The day Donna and I and Rich and Barb tracked down the Quiet Man
bridge was the summer solstice, the longest day of the year for those of us
north of the Equator. In Galway we were treated to 17 hours of daylight,
extending until after 10 pm. The sky wasn’t fully dark until past midnight and
it started getting light in the wee morning hours well before 5:30.
We spent the afternoon after our Quiet Man bridge adventure shopping
in Galway. Claddagh, an area close to the center of Galway city, where the
River Corrib meets Galway Bay, is known for its namesake ring whose heart,
hands and crown symbolize love, friendship, and loyalty.
We strolled around and explored the streets and nameless alleys
of the Latin Quarter. We came across the entrance to a small handsome pub
called the Slate House, its sleek and modern interior a sharp contrast to the
earthy, dark, stone-and-wood-beam styles typical there (after all, a number of
the buildings stretch back four centuries to medieval times). We ordered drinks
and toasted Judge Tom, a participant in our annual Baltimore pub crawls who we
think would have appreciated the place. Barb enjoyed her first Jameson’s Irish
whiskey.
We kept exploring. At one pub there was an open mic session,
with perhaps a dozen or more locals playing the old Frankie Valli and the Four
Seasons standard, “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You” on ukuleles, flutes, kazoos and
other instruments in sort-of unison. It was one of my favorite moments. A link
to a short video of it is here.
Ancient Burial Sites
Before we left for Ireland, I was reading through travel books
to get ideas for places to visit. I came
across mentions of ancient burial
sites. I’m fascinated by ancient engineering marvels such as the Mayan
structures in Mexico that track astronomical events.
The tomb
of Mayan king Pacal, built in the late 600s A.D., for example, in the Temple of the Inscriptions at Palenque, in Chiapas, Mexico, is
aligned with the sun. At winter solstice, the Sun sets behind the high ridge
beyond the temple, in line with the center of the temple roof, according to the
Canadian Museum of History. As the sun crosses the sky, it enters a doorway
in the temple, hits the back wall and, as it heads for the horizon beyond the
temple, appears to descend the temple stairway into Pacal's tomb. Pacal's death
and entry into the Underworld are thus equated with the Sun's death and entry
into the Underworld.
The observatory at Xochicalco, also in Mexico,
built sometime between 700 and 900 A.D., is an underground chamber with a hole
in the ceiling. The sun shines through this hole for most of the summer but is
directly overhead on May 15 and July 29. On these days the sun would directly
illuminate an illustration of the sun on the floor.
Ireland, too, has such sites, yet that were built thousands of
years before the Mayan structures. Passage graves, in which a passage leads
from the tomb entrance into the central burial chamber under a large dirt mound,
were usually placed in a prominent location on the top of a hill. Newgrange,
for instance, was built around 3,000 BC, older
than Stonehenge and the Egyptian pyramids. Behind
an intricately carved entrance stone are chambers built with hundreds of
thousands of tons of material. Above the doorway is a special opening that
allows the sun’s rays to illuminate the 279-foot-wide burial chamber for 17
minutes on one day only each year: the winter solstice.
Older and less sophisticated are Ireland’s dolmens, or portal
tombs. On our way from Galway to Dingle, to meet up with the rest of Donna’s
siblings, we stopped at Poulnabrone dolmen in an area
known as the Burren in County Clare.
The Burren
The
Burren is a barren-looking, moonlike, limestone landscape in stark contrast to the
rest of Ireland’s lush green pastures. While most of Ireland’s land is rocky
(note the thousands of centuries-old walls crisscrossing grazing or farming areas
built from the rocks dug from the ground), the flat limestone boulders that cover
the ground in the Burren are too massive to be easily moved. In between
limestone slabs is grass and clover, which sustains livestock; it is rich in
calcium and other nutrients and cattle that are raised in the Burren are large
specimens.
Poulnabrone Dolmen
We entered
Poulnabrone dolmen into our GPS and
started off. An hour into our drive we were in a desolate area, with unmarked roads
even narrower than typical. We obeyed our navigation system up a hill on a tiny
path, wondering if were about to get “Deliveranced.” Instead, we reached a
mountain peak with amazing views. After we got out to explore a bit and take pictures,
we continued on our trek, saw an unnamed dolmen in a field and ultimately
arrived at the small parking lot for visitors of Poulnabrone dolmen.
Situated
on one of the most desolate and highest points of the region, it comprises
three standing portal stones supporting a horizontal capstone, and dates to
the Neolithic period, probably between
4200 BC and 2900 BC. It the best known and most widely photographed of the
approximately 172 dolmens in Ireland, according to Spectacular Ireland
(Peter Harbison, Universe Publishing).
When the site was excavated in 1986 and again in 1988, around 33
human remains, including those of adults, children were found buried underneath
it, along with various stone and bone objects that would have been placed with
them at the time of interment. Both the human remains and the burial objects
date to between 3800 BC and 3200 BC.
When we arrived there were only a couple other people there, but
soon a tour bus rumbled in (I don’t know how the driver managed to keep the bus
on the back roads that seemed about as wide as a bicycle path) and about 20
Japanese tourists descended on the site. We bid farewell to the friendly ranger
and headed to Dingle to meet the rest of our party and begin the second part of
our unforgettable Ireland vacation.
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