36 The Cabbage Gardens

Posted by on Feb 23, 2015 in Ireland | 3 comments Since researching the history of cabbage in Ireland for “33 Bacon and Cabbage,” I’ve been haunted by a place I visited for the story, a little grassy park near St. Patrick’s Cathedral here in Dublin known as The Cabbage Gardens or The Cabbage Gardens Cemetery. It was on this site that starting in 1649, soldiers serving under Oliver Cromwell grew cabbages, or so the story goes. Eventually the land was used for an overflow cemetery for the nearby parish of St. Nicholas Without (meaning outside the city walls), a burial ground for French Huguenots who came to Dublin escaping persecution, and finally a city park. For as long as I can remember, I have been fascinated by the layers of history—personal or public—that occupy the same space on earth. When I was very young I lived in a big old gray Victorian house in Evanston, IL, and even then I’d try to imagine the lives of past residents and where in the house or yard I might cross paths with their ways—not their ghosts, but their habits, their activities, their favorite spots. I used to search the bare boards of the large attic to see if they had left any messages for future generations to find. In the travel and creative writing I’ve done, this history of space has played a big part, perhaps to the point of obsession. I’m always trying to figure out where things were in the past, how that differs from or overlaps with the present, and what vestiges of the old ways and the old things we can still see. Part of the fun of studying writers or other historical figures is to haunt the houses they lived in, walk the streets they walked, gaze at the buildings or forests or mountains they knew. Even if the terrain and buildings have changed dramatically, you still learn a lot from inhabiting the spaces they inhabited. When I visited the farmhouse in County Down where Agnes Irvine Scott was raised, for example, I discovered she could see the Irish Sea from the field behind the house, a piece of information that had not previously come to light but that added to my understanding of her life in that place (see “15 The Mountains of Mourne”). Though I didn’t plan to do it, quite a few of my blog entries this year tell stories of me tracing...
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35 Legend That She Is

Posted by on Feb 16, 2015 in Ireland | 0 comments TradFest 2015 (January 28 to February 1) here in Dublin was filled with live music, music from the present of the Irish traditional or folk scene as well as from its past, and by design and by luck, music from my past. At the three concerts Ron and I attended, I got to hear from some of the musicians who hooked me on this genre back in the days of vinyl records, when I had only been to Ireland once and didn’t know anything about the sources of the music, the instruments played, or the musicians and groups leading the movement. TradFest is a ten-year-old festival of Irish traditional music. For a few nights in the cold of winter, groups, soloists, and amazing combinations of musicians play in venues around Temple Bar, the trendy nightlife area of Dublin along the south bank of the River Liffey between the medieval city and O’Connell Bridge. With its windy cobblestone streets and alleys with names like “Fishamble Street,” “Cow’s Lane,” and “Copper Alley,” Temple Bar recalls old Dublin. By the 1980s the area had become home to shops, artists, galleries, bars, and restaurants, and was saved from the bulldozer when protests and legal action eventually prevented the state-owned transportation company from building a bus terminal there. Today with several theatres, the Irish Film Institute, and many music venues, Temple Bar is considered a cultural center of the city, though the abundance of pubs makes it a noisy nightlife scene as well. The Temple Bar Company, a business association that focuses on preserving this historic part of Dublin, started TradFest in 2006 with the goal of creating “a festival showcasing the cream of both Irish and international trad and folk artists while also providing a stage to promote the next generation of Irish musicianship.” As it turned out, all three of the concerts I chose were held in churches: the city’s two historic cathedrals, Christ Church and St. Patrick’s, and the less well-known and faded but still beautiful St. Werburgh’s. The atmosphere of these buildings and the acoustics of their large stone caverns make them wonderful places to hear music. And because it was a festival and not a formal concert, there was an exciting looseness and an intimacy to the programs. No one minded you taking pictures, and there was a lot of only slightly covert recording going on. I couldn’t resist...
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34 Bacon and Cabbage

