June 19th- Off to Aran!

There's no rest for the weary, so after a wonderful night's sleep and an excellent breakfast cooked by our host family, we hopped on a bus and then a ferry to get to the Aran Islands. The Aran Islands is situated between Galway Bay and the Atlantic Ocean, so we were looking at extreme isolation. This is where a lot of the Irish language and culture survived the English conquest. In fact, when WB Yeats learned that JM Synge knew Irish, he told him to go to the Aran Islands and gather material for his plays there. Synge reportedly would eavesdrop through the floorboards to the locals telling stories, and a lot of what he heard went into his plays. Most of what I saw reflected the play "Riders to the Sea," in which a mother who has lost a husband and two sons to the sea gets word that her only remaining child has gone missing as well. There was a monument on our route from Kilronan (the biggest town) to our guesthouse to those lost at sea, particularly mentioning one storm in the eighteen-fifties that claimed fifteen lives. It's very sobering to stand at the monument, reading the names on the plaque (which often repeat, indicating fathers and sons or brothers). Being out there basically on the edge of the world, the sea is a big part of the culture. There's a sort of fatalistic idea that when your time comes, the sea claims you. For such a small community, the sea and its tragedies are a big part of life.
Anyway, returning from that literary tangent, the largest of the islands, Inishmore (the Irish, Inis Mor, means "big island") has a population of only about 900, so there are very few cars or even roads. For us, that meant our mode of transportation was bicycle! I cannot describe how awesome it was to be biking around the coast of the island. I will say this: blue waters, mountains in the distance, and cows. Lots and lots of cows. Our adventure of the day took us on a bike and then a hike up the hill to the ruins of a church. We got up the hill and looked over the other side and after a steep stretch of fields and rock fences, we were looking at the Atlantic Ocean. If you went directly west from the Aran Islands into the ocean, Boston would be the first thing you would hit. The Celtic peoples believed that the edge of the ocean was where Tir-na-nOg, the Land of Eternal Youth, was. The extreme Tolkien fanatic in me is now going to make the connection to the West of Lord of the Rings, the Undying Lands of the Elves. Nerd moment over. Anyway, now that we were up on the top of the hill, we had the option of following Dr. Lennon (aka Joe, the new Irish Studies director) to the Black Fort, another ruin on the island. With great directions from Murphy ("When you get to the Atlantic, turn right". Thanks Murph) we headed out. The hike was a lot longer than we expected, turning into an hour and a half of climbing rock fences and trying to figure out what the fort actually was, since it was most likely a large wall of rock in the among lots of other rock walls. But it was a great walk, since we were walking along the cliffs. We did eventually make it there, and it was pretty cool. The outer walls still stand, as well as some walls of rooms and stairs. We took a much shorter way back.
Now, for an aside: before I left for Ireland, I had many people request that I find a guy in Ireland for them who was pretty much Gerard Butler's character from "P.S I Love You." Well, ladies, I have found him, the perfect Irish man: he sings, he dances, he plays the banjo and the tin whistle. The only catch? He's about 9 years old. But I'll try to include a video for general enjoyment and amazement. The band is the Mulkerrin brothers, who are, you guessed it, brothers. The oldest is only 14. Look them up on Youtube; maybe we can get them for Novafest!
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Us5nIATjQjM