pagan harvest festival. But then things became a little more onerous with the strange antics of Halloween and All Souls’ Day, the Celtic festival of Samhain when, in Penny’s words, “only a thin veil separates the physical world from the realm of the spirits.”

  She went on to tell us that, because of that terrible massacre on Dursey in 1602, residents would be “very wary of greeting any stranger encountered on the road at night because the ghosts of those tragic victims still wandered about, lost and hopeless, under cover of darkness.”

  The local fishermen also had their own rigorous codes of superstitious conduct. Conversations on their boats out at sea were bound by strict taboos forbidding any discussion of pigs, foxes, or priests, which, they claimed, could jeopardize a decent catch. And if a fisherman should encounter a red-haired girl on his way down to his boat, he would be well advised to return home promptly and abandon fishing for that day.

  “Oh,” added Penny, “and if he’d forgotten to put some coal in his trouser pocket before he left home, he’d also better go back and get some. And then he’d need to drag his wife or one of his kids down to the jetty to throw an old shoe after the boat—supposedly a very auspicious good luck gesture, although it must have cost them a small fortune in shoes. But if all these precautionary customs failed and there was a death at sea—a drowning—then there were more strict rules to be followed. For example, a close family member had to wear the victim’s clothes at Mass for the three Sundays following the funeral service—and any woman pregnant with child could only attend the service, as she was barred from the actual burial. However, if she heard a bell-like ringing in her ear, she should pray for the deceased immediately. Oh—and if she wasn’t married, she should watch out for houses where sparks from the peat fire flew out of the chimney, because money would be coming in for the fortunate occupants. And if one of them happened to be an eligible bachelor who picks up a hairpin in the road and then immediately meets a woman, she should be ready for a serious proposal of marriage. Of course, if there’s a ginger cat crossing her path ’round about the same time, she should refuse the offer, as she would be constantly plagued by bad luck for the rest of her life.”

  “So complex!” Anne laughed. “Surrounded by so many fears and fantasies…”

  “Oh, that’s just the start,” said Penny. “In the old days, little old Dursey was a hotbed of hauntings, fairy ships, fairies themselves, ghosts, huge fantasy galleons, strange lights, sea apparitions, hidden treasures, disembodied voices, and many other manifestations of overactive imaginations.”

  “So, you’re a believer in all these things?” I asked. “Have you experienced any apparitions yourself yet or found any hidden treasure?”

  “Well—we certainly found treasure. This house for starters! But no, I can’t really claim firsthand experiences, although when you talk to some of the old folk around here, they can make you almost believe…almost anything! But how about you, David—you’ve walked around the island. What were your feelings?”

  “Well,” I said, “I’ve a hunch that, if I’d read your book and talked to you earlier, I’d have come away with a rather different take on Dursey. I mean—I certainly sensed a loneliness there…I think I only saw one other person…Who knows, maybe even that was an apparition…It was definitely an odd figure by the southern cliffs there, near where they threw the bodies over in tied-up bundles during that ghastly massacre. He or she was all hunched over and very dark in silhouette—even though the sun was way over by the Skelligs, behind me…I waved and the person turned but seemed to completely ignore me. So I carried on a short way toward the old village of Ballynacallagh and then I turned around and looked back…but he or she or it was gone. Whatever it was. And for the rest of the walk it was just me and the birds—hundreds of ’em, and…utter peace.”

  “Ah, yes, the dulcet spirit of Dursey,” said Penny. “And for a tiny place, it has so much history—Viking invasions, the Normans, pirates, famines and evictions, emigrations, shipwrecks, collapsing lighthouses and storms like you can’t imagine, and of course, all those—what did Anne call them—superstitious fears and fantasies. Well, it’s amazing it can still offer the kind of peace and calm that can stay inside you and with you for days…weeks.”

  “Yes, it can…it did. It still does!” I said.

  Penny giggled again. “Ah, c’mon. You’ve got a bad case of the Dursey Dreamtime!”

  “Is it very infectious?”

  “Oh—totally!” Penny laughed.

  “You’re right,” said Anne. “I haven’t even been there and I’m utterly enticed…I’m just not sure I want to go across in that cable car contraption.”

