Ireland Journey

In celebration of Ireland, Blarney Castle and St. Patrick's Day, the Library of Congress has posted high resolution scans of over 100 photochroms of Ireland from the Detroit Publishing Company. These are all from the last quarter of the nineteenth century or the beginning of the twentieth century. They include images of Blarney Castle, the home of the fabled Blarney Stone:

And, along the coast in County Clare, not far from Ballyvaughan, the Cliffs of Moher: Read more

Every year around St. Patrick's Colcannonday in the U.S. the grocery stores start putting corned beef brisket on sale and on display, and restaurants and pubs add corned beef and cabbage to their menus as the Irish entree. Unfortunately, corned beef and cabbage, even when accompanied by potatoes, is more American (or Germanic) than Irish; we'd do better to celebrate Irish cuisine with salmon or colcannon, a dish of potatoes and cabbage (that's even better made with kale). Read more

The Irish name for the hill of Tara, Teamhair na Rí, or "Hill of the Kings" gave is the English version for the name of the hill, Tara. Tara looms large Hill of Taraeven now in the minds and hearts of Irish people all over the world. It's about 7.5 miles south of Navan Fort or Emain Macha. Archaeologically, the history of Tara as a major sacred site goes back to 4000 B.C.E. Tara was the site of battles, burials, and and a variety of social-sacral rituals. It is in a number of ways comparable to Stonehenge in terms of Tara's importance as a ritual site for Ireland. Although Tara itself is on the top of a hill, the highest point for miles, it is best to think of the entire area as a complex of ritual sites going back thousands of years. Read more

Ballyvaughan is a small Irish harbor and town in County Clare, on the south shore of Galway Bay. Ballyvaughan is surrounded by a great expanse of rocky landscape, or Burren, and is generally described as one of the most picturesque locations in Ireland. It's a typical Irish Market village, with a mixture of old and new. The views are stunning; it's pretty hard to find anything anywhere without a view of some sort. You can easily get around on foot or bicycle, which are readily available for hire by the day or week at several shops in the village. There are a variety of cottage stay bed and breakfasts, self-catering apartments, and modern hotels. There are several local pubs and, many many artisans selling hand made art. Read more

Emain Macha (said roughly like evan macka) features largely in Irish mythology, though it's far more likely you'll find it on maps or referred to by it's English name, Navan Fort. Technically, it isn't a fort. It is instead best described as a ritual complex, about 1.6 miles west of the city of Armagh, in Northern Ireland. Read more

Blarney castle is about about five miles northwest of the town of Cork, Ireland. Here's the Google map of the site. Most of the ruins that are left of the castle proper date shortly after 1446, but the castle itself was first built sometime before 1200. Today the grounds contain ruins of the mid-fifteenth century castle, and a few buildings. The building include Blarney House, a fairly typical nineteenth century mansion built in 1874 by the castle's new English owner, and now open to the public. The grounds encompass landscaping and a series of gardens from the eighteenth century. And, of course, the Blarney stone. Read more