My second day in Dublin was much more interesting and I finally met my roommate Machik, a 26 year old guy from Poland. We talked a little bit last night and he had just moved to Ireland to look for a job.
Anyway, I got up early this morning and walked to Suffolk Street to meet my group. It wasn't open yet, so I went to Nude cafe around the corner to have a cup of tea. It's a nice little coffee shop owned by Bono's brother and they sell delicious organic things.
I'm not normally fond of organized tours since some of them don't give you allot of freedom to explore the sites, but the one that I chose was very good and I'm glad I did it.
Our tour guide, Paul was a very funny Irish man who believes in ghosts and nature spirits. He seemed to have the gift of gab and told us many interesting tales, legends, superstitions and folklore. He played U2 and other Irish music while he drove us around the ancient and mystical monuments.
Ireland is filled with them and I visited a few surviving structures from the Stone Age and medieval times. One of the most recognizable megalithic structures are grass-covered mounds, which are 4000 to 5000 years old. Our first stop was the Valley of the Kings where the Fourknocks tomb is located. It's a green covered mound that looks like a hobbit home with a short passage leading into a chamber with three smaller offset chambers with stone carvings. There are three grass-covered mounds in this location and only one is open to the public. Paul said the two represents the underworld and the present world and the only one that is opened is fourknocks, which represents the next world. Legends say that if you go around the mound clockwise, you could get a free pass to the next world. He said it may not necessarily be heaven, but it could be the next dimension. The large stones surrounding and inside the passage tombs are decorated with megalithic art such as spirals, concentric circles, triangles, zigzags and images which have been interpreted as the sun, moon and the human face. Paul said that the Celts believed in reincarnation and the spirals symbolize the cycle of life. Most of their myths and legends deal with this journeying and movement through the experiences of life, death and rebirth in the ever-changing directional flow of the spiral. Even though they couldn't read or write, they could carve on things and were good at herbal medicines. Our guide said that they were an imaginative race who put great store in spirituality and supernatural and were feared by the Romans and the Greeks. Paul said they were an interesting culture and the celts influenced our modern day traditions including Halloween and Christmas. Their bravery in battle is also legendary. They often spurned body armour, going naked into battle and bleached their hair with lime. Their society was also typically more equal in terms of gender roles. Women were on more or less equal footing as men, being accomplished warriors and rulers.
Celtic mythology exhibited a rich array of elfin, fairies and tutelaries, beings that still pervade the lore of peoples of Celtic ancestry. There are also many stone circles here and prehistoric burial chambers called Dolmens, which have often been associated with the druids.
The most famous tomb in Ireland is newgrange, which predates the great pyramids of Egypt. They have passageways leading to burial chambers and were probably used as a Neolithic ritual center and now the oldest astronomical observatory in Europe. Our guide said that every winter solstice, the light from the rising sun, shines through the slit above the entrance, creeps slowly down the passage way and illuminates the tomb chambers for 17 minutes. If anyone wishes to experience this mystical annual event, you have to put yourself in the waiting list for at least 15 years.
Christianity of course played a great part in the island's history and our next stop was the hill of slane. This is where St. Patrick lit the Easter fire and proclaimed Christianity throughout the land. The hill of slane originally had a church, but only an outline of the foundation remains. It was raining a little bit today, so the place was pretty empty. We took lots of pictures and wander around the ruins. Paul said to make some black and white photographs because they always turn out great.
After wondering around the ruins for 15 minutes, we drove to another ecclesiastical site before having a lovely luxury of eating cheap. The first was Monasterboise, a cemetery with a record tower and a giant Celtic cross and then we went to Mellifont Abbey, which used to be an Irish Cistercian monastery.
Our last stop was the Hill of Tara, a site of great mythical importance until the 11th century. There is not much to look at today, but the grassy slopes, the cemetery and a small church. The scenery looks like it came from a Hitchcock film, but it looks very cool amidst the misty day, the gray skies, the spooky looking trees with gnarled branches and squawking crows.
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