Never Will Play the Wild Rover (For Now)

Portrush in Northern Ireland is the weirdest place we visited, hands down. Along the beachy waterfront is an amusement park, lightbulbs of Ferris wheels and roller coasters illuminating the August night. An arcade with pinball and slot machines makes a din on one of the main avenues, and when we went in to try to use an ATM to get pounds sterling, we were told that if that one didn't work, we might have luck at the machine down the road, not in the next games building, but the one after that.

Seriously, this was pretty much an inconspicuous Las Vegas along the north coast of Ireland.

In the morning, we left the funhouse behind, left Aaranmore Lodge and headed along the coast for the short drive to Northern Ireland's only UNESCO Heritage Site. We passed the quiet town of Bushmills, famous for its whisky distillery, a rugged landscape that was used in a number of scenes from HBO's Game of Thrones (including Dragonstone and Iron Islands), as well as the ruins of Dunluce Castle on the edge of the cliff-face, but the real destination was the Giant's Causeway.

With its rows and rows of naturally occurring pillars of stone sticking out into the ocean, the Causeway is a strange phenominom. The story goes that an Irish giant, Finn MacCool, was challenging a Scottish giant, Benandonner, to a fight. The only way to allow the two to meet was to construct a causeway from the north of Ireland to southern Scotland. This was what he did, but when Finn got there, he had a stark realization: Benandonner was totally bigger and stronger than he was. So he ran back to Ireland, but the bad news was Benandonner followed in hot pursuit.

Inside the Visitor's Centre, in addition to some really nice, family-friendly

displays, there's a looping 3D video of the legend

When Finn got back, his wife had a plan, and dressed him up as a baby. Benandonner pounded on the door and barged in, but when he saw Finn dressed as a baby, rather than think it weird than a baby would have a beard, he thought that if this was the baby, what must the father look like? So this time he ran away, but being massive he completed wrecked the Giant's Causeway.

I mean, the real story probably has to do with volcanoes, but looking out at the bizarre rows and rows of hexagonal stones abruptly plunging into the ocean, it's not that hard to believe after all.

The Giant's Causeway that is accessible to the public is essentially three inlets, with a walking trail along the edge. It took a couple of hours to wander through, listening to an audio guide about the geological history merged with the folklore of the place. Guides have been taking people along this route for the past few hundred years, and on a sunny morning in August, it wasn't hard to see why. You could spend days here, baffled at the symmetry of nature and the perfect beauty of random nature.

Unfortunately, we had ran out of days, and could only walk in the footsteps of the ancient past and the giants until lunchtime.

The highways in Northern Ireland are much closer to what we're used to then, say, the Hook Peninsula or along the Sky Road. As in, if the signs say 60 miles an hour, you don't feel like going half of that will totally kill you. We left the coast and drove along to Belfast, getting in the capital city  in the early afternoon via the M2, where three or four lanes of highway traffic were guided by big blue signs mounted above the road. Thankfully we stayed out of the city centre and the whir of traffic, exiting at the Titanic Quarter as soon as we crossed over the River Lagan.

Ask someone from Belfast what they think of the R.M.S. Titanic, and it's something they seem pretty proud about. The ship was, after all, fine when it left here. Back in 1912, the Titanic was a marvel of luxury and engineering—I'm not breaking any new ground here by writing that. But what Leo and the  rest of the spectacle associated with the doomed ocean liner never really focus on are what happened before the Titanic left Southampton bound for New York City.

In particular, the shipyard in Belfast where she was launched in 1911 and dry docked to completion are never really part of the story I've heard, but it was, naturally, a huge and amazing undertaking in this city over a hundred years ago.

Harland and Wolff, the shipbuilders, had never undertaken anything of this magnitude—no one on earth had, and the planning and accommodation started in the early 1900s just to accommodate the ship. After the Titanic was constructed at the Arrol Gantry, a seriously huge piece of scaffolding, it took 22 tonnes of soap and tallow to get the beast off the land and into the river on May 31, 1911, with 100,000 people coming out to watch. This was Rolling Stones huge, and on the area outside the massive Titanic museum in Belfast where the actual slipway once stood, a lawn remains where the massive giant was constructed. Everything here is symbolic—the grass represented people who died from each class (the first chunk is the crew), while the paving stones are the survivors. Pretty chilling, even on a warm day, to walk back over this spot.

