Castles and Cashel

When asked how I'm feeling right about now, "wiped out" comes to mind. I've been living the dream here, going from landmark to castle to cathedral and back again, and I think I am good and ready for an evening in--which is fortunately what I get tonight! We are spending the night in The Hotel Kilkenny in (you guessed it) Kilkenny. It seems like a pretty ritzy place everywhere except for the hallway outside my room, which unfortunately reminds me of a rather creepy episode of Doctor Who. If you've ever seen the episode where they get trapped in the labyrinth hotel of worst nightmares, then you've got an idea what the hallway looks like. I think I'll stay in my room, thanks. :) BUT! On to the good stuff.

We fit three stops into the schedule between Cork and Kilkenny. The First was Cahir Castle. Of the castles that we've visited, this is definitely up there on the list of places I'd highly recommend you see while in Ireland. It's built on an island in the middle of a river, so there's lots of pretty scenery. I got a picture on the banks that had tiny baby ducks, a brown goose, and two beautiful white swans swimming in the moat.

The tour guide was wonderful and gave us lots of great information. Cahir was considered impregnable because of it's location and its great defenses. It was remodeled centuries ago, and you can still see the filled in archway where the entrance used to be. We saw lots of arrow slits, holes for pouring boiling oil on enemies, and even something called a "ouiblette" (if I recall correctly), french for "forget about it." It was a trapdoor that you threw people into and then forgot about them. Fortunately they've bolted that shut. They had these things called stumble stairs, which are stairs that are cut roughly in a deliberate attempt to trip up any enemies who were invading. Fun fact that I learned today: all the spiral staircases in these castles go up clockwise (from the right to the left) so that right-handed soldiers would have the advantage when defending and the disadvantage when attacking. (Think about it-the right hand with your sword would be constantly hitting the center of the stairway if you were trying to fight your way up, while those defending have much more room to move and swing their swords.) This was one reason while people started considering it unlucky to be left-handed: the handful or so of left-handed soldiers were shoved to the front of the invading army to try their luck on these stairways.

Coolest parts of Cahir:
-the cannonball that's STILL lodged in the building from some attack centuries ago
-the stumble stairs :)
-this awesome stairway that goes down from the courtyard and then randomly up past a lot of barred cells to the top of a tower. We got some great photos!
-walking on the battlements with a sheer drop back into the castle--no railings here!

After Cahir we went to the Rock of Cashel: a big, limestone rock in the middle of this city that someone built a fortress on top of. The man who owned that fortress was considered the king of Munster (the south county of Ireland). The last one donated it to the church, so it became a cathedral more recently. St. Patrick figured heavily into the history of this building, though I can't remember it off hand--I have it all in the brochure.

Some fun (and also horrifying) stories about The Rock of Cashel:
-Right around the time of the great famine, there was this single night when there were giant wind bursts. The winds decimated the crops and also knocked down two upper stories of the bishop's living quarters. There are two pieces of the knocked over building still in existence. The first is right at the foot of the building.Those walls were easily three feet thick, so you can imagine how strong the wind had to be. (I keep thinking of the windbursts that tore the shingles off our roof at home!) The second piece of rubble, for some reason, is in Waterton, Wisconsin. The guide asked if anyone was from Wisconsin, and when no one was, I mentioned that I lived right next door. :)
-There is a chapel made out of sandstone that is undergoing an extremely expensive, extensive renovation project because centuries of exposure to Ireland weather has damaged it considerably. We got to go inside and see the "before" and "after" of the sandstone that they are treating, as well as some preserved paintings of the nativity. Here's the horrifying part: My friend Jessica Palmer (hereafter referred to as "Palmer") was standing next to me in the chapel, taking pictures. Out of nowhere she gasped and turned to me, asking frantically what was on her. Her shirt was dark, so it took some squinting, but I finally saw a black spider the size of a golfball crawling on her shirt. When I told her what I was seeing, she shook it off and it ran for the corner of the room. It had fallen from the ceiling onto her neck and when she touched it to find out what it was, it scuttled away, at which point she had asked for my help. Needless to say, the chapel was a bit ruined for me after that. I felt all prickly for a while afterwards!
-From the cemetery to the north of the cathedral, you can see this mountain with a huge chunk missing from the top. The local legend is that the devil was flying over the mountain and swept down and took a huge bite out of it. Then, when he was fflying over the valley, he saw St. Patrick standing and promptly spit the chunk of earth down at him. That chunk of earth is what became the Rock of Cashel, on which the fortress/cathedral is built.
-St. Patrick's Cross stands in the middle of everything (or at least a replica of it does--the original is inside to protect it from the elements since it, too, is made of sandstone). There are two legends associated with this cross. The first is that if you can get your arms all the way around it then you'll never have a toothache for the rest of your life (though you'd also have gorilla arms to accomplish this). The second is that if you can hop around it nine times counter-clockwise on your left foot, then you'll be married within the year. No, Mom and Dad, I did not try that one out. You'd probably fall and break your neck in the attempt because the ground is so uneven.

Our last stop today was at Kilkenny Castle, which was actually renovated in the Victorian style so someone could live in it. We got there 35 minutes before it closed, so they gave us the "whistle stop" tour, as they called it, which just meant that they gave us some brief background and then set us loose to walk through as quickly as possible. It was beautiful, but we didn't have much time to appreciate it. This place also had a beautiful rose garden on one side and a sweeping front lawn that I couldn't see the end of. That wraps it all up, I guess. I do apologize for the lack of pictures, I honestly don't have a way to get them on. Kudos to you for reading all of this without some kind of visual stimulation. Don't worry, they'll all go up as soon as I'm able to do so without inconveniencing those around me. For now, good night!