Posted by on Feb 10, 2015 in Ireland | 3 comments For tourists, the most readily identifiable “Irish” food is Irish stew, a concoction of lamb, potatoes, carrots, and onions that is available in most food pubs, many restaurants, and also served at home. A less well-known but even more homey dish is bacon and cabbage, always accompanied by “floury” potatoes (boiled, mashed, or both), and topped off with parsley sauce, the final touch that gives this ubiquitous plateful its most irresistible quality. Simple to make, inexpensive, durable in the fridge if you can’t eat all of it in one night, and a very satisfying combination of flavors, bacon and cabbage is the national dish of Ireland—true Irish soul food. I’ve had bacon and cabbage in homes and at restaurants, and it’s always fun to see how excited people get about this comfort food, a reaction I soon picked up. Bacon and cabbage is not to be confused with the Irish-American specialty, corned beef and cabbage, though the two have common roots. During the nineteenth century and the height of Irish immigration to the US, “corned” or salt-cured beef was widely available on the east coast, and with its ham-like taste, probably seemed like an economical and, because it came in tins, convenient stand-in for pork from the butcher when preparing bacon and cabbage. Some restaurants here in Ireland advertise “traditional corned beef and cabbage,” but they are aiming to lure the Irish-American contingent. I love corned beef and cabbage, but I also love the Irish original. “Bacon and cabbage” or sometimes “ham and cabbage” are the words to look for on a menu, and like Irish stew, you’ll find this dish on many pub and family restaurant menus, and in its “sourced” versions, even at fancier places. Pork has played an important role in the Irish diet probably since human habitation of the island began: the ecosystem favored the flourishing of wild boar in thick forests with few predators. Though deforestation under English rule from 1500 to 1800 (the navy needed ships) significantly shrank the boar population, domestic pig farming had already become part of the economy. Pork has almost always been easy to get and relatively cheap here, and today is the third largest farm industry after beef and dairy. As exports, Irish pork products such as sausages are very much in demand, especially in the UK. “Bacon” is a more complicated term here than in the US. An Irish breakfast includes...
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33 Under Ben Bulben

Posted by on Feb 2, 2015 in Ireland | 3 comments One of my favorite photos of Ireland is a lucky shot I took of William Butler Yeats’s grave at Drumcliff Churchyard with Ben Bulben, an iconic mountain just north of Sligo town, looming in the background. The photograph was made with a nothing little point-and-shoot in January 2010 on the sixth Agnes Scott student trip to Ireland. The mountain, shown in the top half of the photo featured above, is beautiful enough on its own and has a thousand faces, changing its look and mystery with every shift in the weather, every angle of the sun or shadow of a cloud, every different position from which the photographer tries to shoot. Yeats’s grave is located in a small churchyard on the plain to the south of the great mountain and is one of the most important sites of our trip, as well as a very popular stop for any Yeats lover who comes to this part of Ireland. Not long before he died, Yeats wrote a poem about this spot called “Under Ben Bulben,” a meditation on life and death, war, mythology, nationality, and the importance of art. By projecting the speaker’s voice to the future, he inscribes in the poem’s last section his wish to be buried in Drumcliff Churchyard at the foot of the mountain, even including his chosen epitaph:  Under bare Ben Bulben’s head In Drumcliff churchyard Yeats is laid. An ancestor was rector there Long years ago, a church stands near, By the road an ancient cross. No marble, no conventional phrase; On limestone quarried near the spot By his command these words are cut: Cast a cold eye On life, on death. Horseman, pass by! The dramatic features of the landscape around Ben Bulben create a suggestive backdrop for storytelling and figure prominently in the “mythohistory” of the land. In Celtic mythology, the Fianna, a band of warriors on horseback, used Ben Bulben as their hunting grounds and are said to be buried or held inside the mountain, waiting to be summoned for a new cause. Was that story the source of the “horseman” mentioned in the epitaph Yeats wrote for himself? Or was he thinking of the horsemen of some other myth, or of the apocalypse? Diarmuid and Gráinne [GRAWN-ya], who formed a legendary love triangle with the leader of the Fianna, Fionn mac Chumhaill [FIN muhCOOL], are also supposed to be buried there....
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