3 June 2023

Dingle Dunquin and the Great Blasket

3 June 2023

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Saturday 3 June 2023--Our first stop today is Brandon Creek, on the north side of the Dingle Peninsula. According to "The Voyage of St Brendan the Navigator", this was the starting point for St Brendan's legendary 6th-century journey. The earliest known written versions of "Voyage" are from three centuries later; as with Icelandic sagas, the gap makes the reliability of the story suspect. As well, the intent of "Voyage" was more likely to have been religious allegory rather than factual history, in keeping with an Irish tradition of heroic tales. Nevertheless, there has been a lot of speculation regarding where St Brendan might actually have gone, even though the various lands mentioned are plainly mythical. The St Brendan Society pushes the idea that he made it all the way to North America, centuries before Leif Eiriksson, despite the fact that there is no evidence. In fact, I once casually repeated in an archaeological forum what I'd read about evidence of early Irish habitation in Iceland and the Faroe Islands, before the arrival of the Norse; an actual Icelandic archaeologist, on whose turf I had so carelessly trodden, politely but forcefully informed me that assertions of the existence of such evidence were fantasy. Being merely an interested layman, I thanked him for correcting me. I am left to think that there is much wishful thinking going on among Brendan's fans.

We drive a short distance to see a site signposted as Cathair na bhFionnúrach. The Irish word cathair has nothing to do with feline fur...the anglicized word is caher. This sort of round fortified construction is also called a cashel. Within the outer wall stand the remains of two round buildings, configured in a figure 8. There's a souterrain set into the wall, and excavation also found a stone-lined latrine, which yielded all the sort of artifacts one would expect.

A few miles across the shallow valley, we have a look at a curious cross stone. It's up behind the house of an acquaintance of Bobby's, a noted jeweler in Dingle. Bobby calls in at the house; no one home but the dog, who is not welcoming. The carved stone is broken in half, the bottom part lying flat, the top stuck into the ground, upside down. The surrounding site is a shambles, apparently never excavated. Bobby says the stone is called Corrali Cross. I can't verify that--Google keeps asking me if I mean "Corolla"--so I'll take his word for it. Bobby has made t-shirts from rubbings he's done of several of these cross stones, in this case doing the two halves and joining them together. You can see Ron and him wearing a couple of them in a number of the photos here.

Down on the street, we find Brian, the jeweler, waiting to see what morons have parked in his driveway. Why, it's Bobby and his friends.

On the south coast again, we visit Minard Castle, overlooking a beach where a handful of locals are enjoying the weather. The 16th-century Fitzgerald stronghold was damaged in 1650 by Cromwell's forces, during his brutal conquest of Ireland following the English Civil War.

Finally, we stop for a pint at the South Pole Inn in Annascaul. Tom Crean opened the inn at his home after retiring from the British navy in 1920. Crean participated in two Antarctic expeditions led by Robert Falcon Scott, including the ill-fated Terra Nova expedition. He was subsequently a member of Ernest Shackleton's crew aboard the Endurance. He was one of the party that made the extraordinary journey to South Georgia Island in search of rescue. A remarkable person.

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