Colonialism

So much for my plan to look at Blackrock Castle on its impressive river site from the bridge as we left Cork. There wasn't a bridge, there was a tunnel, so of course we saw nothing. I'd already decided to buy digital OS maps for future journeys rather than use googlemaps, but that was the clincher.

But even google was capable of directing us to Cashel where, in the 5th century when St. Patrick banished Satan from a cave, a huge rock suddenly landed. The Rock of Cashel became the seat of the kings of Munster until they donated their fortress to the church in 1101 and an impressive round tower, dating from around then, still stands. As do the walls of the cathedral, built about 150 years later, despite the Anglican Archbishop of Cashel removing its roof in 1749. English Parliamentarians had already sacked Cashel a hundred years earlier, destroying religious artefacts and massacring Irish troops and clergy. But more on the English below.

Meanwhile, some complicated logistics when we got back to Dublin: I dropped B in a helpful bar with all our baggage, ready to take round the corner to our airbnb as soon as our host got home, while I went to return the car before the hire place closed. I got a cab back through rush hour traffic and arrived in the bar to find no B but all our bags still there. I was quite perplexed until I realised he'd very sensibly gone unencumbered to collect the key.

Divested of the baggage, we walked through evening light to the north quay to see the Famine Memorial, a sculpture by Rowan Gillespie (rather better than his Orpen sculpture, I thought). It conveys the horror and, for someone with an accent like mine, the shame of an Gorta Mór (the Great Hunger) between 1845 and 1849. While Ireland's staple food was infected by potato blight, and one million Irish people starved to death and a million more emigrated (reducing the population by 20-25%), other crops grown in Ireland were exported by the English authorities to feed the English.

History ripples on. It is not finished yet.