Even the design room remains intact, a hallowed spot where designers and engineers huddled over massive drawings, sketching out what was to be the Titanic.

We went first to the dry docks and pump house. Once the Titanic was launched, she was empty. It took close to a year to fit out the inside and add the engines and whatnot. The final fittings took place, maybe a bit surprisingly, on dry land. Now, when you go to the cabin on a canoe, it's typical to haul it up out of the water when you get there. It's not that big an ordeal. The Titanic was bigger than a canoe, bigger even than a handful of canoes. To get this ship from the river to dry land wasn't exactly as easy as getting two dudes on either end to lift it up—imagine though the feat of engineering that built the pump house alongside the Thompson Dry Dock, a system of hydraulic pumps to flush out the water from a carved out section that was bound to house a giant. This is, aside from the spot on the ocean floor off the coast of Cape Race, the last piece of earth the Titanic ever touched.

The Titanic Belfast is a nine-galey, self-guided experience in a beautiful new facility on the former shipyard. Flashy exhibitions are something I look at with a certain degree of suspicion, but for anyone with even a peripheral interest in the Titanic, this stop is a must in Belfast. The sheer scope of it was more than could fit into a single day, going right from the construction to lavish exhibits on the ship's conditions, to the search to find the wreckage (originally, the wealthy survivors proposed literally raising the Titanic) and the current state of underwater exploration.

The coolest exhibits amongst many relics were a complete database of everyone on the Titanic (where they were from, what class a passenger they were, and whether they lived or died. Two Ryans from Ireland, Mom's possible ancestors, were onboard, incidentally); a 3D simulated tour of the main parts of the ship, which I swear felt real if you stood in the middle of the three video screens; and an actual menu from the literal last supper on April 14, 1912, that survived because it was put into a survivor's purse (that this little glimpse into life on the Titanic actually survived for a hundred years is nothing short of amazing, even after having been to a thousand-year-old monastery in Glendalough).

We had what can only be called the luck of the Irish. At the Giant's Caseway, the parks officer gave us a family discount. At the Titanic exhibition, Mom and Dad got a seniors' discount they weren't entitled to. Even our B&B hosts seemed friendlier and a cut above the rest. “Imagine,” I said as we walked back to the car park, “if the gate somehow got left open and we got our parking for free?”

I swear to God I said that. It was with such an attitude that we rounded the corner at promptly 6:45 pm. For those unacquainted with military time, that would be 18:45.

If ever there was such a thing as the exact opposite, a locked gate would be it. Apparently the hapless crowd in this silver car missed that memo.

No sweat, we've got our phones, right? There's a number on a poster there, so I give it a ring, only to find out they have nothing to do with that parking lot. Let's just overlook the fact that their contact info is all we have—alright, well who should we call? I'm given a second number for the guy who looks after all the parking garages in this area.

It goes straight to voicemail. This isn't looking good, and I'm wishing I didn't give my credit card number to a B&B moments earlier with a no-cancellation policy.

I ran around the massive building looking for a way in, looking for a nightwatchman or someone. The guys who review the security footage from the night before will surely have a good laugh, watching me cycle the building, pound on the glass doors, and wave frantically at the bulb of the security camera. All to no avail of course, and even the Harbour Police, who have handled locked car parks before, can't get a hold of this guy with the keys.

In the end, neither myself, the guy at the Titanic exhibit who tried to help us, the Harbour Police, nor the hosts at our B&B who I managed to explain the situation to via a sketchy wifi connection were able to get a hold of someone with the authority to get our car our. With the sun going down and our shorts and t-shirts no longer appropriate, we didn't have many options other than to go to the Premier Inn down the street.

