Croagh Patrick (Irish: Cruach Phádraig, meaning "(Saint) Patrick's Stack"), nicknamed the Reek, is a 764 metres (2,507 ft) mountain and an important site of pilgrimage in County Mayo in Ireland. It is 8 kilometres (5 mi) from Westport, above the villages of Murrisk and Lecanvey. It is the third highest mountain in County Mayo after Mweelrea and Nephin. It is climbed by pilgrims on Reek Sunday every year, which is the last Sunday in July. It forms the southern part of a U-shaped valley created by a glacier flowing into Clew Bay in the last Ice Age. Croagh Patrick is part of a longer east-west ridge; the westernmost peak is called Ben Gorm.
Croagh Patrick has been a site of pagan pilgrimage, especially for the summer solstice, since 3,000 B.C. It is now a site of Christian pilgrimage associated with Saint Patrick who reputedly fasted on the summit for forty days in the fifth century A.D. Thousands of people climb the mountain every Reek Sunday, which is the last Sunday in July.
We took the day off on Tuesday, did some laundry and some blogging, and Jan walked down to the beach. On Wednesday, we spent some time in nearby Westport, the 'big' city in the area, and the county seat of County Mayo. I had intended to do some genealogy sleuthing on my maternal ancestors who hailed from County Mayo, but I was ill prepared and it would have taken a lot more time than we really wanted to give it on this trip. Then on Thursday, we packed up and headed toward Limerick... we would be staying in Adare, which is near Limerick, but we found enough to do in Adare that we never did get to Limerick. However, in lieu of the geographical Limerick, suffer my Limerick that I wrote when my friend and fellow carpenter, Carl, had been wrongfully accused of building a crooked chimney...
A carpenter named Carl almost made it.
A chimney, yes he could create it.
He could measure real well.
Even peck at a nail.
But when it came to the plumb, he just ate it.
Most traffic and official signs in Ireland are printed in both standard English and Irish (Gaelic). From Wikipedia: Irish (Gaeilge) is a Goidelic language of the Indo-European languages family, originating in Ireland and historically spoken by the Irish people. Irish is spoken as a first language by a small minority of Irish people, and as a second language by a rather larger group. Irish enjoys constitutional status as the national and first official language of the Republic of Ireland. It is an official language of the European Union and an officially recognised minority language in Northern Ireland.
Which makes Westport here, Cathair na Mart!
on our way out of town on Thursday...
The Great Famine (Irish: an Gorta Mór) was a period of mass starvation, disease and emigration in Ireland between 1845 and 1852. It is sometimes referred to, mostly outside Ireland, as the Irish Potato Famine because one-third of the population was then solely reliant on this cheap crop for a number of historical reasons. During the famine approximately 1 million people died and a million more emigrated from Ireland, causing the island's population to fall by between 20% and 25%. The proximate cause of famine was a potato disease commonly known as potato blight.
Although the potato crop failed, the country was still producing and exporting more than enough grain crops to feed the population. Records show during the period Ireland was exporting approximately thirty to fifty shiploads per day of food produce. As a consequence of these exports and a number of other factors such as land acquisition, absentee landlords and the effect of the 1690 penal laws, the Great Famine today is viewed by a number of historical academics as a form of either direct or indirect genocide.
One of my maternal ancestors came to the US from Ireland during this time.
It was a drive fraught with the usual perils of driving in Ireland, narrow roads, no shoulder, poor marking, traffic rotaries, people parking on the street, and...
But we took the long scenic route anyway, stopping for breakfast along the way, near the only fjord in Ireland. And, as has been the case everywhere so far, we were very pleased with our choice of accommodations when we arrived in Adare.
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