  “Never a single accident,” insisted Penny.

  “Oh, good,” said Anne.

  “Yet,” said Penny.

  A SECOND LITTLE SIX-MILE loop appendage of the Beara Way is on Bere Island itself, an appealing fifteen-minute ferry ride from Castletownbere. Renowned for its fine harbor, the island was the site of a major British naval base until 1938.

  With a small population of around two hundred, a couple of pubs, and some basic accommodations, the place seems far removed from the quayside hullabaloo of Castletownbere, packed with huge trawlers and all its now-familiar bars and restaurants increasingly redolent with Polish and East European accents.

  The island doesn’t look very different from the mainland with its neatly walled fields, scattered farms, and beautiful patchwork quilt of greens and ochres featured in so many photographs of this part of Ireland. But it certainly reveals its own strong character in the remnants of fortifications, gun batteries, a Martello tower, and fine views of Dunboy Castle, where the O’Sullivan clan was massacred by the English general Carew after a siege of eleven days in 1602.

  There are other island delights that make a hike here worthwhile—the late summer explosions of golden gorse flowers, the scarlet profusion of fuchsia hedgerows, a Bronze (2000–500 BC) Age standing stone on a high point marking the exact center of the island, and the wonderful, wind-buffeted wildness of the moor itself with panoramic vistas in all directions.

  MEMORIES OF THESE TWO walks are true keepers: mists writhing like semitransparent serpents around the wrinkled strata of the hills; the swirl and scurry of hungry seagulls hoping for tail-end scraps from my sandwich lunches; burpy recollections of large breakfasts to bank up the energy supplies prior to my explorations. Anne’s fine repasts would honor royal palates—thick pinhead porridge with cream and treacle, gorgeous slices of pan-roasted gammon ham liberally scorched with caramelized brown sugar, a couple of oh-so-golden eggs fresh from the farm down the road and tasting like eggs did pre–World War II (or so I’m told!), and finally, whiskey-flavored orange marmalade thick with pungent zest slathered on hot buttered soda-bread toast. And of course—tea. Good old stand-a-spoon-in-it Yorkshire tea.

  Such abundances make you feel ready—indeed, obligated—to sally forth like a squire inspecting his estates. And in doing so you forget your sedentary tendencies and launch into that delicious stupor of “earned exhaustion” and frisson flashes that occur in those high barren places where the wind whips away all the crud of civilized torpor and reveals your true “creature of nature” beneath. This is the one that hunted with stone ax and rough-hewn spear, the one that sensed the power of the Creator in every daily moment and act and understood the sheer glorious surge of nature in all her moods and terrible cruelties. That’s the fellow you don’t get to meet too often in the comfortable confines of domesticity. That’s a transcendency that transcends all mundanity and moroseness and lingers in the spirit for days—even weeks. Until the next time and the next revelation on these high wild places.

  AND SO IT WAS that I was finally ready to begin my own odyssey of self-rediscovery on the Beara Way itself. And where better to
put myself in an appropriate mood than by making my start at the four white stones at Allihies, otherwise known to the cognoscenti of Irish folklore as the Children of Lir.

  An alternative starting point, and a place to which Anne and I return regularly like dogs exploring the scents on their favorite tree, could have been the remarkable remnant of a neolithic stone circle on the back road just to the west of Castletownbere. Among the tumultuous tumble here on Beara of standing stones, circles, cairns, souterrains, megalithic tombs, dolmen, and ring forts, this strong and ancient entity of Derreenataggart is one of our favorite and most dramatic places on the peninsula. We came here with good old Carey Conrad, our early mentor and guide, during our initial explorations, and it has remained one of our key touchstones of ancient authenticity here.

  However, I chose the Children of Lir as my starting point. Anne drove me down on a windy morning from our Allihies cottage, patted my rucksack to ensure I had my sandwiches and water, and gave me an unusually clinging hug, as if she sensed some uncertainty about the likelihood of an imminent return.