At least there was a room for us and we had our wallets. That came doubly in handy, since there was a bar in the lobby and we needed a good laugh after that day. As if we didn't already look sketchy, coming in off the street with nothing but the clothes on our back, we had a bundle of coins accumulated from various trips to the UK over the years, and this seemed like the appropriate time to try to get rid of what we had in a slot machine in the hotel bar.

First thing in the morning, after guzzling an instant coffee and collecting our non-existent bags, we were back at the car park for when they opened at 8:00 am. By 8:10 am, we were on the motorway, getting the hell out of Belfast.

One last day abroad, just before we left Northern Ireland and re-entered the Republic and Dublin, we stopped off the main highway in the small city of Newry. In the list of big sites to see, I don't think Newry makes it, but musician Tommy Sands was born in Mayobridge, not far from this town. Significantly, during the Troubles, he was part of a friends group that included Protestants and Catholics, the two waring factions. For socially conscious young people, this was never particularly troubling.

However, as the song he would eventually write makes very clear, centuries of hatred have ears that cannot hear. Isaac Scott from Armagh was leaving Tully's Pub in Belleek on July 9, 1973. He was a protestant, and as he was starting his car a gunman came to the window and shot him. In retaliation, masked gunmen came to the Catholic home of Charles McDonnell on August 22, taking him away into the back of a car and murdering him. He had been making wedding plans with his fiancé moments before.

The tragic irony of all this is that the two men were good friends. "There Were Roses" is the beautiful song that took a stricken Tommy Sands some 10 years to finally write, but it now stands as a chilling testament to that terrible time in Northern Ireland's history. We found the Ryan's Road mentioned in the song and played the song along the still farming avenue, went through the streets of Mayobridge, and passed Tully's on our eventual way to Dublin. It's all quiet and nondescript now, and hard to picture the sounds of guns being a constant part of the environment, but it made a fitting last stop through Northern Ireland. A country with a troubled past and with reminders impossible to ignore (newspapers we saw during our brief stay could not get around that there was still violent acts back by one religious group against the other), but which is somehow managing to forge on despite the overwhelming and tragic weight.

Once in Dublin, taking a stroll down O'Connell Street on a day-ai-ay-ai-ay, I passed a long-haired streel and had to do a double take. I fully admit that, on our first night in Temple Bar, I'm pretty sure Jack Gleeson, the actor who plays Joffrey in Game of Thrones, was out having a pint in the beer garden, and I didn't say anything to him. I wasn't missing this chance.

“I'm not going to bother you,” I said as I ran back, “but are you Steve Earle?”

He stopped for a second as if thinking about it. “I am,” he said.

“Ah. Cool. Can I shake your hand?”

So he adjusted his Starbucks coffee cup, shook my hand, and I let him be. Well, I might have said something star stricken and stupid, but I'll let this illusion of nonchalance linger.

To finish off a rainy evening in Dublin, after we visited the massive gift store at Carroll's, we went on a whiskey and beer tour organized by the same guys who organized the Free Walking Tour that started our Ireland escapade. We went to four different pubs in a small group of about half a dozen besides ourselves, our bearded guide, Paul, explaining the craft of brewing beer and distilling whiskey, and offering us a sample of stout, ale, and IPA at the first craft brewery; Guinness at another (and supplementing what I already learned at the Storehouse—the reason Guinness allegedly tastes different at bars in North America, even though it's brewed at St. James Gate here in Dublin, is that the brew requires a warmer temperature, and bars often aren't as willing to build a separate room to house the keg like they do here; and because a keg is only fresh for around 5 days, and other than St. Patrick's Day when was the last time you went to a bar in Canada and saw wall-to-wall drinkers of Guinness?), and finally a sit-down meal (vegetable curry and Irish stew) and whiskey sampling (the real taste of whiskey comes from sitting in a cask, for what could be decades—it would suck to put all your money on this one batch of whiskey, only to come back in 21 years and find out you used the wrong barrel and had to start over) at a third.

As an aside, the Guinness we had, huddled around a wooden table in the back room of that Dublin pub was to be my final draught while here in Ireland. All good things must end, I guess.

