Fishambles St

Do you recall that our Hotel is in Fishambles St? Well in the year 1000 AD (or thereabouts), the neighbourhood looked a bit like this:

National Museum of Ireland model.

  I can assure that our Hotel is a lot more   comfortable than that. Although there is no air conditioning, there is but a wee window that can open about 10 cm wide, which is surprisingly effective.

Fishambles St runs perpendicular to the Liffey. It seems that the office blocks out my window cover the greatest urban Viking archeological site in the world but that will be another post!

And the beds are lot more advanced than what was available at the approximate time (this being a Viking bed of a slightly earlier time). The beds are firm and the pillows soft. I have glimpse of the Liffey and at 7am the streets are quiet.

In general the hotel nights have been very quiet. Last night there were a few cars backfiring, raised shouts and even in my corridor multiple slamming doors. It might have been the Craic (Irish for having a good time) or a crime in progress. Just saying there is a goodly visible police presence on the streets of Dublin for a reason.

What have I done in Dublin in the two full days we are here?

Day 1:

A walking tour with Dubliner Ciaren, knowledgeable, witty, thoughtful. He seemed genuinely interested in everyone. Both his parents were born in County Clare. A great story-teller. His theme if there was one was about conflict over the centuries, resulting in change and more building. But his tale of The Great Famine ended with a story of a the Irish common people sending money to an American Indian tribe devastated by Covid, in recognition of the precious pennies (cents?) sent to Irish folk during the famine. The tour took three hours.

Thanks to Peter McGuiness who already knew this story, or else went looking for it.

They were the Choctaw tribe, and I guess this memorial is on their lands. After all the sun is shining, not Irish at all.

On the subject of weather, there were 10 drops of rain last night, forcing us into the very crowded bar around the corner. 

Just another fun fact about Ireland. Their national TV station RTE 1 broadcast Wednesday’s news on Thursday morning. I only cottoned on when they provide the ‘forecast for tomorrow’ ie for Thursday. Perhaps it makes it easier, but I am not sure how.

Off to Trinity College where the Kells Experience was not available till later so off to EPIC - we were criss-crossing the Liffey River. In Irish called ‘An Life’, so true. I think EPIC deserves all the awards and plaudits and five-star reviews you might read about. Detailed, comprehensive, visually stimulating, fun, moving. So many personal stories voiced by actors or on film, choreographed superbly. I know both Kelly and I shed the odd tear.

What was fun was submitting our Irish ancestors into their database, and Kelly trying to get me and the words to appear together on a picture. She did good.

Mary Tuohy is Mary Many Names, of course.

Mary is the subject of the biography I must write, telling the fall from farmer’s wife forced to leave three young children behind in Ireland, the pregnant widow later giving birth in the Sydney Benevolent Asylum, the successful farmer’s wife until widowed again, and the finale when she married a third time, to a drunken threat she felt driven to try to murder. Now back to happier Dublin.

Finally the Kells Experience and Long Room which was worth the wait. I don’t have pictures - my phone was out of charge by then. First rule of traveling to fully charge your phone every night. Dinner in a pub themed around a most amazing Irishman, Oliver St John Gogarty. Look him up. A writer poet drinker satirist and eminent throat surgeon. He performed the autopsy on his good friend Michael Collin’s, killed in the Irish civil war, found with Gogarty’s front door key in his pocket.

Day 2:

Mostly on my own, walked to the Collin’s barracks, once British Army barracks where my x6 great grandfather was stationed in 1780 when he married Margaret Leslie - so she might be Irish. (DNA note - I have a match to one of her descendants from her second marriage, making her the earliest ancestor for whom DNA has probably been confirmed). Their son, also called William Leviston, was born in St James Parish, Dublin, in 1781. He was the teenager who came to Sydney in 1796 with mother, brother and sister, joined the British Army there, later to be a member of the NSW Rum Corps and who fought the rebel Irishmen at the Battle of Vinegar Hill (Rouse Hill) in 1804. The battle was so-named after a similar rebellion against British control in Ireland in 1798. Also visited the burial site of the leaders of the 1916 Easter Rising which was very solemn, many were very young to be executed by firing squad in nearby Kilhaimham Gaol. 

Walked to the An Post to buy one of every current Eire stamp for sale. I did not feel too bad taking as long as it did, because I had had to return when the staff were ‘off-counter’ the first time I turned up. Got some Euros at last. Walked to EPIC again because the light was wrong to photograph the Famine Memorial the previous evening, and I had no phone charge anyway. Then up to The National Archive to get my readers ticket - the man at reception could not understand my five minute visit ‘What had I come to research?

Walked, but it was nearby, to St Patrick’s Cathedral - amazing, Dublinia - amazing, The National Museum of Ireland Archeology - amazing gold work, bog bodies and more gold work. 

This particular hoard was found by a farmer in County Clare whose son (and therefore maybe also the father) is a DNA match of Kelly’s. The son lives in Feakle, where her McNamara’s are from, and so she hoped to find a relative to meet when we get there.

It seems there are plenty of gold hoards in Ireland being dug up by farmers every year.

You can picture the rest - mostly religious.

Now the bog people were very amazing. One had the finest details of fingers and fingernails but had lost his head and legs. I was hoping to see a Poulnabrone artifact if not actual remains, perhaps a grave good, but no.

Keep up, I am related to three Poulnabrone buried men from several thousands BC.

Almost all map-reading failed, requiring me to ask random people on the street about where I should have been going. ‘Twas 2008 all over again. One Baltic sounding man offered to look up his map, but I already had two of them. Mostly though I could pick a local.

Just time to squeeze in buying our Heritage passes at Dublin Castle and tour the State Apartments. Saw imagery of my ancestor Strongbow (aka Richard de Clare) at several of these venues. Another pub meal - too noisy for me, and a long, long bath!

I will keep adding photos to this blog for your enjoyment.

More candid observations: only half the population look Caucasian, and many of the receptionists and shop attendants could not understand my Australian accented English. While walking around the streets of the hotel I saw a group of men I’d seen yesterday. Again today they were arguing amongst themselves, I did cross the street about then, as I heard one say ‘I don’t care about dat, just get me money’. Sadly he looked too ill to be a threat, with cheeks like the sunken cheeks of AIDS sufferers in the 1990s and so terribly thin. Around the city streets a regular appearance of people on the ground under sleeping bags and cardboard. Those awake often with heads sunk low and in moon boots (for broken legs) or on crutches.

But on the way back I was asked by a group of travellers ‘where was Heuston Station?’ They sounded Irish! But I knew where it was as I’d gone close to it yesterday, and I could point out a landmark. ‘At least we’re on the right side of the road’ said the spokesman (‘‘twas a group of about 20), and I most certainly hope they were.

Breakfast today on ginger snaps and a bag of Keoghans ‘Grown with love in Ireland’ and gluten free. They were leftovers from the ferry. Plenty of places to have a full Irish breakfast around here. As I walked around a few blocks, truly every corner had a different church - thought not always selling God any more. I’ll end this post with some graffiti just for Piper and Mimi. I haven’t seen any fairies yet, despite being out at night, but this is for them.