‘The Irish landscape whispers tales of the past’: a journey beyond Blarney in remote Donegal | Ireland Holidays
eEarlier this year, a trailer for a film titled Dear Erin It debuted in cinemas showing a “buddy” with bloodied knuckles and a flat cap writing a letter on a table strewn with empty porterhouses and whiskey glasses to Irene, his long-lost American flame. Much online uproar and frustration ensued over yet another Hollywood misrepresentation of contemporary Ireland. The trailer is eventually revealed to be an elaborate hoax epicand the Irish Emigration Museum in Dublin, to clear up tired stereotypes and “to find out who the Irish really are”.
Ireland and the Irish are many things. The country’s economic and social structures have changed rapidly in recent decades, but this does not necessarily mean that the culture has changed beyond recognition. What has changed is the growing attraction of connecting with Ireland’s landscape. Writers like the late Tim Robinson, Manchan Magan And the famous podcast blindboyboatclub It was pivotal in exploring the relationship between the natural world and the country’s past. The Irish language has seen a renaissance in the past few years for the same reason. In his best-selling book of 2020 Thirty-two words for the field“The Irish language has a rich store of words that provide a more emotional and nature-connected way of seeing the world,” Magan writes. It allows you to live more deeply in your environment.”
To test Magan’s hypothesis, I traveled with my family to the Fanad Peninsula Gaeltacht (Irish-speaking) in County Donegal this summer. The bilingual road sign that welcomed us to Fanad/Vanid It immediately provided geographical context, as fána was the Irish word for sloping land. Mount Knokala (Knock Kolbha – Ridge Hill) looms to the east, calling to mind images of ice sheets that carved the ridges along the Twin Peaks about 14,000 years ago.
The Ice Age also had an impact on the Fanad coast. The rocks that still line the foreshore of its pristine beaches were left behind by retreating glaciers and have since been bombarded by the North Atlantic Ocean to form sand. We looked for one of those white beaches in Balhernan Bay (Pa bheli User interface Thearenen – Tianan Town). My phone didn’t offer any details about Tiarnan’s obscure biography, but I wanted to know more about why an entire bay was named after him — and Robinson was right: “Place names tell stories.” We were alone on the beach, accompanied by the only swallows riding the air currents above the crashing waves. My 16 year old son and I have spent the last year attending a “pop-up”. “Galtachts” In the pubs of Dublin preparing for his stint at an Irish college, a rite of passage for Irish teenagers, the Irish word for swallow eluded him, however. that it com.fáinleogMaybe from a fan Meaning to wander or leave, which perfectly captures the tendency of these summer visitors to travel to Africa in the winter.
The process of converting Irish place names into English began in the early 19th century, following the Act of Union of 1800, with the renaming of towns as part of the Ordnance Survey of Ireland, which began in 1824. This cultural erasure was quickly followed by the Great Famine, from 1845 to 1852, which decimated the Irish-speaking population. In 1980, decades before there had been a recent resurgence of interest in Irish linguistic past, Donegal playwright Brian Friel unearthed this pivotal era in his 1833 collection Translations. Hugh, the erudite schoolmaster in the play, who refers to Irish as “a rich composition of tomorrow,” might have smiled warmly at the idea of musicians like CMAT, Fontaines DC and Kneecap releasing songs in the language two centuries later Approx.
Settling into our stay in A Cottage within the grounds of Manara FanadThe view from the living room looked west to the towering cliffs of Torrey Island (Torig – a place of steep, rocky heights), another remote corner where the mother tongue maintains its dominance, and is famous for its presence king Until 2018. Climbing the dizzying steps to the lantern room gave us a better view, with Malin Head (Sion Mahalana – High Head, the northernmost tip of Ireland, clearly visible across Lough Swilly (Lake Swilley – Lake of eyes or shadows. The vast expanse of sea to the north created a sense of the earth’s curvature, and Scotland and Iceland seemed almost within reach, somewhere in the distance.
The next morning, while… Blasphemy Beneath the cliffs and nearby holes with local guide Hugh Hunter, oystercatchers dove overhead, screaming angrily as we paddled past their nesting grounds. These black-and-white seabirds with an orange, chisel-like bill migrate from neighboring Nordic countries each fall. My son is none the wiser about the Irish Oystercatcher: Roelich and Gullah Pridemeaning Servant of Saint Brigid. The story goes that the Shepherdess of Ireland was hidden from an angry mob by a flock of oystercatchers who covered her with seaweed.
That afternoon, we joined the crowd at Lighthouse Pub To watch the All-Ireland football final between Donegal and Kerry. There was loud cheering in a mixture of Irish and English every time the home team scored. At break, we joined a group of local teenagers as they discussed their impending university courses in Dublin. I wondered how their lives would change and who, like the swallows and oystercatchers, might return to the remote peninsula.
Later in the week, as we stopped to get directions to Port Na Ling Beach (the ship port), a local man spoke to us, explaining that he had never spoken a word of English until he went to high school. He pointed to the house where he grew up with 11 of his siblings, amid a cluster of whitewashed cottages on the hillside on the other side of Mulroy Bay (That Mhawel Roy – It means the bare hill. Ireland’s pre-famine population, mostly rural, peaked at around 8.2 million, and a sense of how the country’s built environment looked at that time is still somewhat palpable in many Donegal coastal communities. Gwedor (Gauth Dobhair – Estuary), an hour to the west, is described as one of the most densely populated rural areas in Europe. In the wake of the famine, people in Donegal largely survived by traveling to Scotland to work as potato pickers, and this seasonal work allowed the county’s population to remain relatively fresh, with locals returning home in the winter months rather than permanently migrating.
We ended our time at Fanad with a follow The way of the cross Knockalla arrives at an outdoor altar with three crosses looking across the peninsula. “The Irish landscape itself acts as a storyteller, whispering tales of the past,” Blindboyboatclub explains. The path we have just ascended has been a place of spiritual importance for thousands of years, long before Christianity co-opted it. Numerous standing stones and ancient sites scattered across the fields hint at a secret history. We were the only ones climbing the mountain that morning, and what a privilege it was to have this sacred site to ourselves.
Our time at Fanad was a gateway to seeing the landscape anew. Magan was right: the Irish language is an extraordinary conduit to the past and provides us with a better understanding of the present.
Two nights stays in So he called beacon from 350 euros. Kayak trips with Eco Atlantic Adventures from 35 euros per person. More information: tourismireland.com