This guy knew his alcohol, but it wasn't a sloppy night by any means. When we finished at the fourth pub, a packed mass with a session busily underway in the corner, the last buses were starting to run, and it was time for us to slip off into the evening.

Ireland in two weeks is amazing but exhausting—yet we only had the luxury of a few short hours sleep at our hotel, because we had to get to the airport and return our rental car to Budget and get through security for an international flight, all before 8:00 am. Thankfully, everything went as it should, and after a light breakfast in the terminal of Dublin Airport, we found our seats and started to doze before the plane even left the tarmac.

In two weeks, we saw the bulk of the island of Ireland. Surely you could spend a year and want more time, but to get a car and go for a couple thousand kilometres, along the coasts and the green, green fields, we did more than alright. 

Travel is a cool luxury that some of us get. It really is something that we should never take for granted—how privileged we are that we once we get a bit tired of our own familiar surroundings, we can just uproot, switch our money at the bank and take a stroll through monasteries, pubs, roundabouts, haunted houses and castles. You're really lucky if you can have those experiences with your family too—they're the ones who you'll argue with the quickest (and usually be right, but that's another story), but who will genuinely be interested in making the most of the time together.

Thus it is, the trip is over, and I guess the summer is too. Holy frig, I have to go back to school in, like, three days. I won't forget this summer or this time, though—I never heard the song "Beeswing" until I sat in an Irish pub in Doolin, but the words resonate now, giving some sense of what the past four months have been:

She was a rare thing, fine as a bee's wing
I miss her more than ever, words can say
If I could just taste all of her wildness now
If I could hold her in my arms today
I wouldn't want her any other way

If you come out of something and literally could not want it any other way, I think you've done something right. Until next time we're lucky enough to be in the same place at the same time, may the road rise up to meet you, and may the wind be always at your back.

Cheers,

rb

The Trouble with Derry

I feel raw. Rawer than I have in a long time, and I daresay that's a good thing. I appreciate Northern Ireland, but I can't pretend that I had a fun day in the city of Derry, on the border of that country and the Republic of Ireland.

Or maybe it's Londonderry. That's an important distinction—technically it's Londonderry, but if you're a nationalist, one of the ones who aligns more with the Republic than the United Kingdom, then you're not too happy about that. This city has the only complete walled city centre in Ireland, but a focus on its historical significance would do a disservice to what happened here much more recently than that.

We're not dealing with ancient history of pagans and myths anymore. Bloody Sunday was in 1972, and it was only in 2010 that those who were murdered during the peaceful protest were declared innocent after the longest public inquiry in British or Irish history. Derry was an epicentre for the tumultuous strife across religious and political lines, of terrorism and bombs and chaos, where thousands were killed and the scars still bleed.

All under the guise of an innocuous name. Simply the Troubles.

There is a walled interior city in Londonderry, a unique anomaly that doesn't exist anywhere else in Ireland and was quite cool to walk around and gaze at the historical city as it stood hundreds of years ago (much smaller than the sprawling mass that exists now, with fewer Primark shopping plazas and traffic lights). I think it would be possible to visit Londonderry and focus on the distant past, on the siege and the heroic moment where the Apprentice Boys shut the city gates in 1688.

I found it impossible to concentrate on that, with the immediacy of the surrounding area. Apologies to any students of Irish history who might be reading this if I screw up any of the facts. This is all just part of my interpretation of the place and the past.

In the early 1900s, Ireland was a part of the British Empire and stretched from Cork to Antrim and everything in between. That's not to say that it was always an amicable thing—judging from some of the sites we visited, like Enniscorthy and Vinegar Hill, seat of the 1798 rebellion, and Dublin with the 1916 Easter Rising, I'd venture a guess that it often wasn't amicable. That's been a constant theme I've discovered, the process by which citizens of the Emerald Isle came into their own identity. In different parts of the country, the attitudes were different. By and large, nationalist sentiments ran strongest amongst those in the southern part of Ireland, and religion reflected that—these were predominantly Catholic, a manifestation of a rejection of English Protestant rule.

