Northern Ireland

When we toured Ireland in our crowded station wagon in 1965 (see posting below), my father made a point of belting out Irish folk songs…. even though he wasn’t Irish. One of his favorites was “The Mountains of Mourne” (you can hear a nicely-sung version by Don McLean on YouTube), the wistful tale of a worker longing to be home “…where the mountains of Mourne sweep down to the sea.” My cousin Bryan married an Irish girl, Mary – and they’ve now retired to her home town, Newcastle in County Down, Northern Ireland — in exactly that lyrical place!

The Mountains of Mourne

While I was prepared for a beautiful stay in the hilly Irish countryside…. I didn’t realize that Northern Ireland has now become more like a movie set for Game of Thrones. Indeed, they’ve done a considerable amount of filming for the series there in places we visited, like the nearby Tollymore Forest Park…. and GoT tours now teach eager tourists how to use long swords & crossbows at places like Dundrum Castle.

Legananny Dolmen

I was particularly interested, however, in some of the older cashels (stonework farming enclosures) and raths (earthworks) dating from 600-1200 AD — & the souterrains (underground passageways) they might use to escape from raiding Vikings. Similarly, the tripod Legananny Dolmen, a Neolithic tomb from 2500-2000 BC, eerily reminds one of Stonehenge, which dates from roughly the same period. Northern Ireland’s countryside is obviously an enchanted location!

We didn’t miss the chance to visit Belfast too, a place with a more modern – but also comparably troubled – history. That term suits it well, & the period of religious and political strife after the late 1960s is commonly referred to locally as “the Troubles.” We visited the Peace Wall – a structure designed to clearly separate the two parties, as well as streets & other locations with wall murals & memorials highlighting both Loyalist & Republican tragedies. A visit to the relatively new Titanic Museum at the Belfast shipyards was fascinating – and we ended our Belfast visit on an appropriate note: having an Irish beer in The Crown Liquor Saloon, a drinking establishment so historic it was upgraded by the National Trust. It seemed a suitable location to discuss the pros & cons of another historical event we had witnessed just the previous day: the U.K. vote to “Brexit.”