Kiltartan, Kilmacduagh and Glenstal Abbey

Dia dhuit! Hello! This is a long one (and my second today) so lo siento, just bear with me!

We started early (as in 8:30, that’s the new early) with a talk from Brother Colman, our guide for he weekend and also the teacher for our Contemporary Irish Catholicism class. He gave us a little background on the trip and then we started off for our first of many overnights at various points around Ireland!

The first stop was Kiltartan, just a simple ruined old church just beyond the fence that marked the edge of the Coole Estate.  The church was missing a roof (common theme) and the inside was full of graves and trees. The legend says Lord Gregory didn’t want to have to see a Catholic Church steeple so he built the church outside the grounds without the steeple.

kilmacduagh

Then we drove to Kilmacduagh where they had the ruins of several churches/monasteries plus the round tower.  The door to the round tower is placed 26 feet off the ground, the tower leans 4 feet in one direction and the pitch of the tower is just 18 inches, doable because the it is a cone shape.  The tower was where monks would hide things if raiders came calling, which worked great until the tower shape was likened to a chimney and raiders started burning the tower

kilmacduagh

and all its contents.  This particular
tower has been burnt at least twice.




 The weather was wonderful for this portion of the trip: little bits of rain but mostly clear blue skies and warm!  I decided to ditch my rain jacket at Kilmacduagh, so I had to keep finding spots that would keep me out of the rain when it started to sprinkle. 

Kilmacduagh - kil = church/monastery, mac = son of, duagh = name

The cave where St. Colman would spend Lent

We then drove to the Burren and hiked up to the hermitage and cave of St. Colman.  This was my favorite part. You would never have known how gorgeous it was in this little copse of trees without going in. The trees were covered in moss and there was this little stream which ran next to his ruined cottage.  A little bit up the hill, still in the copse of trees, was this little cave where St. Colman would spend all of Lent. I think 6 of these caves would fit in my bathroom.

spring at St. Colman's hermitage

oops. I forgot this.  Megalithic tomb Poulnabrone - dates back to 2500 BC, site of 33 burials

Glenstal Abbey

Sunday we went to mass at Glenstal Abbey, from where comes Brother Colman.  Glenstal is beautiful, built in an 18^th century castle which was donated to the monastery through a chain of events that started with the original owner’s daughter being killed by the IRA. After mass we were given a tour of the abbey and grounds from a different monk, Brother Cuthbert (the youngest monk at the age of 38 at Glenstal. Average monk age in Ireland? 67 Nuns? 71). The Abbot then took us into this Icon Chapel where there are icons in a small “chapel” decorated in the Turkish Icon Chapel style (didn’t know there was such a thing) with a whole story round about story that started with this Swiss woman that had a dream about these icons and their relationship to Russia.

prayer book of the priest, look closer it says 01 May, 1789

Brother Colman showed us some of the books in their library. That was awesome, by far my favorite part. He showed us a scroll from the 15^th century, a little handwritten illuminated prayer book from the 11^th century, the prayer book of the priest who gave Louis XVI his last rites at the guillotine(Louis’s last words were to turn to the executioner and tell him that the priest’s life was in his hands), a signed copy of Winston Churchill’s history of the WWII, a first edition of Mein Kampf published in 1935 by the Nazi publishing Company and a signed copy of Daniel O’Connell’s book (the Irish George Washington, aka “The Liberator”). That stuff was so cool, I still can’t wrap my head around it.

We stopped at Tesco on the way home, a wonderfully large grocery store and wonderfully cheap!! That’s a big deal for us. We haven’t had to cook dinner for the past two nights, cottages 4 and 3 each made us dinner (tacos and orange/onion/?  porkchops) which also means no doing dishes, although we did offer.  Add to that that I didn’t have class today and no class Thursday and Friday makes this an excellent week!!

michelle

random addition: We were extras today in the Irish soap opera "Ros na Run." They were shooting at the hotel and were in need of extras! So we went and were there for 4 hours, two episodes. They got our contact information and are going to call us back to be extras again (paid this time!!) and are going to bring us to the studio and give us a tour!