Alright, we're good so far? In 1921, there's an Anglo-Irish Treaty, and Ireland becomes two countries. There's the Republic of Ireland, which is what people usually mean nowadays when they say “Ireland”, and there's Northern Ireland, still as much a part of the U.K. As Wales or Scotland. Northern Ireland is much smaller, just the six counties of Fermanagh, Tyrone, Armaugh, Down, Antrim, and Londonderry. The capital city is Belfast, on the eastern coast.

That isn't the end of the story, by any means, because there's considerable animosity between those unionist loyal to Great Britain in the north, and those nationalists in the south who wanted to be a free state. Londonderry is somewhat uniquely situated, in that there was a very strong Catholic, nationalist majority, but the political elite was controlled by the English protestants. In effect, it was really hard to be a Catholic here following the separation of Northern Ireland and Ireland, and these people faced unemployment, poor living conditions in the so-called Bogside part of the city, and discrimination.

Follow the historical context, and in the 60s we start to see the emergence of the civil rights movement. Londonderry was a natural place for that to boom in Northern Ireland, with protests in the streets and a moniquer of Free Derry established as a symbol of freedom and equality.

In the streets the citizens protested against the powers that be. Those powers were the British Empire, no small force to be reckoned with, and it created a clear imbalance of power. An imbalance of power with riot police and guns.

“I can't believe the news today,” Bono begins on “Sunday Bloody Sunday.” Unbelievable is what it was. On January 30, 1972, the British Parachute Regime responded to a peaceful protest on the streets of Londonderry by opening fire. Can I repeat that date, just in case you skimmed over it? January 30, 1972. People had been to the moon by that time. We have seen ancient ruins, but this was yesterday in the grand scheme of things. You don't need to try to imagine what the streets would have looked like way back then or what different way the river would have ran, because the city as it is, plain if not somewhat grim, is as it was on Bloody Sunday.

We stood where the protestors stood and died. We passed people who could easily have been there that day.

If that's not unsettling enough, there was eventually an inquiry to determine where the blame should lay. The protestors were absolved of any blame and were labelled as innocent, and the killings were unjustified and unjustifiable. That decision was released in 2010. Again, let me repeat that date: 2010.

We visited the Free Derry museum, a chilling collection of memorabilia right in sight of the events of Bloody Sunday and along the concourse of murals and monuments lining the Bogside. A photograph of a protestor, taken moments before he was shot to death, his jacket in a glass case with the bullet hole through the back shoulder eerily visible. The camera that filmed the atrocity before the student journalist became a victim. A chilling vision into a past that, no matter how you spin it, is not that past.

I never felt unsafe, walking the streets of Londonderry. But I certainly didn't feel welcome, felt like there's a heaviness in this place. The civilized western world is fully capable of being barbaric in the name of arbitrary divisions. And if the fact that a European country once implemented a genocide of Jewish people and Rosa Parks was forced to sit in the back of a bus is too far removed from the comforting picture we have of 2014, remember that young people with dreams, ambitions, friends, lovers, a life, as well as a vision of a peaceful future were murdered point blank during the Troubles in Northern Ireland.

Keep in mind that I had my driver's licence in 2005 when the IRA announced an end to its armed campaign in Northern Ireland. It wasn't long ago at all, and a four hour direct flight to Dublin carries with it another reminder: it's not far away from us, either.

Try to keep that in mind. I certainly will.

Cheers,

rb

North by West

When you do a two week tour of an entire country, even one as relatively small as Ireland at 85,000 square kilometres, you have to carefully manage your days so that you squeeze as much walking, gawking, and drinking in as possible. We did the triumvirate in spades, but that hasn't left a lot of time for writing about it. I'm not surprised that here I am, picking up the story from the lofty position of seat 7F, looking out to the clouds above the Atlantic Ocean and, having decided to stay awake, wishing that the Westjet flight attendants would come back with the coffee tray.

