Monday, 21 August 2000
1:45 p.m. -- I'm staying here tonight and heading back to Dublin via Tralee and Limerick on Tuesday. I'm pre-booked into Jacob's Inn at 11.25 punts sans breakfast for Tues. night (eta = 8 p.m.). That seemed like a good price last week; these 6.50 punts a night places have spoiled me...<*chuckle*>
Went down to see Fungie (pronounced with hard G) about 8 a.m. and spent one and a half hours watching him with the swimmers. Walked past Hussey's Folly (pic w/ rook sitting on it). Went down to Dingle and cashed another $100, got 79.58 for it. Downpour kept me in the Fexco office about 20 min. Bought a walking stick and some presents at 2 craft shops. Went over and signed up for an archaeologist's tour this afternoon. Lovely house and garden, lovely children (2 girls) and Mrs. Collins (very preggers). They run a B&B with his mum, too.
Got some pics of wild fuchia (those trumpet-shaped flowers). Also, shot the interesting fishing boats at the quay. Hitched back here and had a chicken sandwich with garlic dressing, comparable to Big G's (made it myself out of the supplies I got yesterday). The archaeologist is going to pick me up at the gate here at 2:10, so I better quit for now.
Tour -- guide = Kevin. Lord Ventry imported fuchia, which has become an invasive shrub. In his garden, there are cyclids (fern trees), like in Golden Gate Park. He brought some ogham (said "Om") stones to his gardens. Oral tradition prior to 4th century B.C. Ogham is written is in a sort of Roman numeral style. Writing emanates from a central line. Notches are vowels:1=A, 2=E, 3=I, 4=O, 5=U. Consonants are longer lines,- left 1-5, right 1-5, and slanted lines 1-5. Ogham stones bridge the gap between pagan and Christian times. Lord Ventry's house has been turned into a girls' school, where the teaching is all in the Irish (Gaelic) language. Dingle Peninsula is an Irish-speaking area.
Fitzgerald's Fort was the next stop. It's a medieval castle built in a Neolithic ring fort which was built around 1,000 B.C. The last family to live in the castle was the Falveys. Presently, the land surrounding the ruins is a sheep pasture. We scrambled up a muddy bank and I laid on my tummy to take a picture through the wire fence. We could see the old tower on the Ventry peninsula from here, and I remembered to ask Kevin about it. It's called the Esk Tower and was built at the time of the Famine to point ships toward the Dingle Channel,which is only 200 yards across at high tide, Kevin said. That is, it was a public works project to provide people with some pay to buy food. (I wonder, was it a lack of food or a lack of money that caused the starvation?)
Reask Monastic Enclosure was founded between 400-500 A.D.