Catching Irish Eyes
By jim
31 March 2008
Saturday at twilight, Kytelers pub. Plenty of time left on a midsummer evening for a pint. I rested my camera case on the barstool, and wondered, "Which beer?"
A pint arrived by itself.
It was Bulmers vintage cider, bought by a man next to me. Savoring the cider, I asked my host, who was tapping his left foot in time with the music, about the band. "Do you not know the Briars? Sufferin' ducks!" he said, astonished, finishing his beer with one hand and loosening a button on his worn woolen jacket with the other.
My new friend at the bar grinned from under his dark tweed cap, telling me the band was famous in Kilkenny for "craic." That's right, craic. After I bought him a bitter, he told me that craic was a patter of lighthearted jokes told in between songs. When I wondered aloud if he meant crack, like crack a joke, he brightened and said "Yes. Only in Kilkenny, we spell it c r a i c."
He was right. The Briars' jests put their audience in a good mood with their stage mischief. On their break, this patter segued onto the street outside Kytelers. As three of the band members lit their smokes, they joked about their set, and asked me for my take on Kilkenny. Then they shared some tips about places to visit in Ireland, with a "must see" stop at Newgrange, north of Dublin.
Walking through Kilkenny, I'd seen Kytelers pub across the Noir River on the town's main street. The pub's placard read "hot food served all day," and showed the familiar of a witch, a blue cat. Next to it, a small notice claimed that Dame Alice le Kyteler was the first owner of the property. Dame Kyteler was accused of witchcraft in 1324, after her first 3 husbands died. She then had the honor of becoming the first and only witch burned at the stake in Ireland.
Reading about witch burning gave me a wicked thirst, and the Briars were back on. Time for more music.
As the band started their second set, the place filled up, and the words to unforgotten rhymes floated through the smoky air. Firelight thrown by an open stone hearth glimmered off of unplayable tubas, fiddles and trumpets nailed to the oak beams. These beams were held by walls made from liscannor stone, cleft from the Moher Cliffs in western Ireland.
Our bartender moved gracefully like a clog dancer as he roamed the ship-sized bar serving cider, ale and lager. Perhaps the Irish poet, John Boland, had Kytelers in mind when he penned that "the old, dimly lit bars in which, over a pint, one ruminated on the meaning of a life, are still a dominant feature of rural Ireland." The scents of hot food and beer were cozy . . . it seemed I was in the living room of a dear old friend.
There were many ways to photograph rural Ireland. I thought of an analogy: the traveller is to the tourist what a photograph is to a snapshot. Leaving tourist habits behind, I'd become a traveller, on country time. First I'd seen the pub, next it was off to the countryside.
The next morning, cathedral bells rang. I had tasted the tunes in an Irish pub. Now, time for music of a different style. Having seen Saint Canice's Cathedral from my lodging, I joined its packed 9 a.m. Sunday service to experience an ancient pipe organ, and a mens choir.
After the peaceful church service, the door to Saint Canice's round tower was open to visitors. In the doorway of this eighth-century, 108-foot tower, its keeper told me that the tower builders made the ascending stone steps in a clockwise spiral, so that from inside, a right-handed villager defending the riches stored there could easily strike downwards. A Viking invader, climbing up clockwise, would be forced to use his weaker left hand.
Atop the round tower, gusts from a strong breeze buffeted the stones. Below, an impossibly green lawn skirted the cathedral. A man mowing this lawn threaded his way between the high crosses of the church cemetery. His labors wafted scents of freshcut grass skyward. I climbed down the tower stairs.
The cemetery was quiet, although the graves seemed to speak and burial markers whispered to me. With angled sunlight softening the edges of the lichen-covered grave markers, the orange growth seemed to glow against the grey stones. This contrast drew my camera, as the cemetery was a reminder of Kilkenny times past. I photographed until dusk.
"No trip to Kilkenny should skip seeing a hurling match," my barmate had emphatically told me. A traditional Gaelic game, hurling is played with sticks and a hard ball. Like field hockey, the 3-foot long stick is curved. This axe-shaped oak, a "hurley", is used to bat the ball either into the goal for 3 points, or between the crossbars for one point. Baseball-sized and just as hard, the white ball is called a "sliotar."
In hurling, a team of 15 players competes on the field without helmets or gloves. Players injured their fingers catching the sliotar because they often got hit by an opponent's stick. Since a skilled player can whack the sliotar at 90 mph, when a stick hits a bare body part, blood can be shed. I saw four hand injuries in one 30-minute half. Hurling was war.
Fortunately, my mid-field seat at the town's hurling arena let me rub elbows with fans and have a Guinness or two. As the Kilkenny fans cheered their team to a win, I made portraits of the Irish faces sitting nearby. The town folk again made me feel at home with their friendliness. When I thought I may have asked too many questions during the game, my rowmate exclaimed "Too many questions? onsense! Let me tell you about the point scoring...".
The next day at the bus station, on the route to Newgrange, I met a school hurling team. Hefting their hurleys, they seemed pleased to pose for a group portrait before their match in Dublin. It was time to leave Kilkenny.
On to Newgrange. Newgrange was built 1000 years before Stonehenge, perhaps as a tomb for Irish kings; its purpose pre-dates any historic record. Its builders made a narrow window through Newgrange's thick walls, allowing the sun to beam light into the tomb chamber, but only for a few minutes at the winter solstice.
Entering the passage over polished stones, I crouched down and tip-toed into the tomb. My lens hood glanced off one of the musty walls. I stood within, and looked back to the opening where shafts of sunlight would come beaming in at the solstice, to light up the tomb chamber.
This momentary opening to admit the light into the chamber reminded me of a camera time exposure. Part of the magic of Newgrance is this eternal presence of light.
With other pixel-delerious visitors, I photographed the standing stones outside. Their presence was so odd that a myth emerged about how they arrived: it was said the stones were thrown, for a lark, by huge Irish giants just to pass the time. Posing for a photo in front of a huge stone, two women, one with a purple shawl wrapped around her white hair like a jib sail, were enthralled with Newgrange.
Although they had lived nearby, they were first time visitors, as was I. We all stood there in the wind, and gazed at the beautiful art on the stones, and wondered: Why did a group of Megalithic people spend a lifetime building a massive tomb? How did they move the huge boulders? What did the spiral carvings on the stones mean?
Newgrange was silent to these questions. Its presence was a fusion of two worlds, the mortal and the eternal.
It was late. By now my camera needed a resting place on a barstool somewhere, as its memory card was full of portraits from rural Ireland.
A dusky thirst came on. There was time for one last toast to friends in a dim, cozy pub, in the heart of old Ireland.
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About the Photographer: Jim Austin, M.A., A.C.E. is a digital imaging teacher, consultant, and Adobe Certified Expert in Photoshop. His website is Jimages.com . A special thanks to Rhona and John Smith of Malahide, Ireland for lodging, transport, and the best Irish coffee anywhere.