At any rate, the low-key two nights we spent in Galway were something of a refuel for when we hit the road on Sunday morning, a grey foggy day if ever there was one, drizzle on the windshield and a map strewn across my lap. 

Our road today went through Connemara, a national park in the western part of County Galway with wild sea coasts, boglands, and the Maamturk Mountains.

Roundstone is a village within this area, nestled on the cusp of a coastal route off the main drag that loops back to reconnect at Clifden. With the tidal flats and boats drawn ashore, this unassuming village could belong on the other side of the Atlantic, were it not for an old Franciscan monastery on a turn off that we almost missed, housing a craft shop, cafe, and a bodhran workshop.

In fact, probably the most significant bodhran workshop in the whole world, with the master craftsman sitting behind the counter. For the kids who bought knickknacks, he signed a postage stamp and stuck it on their bag—oh, and he was on the 1997 postage stamp. 

Malachy Kearns has become known as Malachly Bodhran, and his drums have been used by the crowd of River Dance, Christy Moore, and the Chieftains.

A curved rim of wood with a goatskin stretched across it. It sounds almost barbaric or archaic, but the sound of a lilting tipper against the skin creates a thumping pulse like a heartbeat, used correctly. Irish traditional music makes ready use of the rhythm of the goat, and it's certainly no stranger to the trad music in Newfoundland, either (Sean McCann, formerly of Great Big Sea, is probably one of the best players in the province). I don't pretend to be able to play worth anything, but it's a fun addition to a jam session, so seeing an artist in the corner, painting a Celtic design onto the skin of a new bodhran, amongst rows and rows of instruments of different sizes and designs was pretty cool.

Plus, there's a sound room, where you can test them out for yourself.

I gather Malachy is an honest-to-God Irishman, set in his ways. He asks for a Euro to use the toilet, has copies of emails where he got into a racket with town council taped around his shop, and stands around cracking wise to customers. I can just imagine what would happen if Wal-Mart drove up and tried to buy him out. I picked up a copy of a book he wrote, which from a cursory glance looks like a stream of conscious examination of the music and the craft and the stories he's picked up along the way. A little piece of the Irish character to bring back with me.

"No, dammit, it is alive!" he writes of the instrument. "That's what I think anyway. The first time you run your fingers over the head of a new bodhran is like bringing something to life. [...] Out of the goatskin itself, the sense of wild freedom, the sense of paganism of nature, of the freshest of fresh air up amongst the peaks where men don't go."Almost poetic—or musical, I suppose.

We continued along the narrow ocean route, weaving between the rocky outcrops of hills and the sudden openness of beaches.

Just before Clifden, we turned off another road that you'd miss if you weren't looking for it. We take it for granted that you can fly direct to Dublin in just over 4 hours, but that wasn't the case in 1919. In fact, it had never been done at that time, and every attempt to cross the Atlantic had failed. That was until two dudes, John Alcock and Arthur Whitten-Brown, left Lester's Field in St. John's in an aircraft powered by two Rolls-Royce engines. It took them 16 and a half hours to make the flight, but imagine what that must have looked like, seeing this boggy land stretching in front of them—because, of course, this was the spot where they abruptly landed, with a memorial on the mound looking out to the the site, slightly inland. This was the first time that anyone in the world had ever done it, and the financial rewards (£10,000, huge at the time) and celebrity status were a fitting reward for the daring feat.

Not far from where they landed, there once stood a cable station. It's now privately owned and inaccessible, which is a shame, because it maintains another connection to Newfoundland and Labrador, at least indirectly. This was a station that Guglielmo Marconi used for transatlantic wireless transmission to a sister station in Glace Bay, a couple years after he received a wireless message on top of Signal Hill in St. John's (when we were there, we were under the impression this was where that original transmission came from, and very nearly trespassed down a dirt road. I'm glad now we didn't).

A short hour drive makes a loop around Clifden, the aptly named Sky Road, onto a narrow peninsula on the western edge of Ireland and looking down to the vast distances of the ocean. We took a spin and, connecting back to the main road, continued on our way through Connemara.