  We stood together, looking at the four famous stones. As stones go, these hardly seemed icons of mega-significance. In fact, they were barely more than large rounded beach rocks a couple of feet or so across and set closely together in rough-cut grass just above our beautiful Ballydonegan Beach.

  “They hardly seem to reflect the importance of that great Lir legend,” said Anne. “I mean, isn’t it celebrated all over Ireland as one of the keystones of all their vast Celtic culture? Four little white stones doesn’t really seem to do it…”

  And yet it was rather moving in its own modest and sad way. The tale has many versions, with subtle variations and nuances that only true folklorists could relish. We prefer the short, relatively untangled one that goes something like this:

  The wise and revered ocean god-king Lir of Sidh Fionnachaidh, intent on bringing peace to the tribal feudings of ancient history, married Eve (Aobh), daughter of King Bodhbh Dearg the Red, a powerful member of Tuatha Dé Danann. They were the people descended from the mother-goddess Anu, who, according to Irish legend, arrived here from Greece around 350 BC. Much later on, following a series of lost battles with the Celtic Milesians from Galicia in northwestern Spain, these people became the “fairy people”—sole possessors of the underworld.

  But prior to all that, Lir was blissfully married to Eve, who conceived two sets of twins. Unfortunately Eve died in the second childbirth, so to maintain the peace, Lir married her sister Eva (Aoife). However, Eva was not so nice a character as Eve and became extremely jealous of Lir’s love for his four children. So one night she secretly carried them off to Lough Darravagh and transformed them into swans.

  Unfortunately, while immediately recognizing her impetuous sin, she regrettably lost the spell to release them (or so she claimed). But it was too late anyway, because King Bodhbh Dearg discovered her terrible deed and turned her into a demon condemned to float alone in the air forever. So according to the legend, the four children of Lir remained swans for nine hundred years until the coming of Christianity in the fifth century. After the first three hundred years or so, they moved from Lough Darravagh, and many other lakes across Ireland are claimed as their second home. But eventually they settled on the Atlantic Ocean for the last three hundred years. Then finally, attracted by church bells rung by a monk, St. Mochaomhog, at the Christian church in our little community here of Allihies, they finally came ashore. Immediately the spell was broken and they regained their human form, but alas, in doing so, they also became ancient, shriveled-up nine-hundred-year-old beings and died almost instantaneously—but not before the saint had rushed down to the shore from the church and baptized them.

  And thus it was that they came to be buried beneath these four white stones, which are still revered by the locals and whence I began my Beara Way odyssey.

  AND SO FINALLY I was alone and striding eastward, thinking what a glorious day’s adventure on the high fells lay ahead. I was looking forward to disappearing into the deep solitude of the moors—that shimmering, humming stillness that I sensed on shorter walks around Allihies and Ballydonegan beach. Then, next thing I knew, I was stopping and wondering where the hell the fells had gone. I’m sure they’d been there when I set off a short while ago. In fact, I know they were. But now they weren’t. A cloud out of nowhere had snuck in when I was studying the map or daydreaming about Anne’s fabulous breakfast or wondering where to camp the night after a long hike. Except I wondered if my hike might be interrupted. There was a strong suggestion of imminent rain not yet fallen.

  And then, of course, the rains fell. Also out of nowhere. In fact, I could still see sunlight like jagged golden rips in the ever-accumulating black cloud mass. And of course it was your typical southwestern Ireland deluge—unforecast, unforgiving, and unforgettable. I don’t believe—except maybe in the height of the Indian monsoon season—that I’ve ever known a rain that can so quickly turn a mood of bucolic bonhomie into a pure bloody mayhem of mud-slimed, buckled knees, clobber-soaked, heart-pounding, ankle-cracking chaos. And of course I’d left all possibilities of shelter behind me. Around me was nothing now but moor dotted with flesh-ripping huddles of ogreous, spike-laden gorse. Not to mention an unusually odiferous collection of cow pies rapidly dissolving into the mud of the path, which in turn was rapidly dissolving into the adjoining tangles of tussocks and marsh grass, and—of course—also disappearing into my now-sodden boots.

