CHRISTMAS IN KILLARNEY - PART THREE

At home in Pennsylvania, I know pretty well what the Christmas holidays will bring.  It will probably be cold, although statistically I believe our chances of a White Christmas are usually only 3-5%.  But the ground is rock-hard, the landscape sere, and when I go up the road to Wade's Christmas Tree Farm, tree saw in hand, frozen fingers and toes will expedite my cutting of just the right tree to put in my Victorian cottage.  It can't be more than five feet high because my ceilings aren't high at all.  In fact, my hand-dug basement is only about six feet deep and people have been known to burn their heads on light bulbs hanging from the ceiling down there!  My horses will be spending a lot of their time in their stalls, trying to get away from the cutting northwest wind.  Even the dogs won't want to stay outside for long.  Instead, they'll snarf their way through my kitchen, looking for Christmas chocolates they can drag down and eat so I'll have the pleasure of doing my own version of stomach-pumping:  one tablespoon of hydrogen peroxide, to be repeated in twenty minutes if there are no...results.

It is at moments like that when I begin to hear "Christmas in Killarney" running through my head and to get a longing for a mere Force 10 gale.  Just the kind of day that makes you long for a cup of Bewley's tea in the hotel lobby at the Killarney Towers.  When the rain lets up, with water pooling in the streets but people already starting to emerge from stores and pubs where they've taken shelter, I envision a slow trickle and then a brisk rush of shoppers darting into Dunne's and other department stores decked out for the holiday.  I would suppose the stores aren't on Irish time now, but remain open later during the Irish twelve days of Christmas.

I would also think Killarney on Ice has been booked and will be appearing nightly, since ice skating and winter walks are always popular but never more so than at Christmas.  It's still not too cold for open air markets offering every possible inducement from woolen sweaters to precious green Connemara marble to lovely Inis perfume from Fragrances of Ireland and maybe even the heather and moss soap of which I'm so fond.  And food, ah, yes.  Not just the hearty Irish fare which I seem absolutely, perhaps genetically predisposed to like--chowing down happily on the classic Irish breakfast:  Irish bacon which puts our to shame, fat sausages, eggs, fried tomatoes, black and white pudding and potatoes, toast and tea.  But there are also lovely little fish and chips shops featuring the sweet white plaice I never had till I went to Ireland.  And shops with some of the hottest chicken curry this side of India.  And pub grub--washed down with Guinness Stout.  Lots of it, since I only seem to get mellow when I drink in Ireland.

As much as I ate there, though, I never gained any weight and it was actually difficult to find extra large sweaters to take back to some of my friends in the States.  Since I'm no Skinny Minny myself, it was pure, unadulterated bliss to be able to put down three real meals a day without counting every calorie.  People walk in Ireland...a lot.  I wouldn't mind walking past Santa's Lodge where children are perched on Santa's knee, asking for gifts, just as they are in the States and so many other places.  I could take in the concerts and shows at night.  During the day, once the skies clear, I suspect I'd rather put on one of my Aran sweaters against the damp chill and hike on down to Killarney National Park or to Muckross House and Abbey to see the buildings artfully decorated for the holiday.

And then back for tea--or maybe something stronger at The Laurels Pub.

Someday...someday, I swear...this is going to happen.

CHRISTMAS IN KILLARNEY - PART TWO

The first indication of humans in the area which now comprises Killarney dates from about 2,000 B.C., when Bronze Age "Beaker Folk" mined tin as so many others would do.  They were supplanted by Picts from the north a little later; legend has it they were descended from Queen Mebh's son Cair and that the name of the Ring of Kerry is derived from his name. In 400 B.C. the Picts were supplanted by the Fir Bolg, the "Bag Men" who shipped bags of Irish earth to Greece to keep away snakes!  Of course Ireland doesn't have snakes because it's an island, so I think this constituted the first known case of blarney.  Tales of the ancient heroes and figures such as Deirdre of the Sorrows, who figures in one of my books, come from this time.

But the beautiful area with its abundant lakes and natural resources would always attract settlers, and next  around 100 B.C. came the Gaels, or Milesians.  It took them 500 years to subdue the fierce Fir Bolg, but then in 400 A.D. St. Alban established a cell at Aghadoe and people were rather easily converted to Christianity.  Their festivals were incorporated into the Church calendar and a bloodless coup of sorts resulted.

The native O'Donoghue/MacCarthy family defeated the Gaels and in turn was attacked from 1,200 A.D. onwards by Anglo-Normans who coveted their lands.  In 1261, the O'Donoghue/MacCarthys defeated them, one of the few people to do so.  But then in 1583 came powerful English troops and Ireland was subdued for the first time in its history.  The territory in and around Killarney was given to Sir Vincent Browne, appointed Earl of Kenmare.  His influence was so far-reaching that even when English Protestant settlers arrived and began hanging Catholics, the Brownes remained Catholic and never totally lost power.

It was Viscount Browne, descendant of Sir Vincent, who first recognized Killarney's potential as a tourist attraction.  Eventually he transferred lands to the Herbert family, who became copper barons.  Both families built grand estate houses at Muckross and Knockreer.  Even today, Muckross House is arguably the main tourist attraction in Killarney--a lovely mansion now open to the public.

Both families were also among the few proactive landlords who supported their workers through the Famine of 1845, thus gaining the respect of the Irish who still speak well of them as representatives of what the English upper class should have been and so often was not.  Elsewhere in Ireland, when the potato crop failed, vitally needed foodstuffs were exported while the Irish died of starvation along roads and in poorhouses.  It was this event which spurred the first great influx of Irish immigrants to America. 

By 1861 things were settled enough for a group of prominent English ladies to visit with Queen Victoria.  They made famous the site of Ladies' View, named for them, where they took in one of the more panoramic vistas in Ireland.

In 1899 the lands of the Herbert family, concentrated around Muckross, were sold to a member of the Guinness family.  He, in turn, sold them in 1910 to William Bourn, an American who gave them to his daughter who married an Irishman but died tragically in 1929.  Her husband, not wishing to maintain his ties with her property, donated them to the government, thus creating the first Irish National Park--Killarney National Park--comprising 26,000 acres.  I have been there many times, riding its grounds on Thoroughbred/Draft Horse crosses, exploring Norman ruins and and feeding the swans.

Join me again later this week for a taste of Christmas in Killarney.

CHRISTMAS IN KILLARNEY - PART ONE

First, let me state clearly that I have never spent Christmas in Killarney.  Wished to?  Yes.  Planned to?  Ditto.  Done it?  No.  The call of the holidays always pulled me home to the States even during the three years when I spent as much time as possible in Ireland.  There's just something about family.  But I longed to see Killarney as Christmas approached, with Dunne's Department Store decked out in lights, horses hitched to jaunting carts, covered with blankets of red and green, and well-insulated swans still sailing peacefully on the increasingly frigid waters of Muckross Lake.

 
At least, that's how I pictured it.  Never saw it, though.  The closest I came was spending Halloween there.  That was a still-warmish time of muted fall colors when tinker children begged money from me and earned a good scolding for "bothering the Americans."  Funny, at the airport in Newark several travelers to Ireland  thought I was Irish (it's the face, you know), but as soon as I got to Ireland I was pegged as indisputably American.  Maybe it's because Irish women of a certain age don't wear jeans, but American women apparently don them until shortly before they shuffle off their mortal coil.  I rather expect to be buried in mine unless I can talk someone into tossing my ashes from the Cliffs of Moher, thus retracing my grandmother's journey to America.

Next week:  a history of Killarney.