Kylemore Abbey, beneath hillsides half hidden by clouds and itself shrouded in damp mist, might not be as haunted as Loftus Hall on the Hook Peninsula, but it certainly had a bit of an ominous look when we drove by it. The huge house was an extravagant, Gothic revival present from a Manchester tycoon to his wife, and it later became an abbey for Benedictine nuns in the First World War.

Westport was our final stop for the night. Just as we were getting used to roundabouts, this city, replete with cobbled streets, statues, stone buildings, and a core dominated by a river, made generous use of one way streets. Apparently Dublin is bad for that too, but we never drove in the capital city, so we had no trouble getting lost trying to find Mulberry Lodge, our B&B for the night. 

When we did finally find it, we had coffee and biscuits, gazing to no avail out our second floor window to try to get a glimpse of Croagh Patrick, Ireland's holy mountain where St. Patrick, Ireland's patron saint, was said to have spent 40 days fasting.

The best I can do is say that it was out there somewhere. People still ascend the mountain, some barefoot, but there was no pilgrimage for us that day. The best we could do was get to a sandwich shop along one of the main thoroughfares in town and watched two Irishmen get into a fistfight on the curb outside.

That evening, it was out to the pub, first to Matt Molloy's, squat and lively with a session in the corner. The bar gets its name from the owner, who also happens to be a member of the Chieftains, one of the biggest Irish tune bands going (he plays the flute).

Next door at the Porter House though, that's where the real party was. Crowded but with room to move around, the Mulloy Brothers were a five-piece, inter-generation band, playing an arsenal of traditional instruments and recognizable tunes. You don't need to have any high pretensions when the frontman blows his nose with a handkerchief on stage—he was constantly pointing at the crowd, encouraging them to join along, which made for good fun. Meanwhile, the older guy in the back, having the time of his life on the drums, was by a conservative estimate at least a hundred years old.

They played “The Fields of Athenry” faster and more percussive than I've ever heard before, giving it a whole other meaning, and even though Steve Earle is American (and in Ireland at the same time as us—but more on that in a few days), these guys made “Galway Girl” sound like a traditional Irish tune. The set ended around midnight with a rendition of the Irish national anthem, “Amhrán na bhFiann,” which we saw finish the evening when we went out in Duncannon as well (even the sloppiest ones along the edge of the bar stood up in reverence and sang along).

With a band like that, as on their game as the crowd was receptive, I wouldn't have minded if the music went on into the wee hours of the morning, even though we had an ambitious day of travel ahead. Hands down this was the best pub experience we had in Ireland (and that's a big statement)—and they'll be back every Sunday, just in case you happen to be lucky enough to find yourself in Westport some evening.

We didn't waste any time getting on the road after a hefty breakfast of cereal, pancakes, and scrambled eggs, driving steadily in a diagonal line north-east. As we entered Sligo, the county and pastoral landscape that Irish poet William Butler Yeats had such affinity with. Even though he died abroad, his body was returned to Drumcliff in 1948.

When you enter the churchyard, which is the former site of a monastery and has a really cool round tower and cross engraved with primitive Biblical images, you're greeted by words of the beautiful Yeats' poem, “Aedh Wishes for the Clothes of Heaven,” which goes like this:

Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,

Enwrought with golden and silver light,

The blue and the dim and the dark cloths

Of night and light and the half light,

I would spread the cloths under your feet:

But I, being poor, have only my dreams;

I have spread my dreams under your feet;

Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

With wind cutting to the bone, we pulled over to a simple asphalt picnic area. Nothing about this place was superficially different from the countryside we'd already passed through, but there was something different here. Cars going in the opposite direction bore different licence plates and a heavy cloud sat on the horizon. At the risk of someone calling me a liar, I had an unsettling feeling that was impossible to shake off.

And then, across the River Foyle through Strabane, road signs were in miles per hour and prices were listed in pounds sterling. There's no checkpoint or passport needed, but in a moment on that bridge we passed into Northern Ireland, another country, and another world.

That is, of course, another story. All in due time.

Cheers,

rb