I Am Not Actually the Rightful High King of Ireland

August 02, 2014

Today was the first day in Ireland! Ireland is one of the ports I was so excited about and I’m not really sure why. Perhaps is it because I was ready for the typical Ireland weather—chilly and rainy. I love getting a little tan, but since I tend to burn more often than I tan, cold weather is a better friend to me. Today I was let of the ship early because I had a field lab (my last one, yay!) for my Foundational Religions of Europe class and we had to meet at 7:15am so we could leave at 7:30 because it was a bit of a drive to the Hill of Tara. I was very excited for this day because we had a real life Bard come with us to tell us a story that was probably one of the weirdest and greatest things I’d ever heard in my life. He dresses like a character from a Live Action Role Playing fantasy game. He also looks a bit like a hippie. There is no way I could describe him to make the way he dresses seem any less awesome than it was. We went to the Hill of Tara and Andrew was our guide so he walked us around the beautiful, green grassy landscape and sat us down next to what he says is a fairy tree. Andrew is a bit eccentric, but he believes in things like fairies but is perfectly accepting of whatever anyone else believes in. He told us this completely amazing, strange, Neopagan story about the Fianna, an ancient people of Ireland (which I won’t post but will reconsider if it’s something you all want). He also told us to walk between two stones as he said that the rightful High King of Ireland would walk through these two stones on the way to the Stone of Destiny, which is on the Hill of Tara. The Stone of Destiny looks like an average, gray stone about 4 feet high but is it said to have been the coronation stone for the ancient High Kings of Ireland. The legend says that when the rightful King places his hands on the stone, the stone will sing. Unfortunately, I placed my hands on the stone, but it did not sing for me. This may be because I do not have a drop of Irish blood in me. I’ll have to get over the fact that I am not the rightful ruler of Ireland. The Mound of the Hostages is also on the Hill of Tara and, with anything I post you don’t recognize or know about, please look it up because I can only post so many pictures but so much of what I see I could never begin to do it justice in my explanation.

We went to Knowth and Newgrange next. Knowth and Newgrange are passage tombs built by the pre-Celts around 3200 BC. The construction used to build these mounds, without modern technology like cranes mind you, is baffling. They didn’t use mortar to keep their stones in place. They used a very specific stone stacking technique assisted by gravity on the inside. Layers of rubble, clay, and dirt are used to make the high, rounded mound that is seen from the outside. I can’t even build a house of cards properly and they build well over a hundred mounds in Scotland and Ireland without the use of tractors and tools I’d see in my garage. Newgrange is special because there is a roof box over the door that, on the winter solstice, will direct the light that shines through all the way down the passage to hit the stone at the end and illuminate the structure. Obviously I wasn’t there on the winter solstice, but the tour guide reenacts it for tour groups so that we can be in awe of these smarter-than-we-originally-thought ancient peoples.

Of course, it rained on and off the whole day and I’d forgotten to bring my rain jacket and instead brought my sweatshirt without a hood. But, walking around the rolling green hills of Ireland where kings and ancient people walked was too incredible to let the rain get me down. Sorry this post is so long, but field labs make for long days and I just got so excited I had to share. J