Fáilte Annex, Part V

Sunday, May 15, 2011

What to tell? It’s been a very relaxing twenty-four hours at friends’, with no timetable or much of an agenda, no particular responsibility for a change. Which has certainly been a welcome relief after the preceding night, the most wretched I have ever spent in any hotel anywhere. In the aftermath the hotel was very apologetic and cancelled all charges for the night; during the night itself sleep was pretty much out of the question, what with a large group of VERY LOUD people (mostly drunken men) partying at the top of their lungs—seriously, literally: yelling, laughing, singing—in the corridors from about 3:00 A.M. to just before 7:00, no one on duty at the hotel desk, and even the police unwilling to come unless the hotel itself requested assistance. I know; it sounds unbelievable to me, now, too.

But a train (two, technically, since most Limerick trains have to change at Limerick Junction), a cab, and another, commuter train later, I was in Leixlip, settled in, and walking into town along the River Rye for lunch. Before crashing for a truly marathon sleep.

Today was a long-awaited visit to Newgrange, including a tour of Knowth, another of the three major sites in the Brú na Bóinne complex, or area, at any rate (clustered near the River Boyne on high, windblasted hills with spectacular 360º panoramas of the surrounding countryside). Both are, simply put, amazing. Knowth seems more complex, more intricate, with numerous smaller burial mounds around the large one, and it had a long and evolving history of use. Precious Neolithic art and objects found there are now in Dublin museums. Inside the admittedly rather claustrophobic (if you have such tendencies) interior of the huge Newgrange mound (still open, towering, and breathable compared to the narrow, narrow passageway that gets you there), the guide points out that although it seems a small space, it’s huge by passage tomb standards. A cathedral among passage tombs (she didn’t say that; I did). Then she points out that the massive, interlocking dome over our heads, tons upon tons of stone, is simply a layered, balanced structure, completely without any sort of mortar or external bracing, that after more than 5,000 years still does not even leak. “Primitive,” brilliant engineers. It took my breath away. Then she turns off the modern electrical lighting, plunging us into total darkness, until another light demonstrates how the rising sun, for seventeen minutes, would illuminate the interior from the entrance on the winter solstice.