  Beara Way Scene

  There was no choice but to slosh and plodge on, hoping that somewhere in the murk ahead I’d find respite from the helter-skelter furor. Childishly optimistic, of course, but that’s the way you feel at the beginning of a hike. And my mind, searching for softer consolations, conjured up an image of an early morning a few days back as I’d sat by the sliding glass door of our cottage overlooking Ballydonegan Beach and watched a robin pecking crumbs from around our wooden picnic table. Such a tranquil scene—the little creature proudly thrusting its ochre-colored breast outward as it surveyed the scene to locate its next morsel and occasionally cocking its head in my direction as if to say: “C’mon, mate, time for a bit more bread, if y’ please—this crumb-peckin’ is f’ the feekin’ birds. Other birds, that is—not this one.” And I’m sitting, smiling, and nodding and doing nothing because I know as soon as I get up to fetch more crusts and scraps, he’ll lose faith in my benign tranquility and fly off. And what was so enticing was—

  “Ah! Halloo. A nize day, I zink! Ha-ha!”

  I must have been so very deeply reveried, almost fetally curled, in that captivating bubble of memory that I had completely failed to notice two figures looming out of the teeming murk. They were obviously fellow hikers but serious ones with far larger rucksacks than mine.

  “Ah…oh…sorry. Didn’t see y’ there…”

  The taller one with a dark dripping beard smiled patronizingly: “Ziss iss not zerprizink, I zink. Ze rain, she iss very wetz.”

  The other man, smaller and with a rather more feminine face despite a thick brown mustache, nodded seriously. “Ya. I zink zo too,” he said.

  I couldn’t help an hospitable chuckle. The rain was so bloody obviously wet that to even mention it seemed ridiculous as we all stood together, drenched from tip to toe and with our boots squishing and our noses and other appendages dripping like chronically leaky faucets.

  Making idle and convivial conversation in such conditions seemed a bit odd, but there again, we had nowhere to go for shelter and were so soaked already as to be beyond restoration anyway. So we removed our rucksacks, sat on them by the side of the path—which actually was now a thick mud stream—and chatted together like old buddies. I passed around a bar of chocolate. They—far more sensibly—passed around an unlabeled liter bottle of what I thought (hoped?) might be Irish poteen moonshine, but they insisted it was German schnapps—“from ver ve are comings…Stuttgart…You know Stuttgart?”

  I apologized profusely for a very significant
lack of familiarity with Germany while insisting that Anne and I intended to make amends in the spring with a planned visit to Eastern Europe via Berlin.

  “Ah yez—Berlin. Very fine place. Ve like ver much. Goods foods. Goods beers. And ver goods ladies…”

  “Ah,” I said, “in that case, maybe I should come alone.”

  They both stared at me curiously. Humor, I then remembered from prior conversations with fellow German travelers, is not always such an easy form of comradely communication.

  “You know—what you said about the good ladies…”

  Still no recognizable response.

  Last try. “What I mean is—maybe I should not come with my wife if the Berlin ladies are—”

  At last. “Ah! Aye…yez, yez—yez. I zee vat you zay. Ya! Ver funny. Ver good idea! Ha-ha!”

  “Ya. I zink zo too,” added the one with the mustache.

  God, this is going to be hard work, my inner voice whispered. Yes, I whispered back, but the schnapps is just too good to up and leave. So somehow we chatted on inanely and the schnapps eased the edges of our conversational confusions. And when we finally parted, I encouragingly confirmed that they were almost at the end of the Beara Way and they, not so encouragingly, told me that I was indeed just at the beginning and it would very quickly get worse as I headed up into the high hills to the east.

  I tried to think of some lighthearted aphorism to end our chat, but for some inane reason, all I could come up with was: “Well—may I just say that as you slide down the banister of life, I hope the splinters never point the wrong way!”

  Not surprisingly I received only blank, uncomprehending stares until the smaller one with the thick mustache reiterated his “Ah, ya, I zink zo too.”

  I’d like to boast that I then pulled on my rucksack, straightened my back, set my mental and physical sights at the high ground, and marched onward and upward like a true “bog-trotter,” determined to conquer all the climatic chaos, all those little incisors of insecurity, and other demons of the Beara Way.