8/3/07 Day 5 Part 2: Cork to Killarney

(It's been a while since my last post about Ireland. After catching copious amounts of shit from people who want me to finish what I started (i.e.: Dad and Seth), the new post is finally here. Hopefully I still have readers.)

From Blarney Castle, we drove northwest and stopped for lunch in the first major town we came to, Macroom. Macroom was kind of a cool place, and the lunch portions of roast turkey and lamb were obscene.

This building was in the town square. I’m not really sure what purpose it serves, but it sure looks cool. After lunch we decided to look around a bit. I discovered a small antique shop with its door open and ventured inside, where it looked like someone had ransacked the place. There was all manner of bric-a-brac and junk scattered around the room, mostly on the floor, and no proprietor in sight. I called out a few times and finally a man came out from the back.

“Are you open?” I asked.

“In a manner of speaking, I suppose,” he said. “This used to be my mother’s shop. She’s dead a year now, and we’re just going through, deciding what to keep and what to sell. Is there something you’re interested in?”

I told him I was looking for old straight razors. After a brief look around, he presented me with two. One had a chipped blade, so for all intents and purposes it was useless to me. The other had chipped scales but the blade was in good shape.

“Go on and take them,” he said to me. I told him I couldn’t do that. “You can, if you like,” he assured me. Once again I passed, thanking him. I told him I couldn’t really use either one, as I shave with them and neither one was anything like shave-ready.

Ever do something dumb and obsess about it for months afterwards? I’m a pro at that. The razor with broken scales was a Puma, which probably means fuck-all to most of you reading this blog, but all you need to know is that I should have taken it, broken scales or not. In fact, I probably should have taken it whether I had to pay for it or not. Pumas are sweet razors, and with a little time and determination I probably could have restored it to a first-class shaver.

Believe it or not, Dad and Seth (and I’m guessing most of you) aren’t all that interested in straight razors. I found Seth in a small shop a few streets over. He was looking at a stool made from a single piece of wood, carved, twisted into shape and polished smooth. It wasn’t cheap, but I know if Seth could have found a way to get it home he would have bought it. While we were poking around Seth struck up a conversation with the shopgirl and told her we were on our way to Killarney. Tomorrow we planned on touring the Ring of Kerry. “Make sure you stop in Derrynane,” she said. “It’s beautiful year-round.”

After another brief stop in a small antiques store (and an even briefer conversation with the bitchy owner), we hit the road, bound for Killarney. We arrived there about an hour later, and we found our hotel by following the main road straight into town. Killarney was packed with people visiting for the Summer Festival. This, coupled with the normal party atmosphere of the Bank Holiday Weekend and The Galway Races, made parking in Killarney quite the adventure. Seth dropped us off at the front door so we could check in. We did, and then spent another 45 minutes outside the front door, waiting for Seth to return on foot from a paid parking lot across town.

Dad, being an old man, told us he wanted to take a nap, so Seth and I parted company and explored the city on our own for a while. We didn’t plan on meeting for dinner, because we were still full from our huge lunch in Macroom.

Killarney is a beautiful little town of quaint brick streets and tiny shops, popular with tourists because of its proximity to the scenic Ring of Kerry. I stopped in a music store with a promising display of instruments in the window, thinking I might find some clue to the whereabouts of the elusive uilleann pipers I had so far been unable to locate anywhere in the country. After a quick look around at the piping CDs, I realized I already owned most of them. I chose one by Jimmy Morrison (no, not that Jim Morrison) and struck up a conversation with the owner.

“Do you have any uilleann pipes?” I asked, not seeing a set anywhere among the whistles, bodhráns, mandolins and harps that made up the majority of his merchandise.

“Oh, sure,” he said. “I have one set and it’s €950.00.”

“Oh,” I said. That’s about $1300.00, in case you’re wondering.

“Shall I get it for you then?” he smiled.

“No,” I said.

“The price does tend to put an end to most people’s curiosity.”

I explained to him that I was an amateur highland piper and that thus far I hadn’t been able to locate any uilleann pipers in Ireland. He gave me the name of a few pubs in town where there was an outside chance a piper might show up, but it was unlikely. “Not many pipers in this part of the country,” he said. I was getting used to disappointment.

I made my way across the street to a pub, where I downed a few pints of Guinness North Star and had a bowl of fresh potato-leek soup. I caught up with Dad and Seth later at the hotel, and we decided to hit the town in search of some good local music.

A few pubs down the block we saw a sign advertising live music. Inside, I ordered the first round and asked the bartender about it.

“Live music tonight?”

“Oh, aye,” he said. “Most every night.”

“Any pipers?”

“Hopefully not,” he said with an innocent smile.

I began to understand that uilleann pipers were not widely appreciated, encouraged or even tolerated. After a couple of drinks, we left and went to another place down the street, where the sound of an accordion and bodhrán lured us in. We quickly realized this wasn’t our kind of place, though. It was an obviously college crowd, and after one round the musicians packed up and techno music started blaring over a sound system. Since I’d rather rub shit in my hair than listen to five minutes of techno, we quickly left and after another hour or so of pub-hopping we wound up back at the first place we started, but things were a bit different this time around.

The musicians had arrived.

They numbered about six or seven, mostly men, gathered around a few pushed-together pub tables littered with pint glasses in various stages of consumption. They ranged in age from a whistle player in his early twenties to a fiddler who had to be over sixty. They played a variety of instruments, but to my disappointment, there was no piper to be found. The pub was filling up fast. It was Seth’s round, and I told him so. As I had been drinking Guinness all day, I was a bit full. But the craic was high and I wanted a drink.

“Get me a double shot of Bushmill’s Black Bush,” I said.

“You know what?” Seth asked, “I just realized something. You can go to hell. Your fucking Bushmill’s costs twice what a pint of Guinness costs. So every round I buy, I’m spending twice as much on your ass than you are on me.”

I was hoping Seth wouldn’t notice this, so I pretended not to hear him. “I’ll have a double shot of Black Bush, please,” I repeated. Dad started laughing.

“Fuck you,” Seth said. “Buy your own.”

“It’s your round!”

“And while you’re at it, boy, get me a gin and tonic,” Dad said. “Tonight I’m drinking you losers under the table.”

Seth shook his head and went off to the bar, muttering.

The place was full, standing room only. Dad and I managed to get some wall space next to the musicians. Seth returned with our drinks and handed me my whiskey with a look that spoke volumes. I raised my glass with a smile. Whatever he was going to say would have to wait though, because at that moment, one of the musicians began to sing.

After the first few words, the bar got quiet, even the farthest corners where you wouldn’t think the music was more than background noise. I wish I could remember what song she sang, it was soft and sad and somehow familiar. She sang alone, no music to accompany her. And she sang well. Dad leaned over to me halfway through the song and whispered, “The old man sitting in front of me is crying.”

The song ended to resounding applause. The players ran through a few more tunes, Seth and I ran through a few more rounds, then the old man rose to his feet. He was about sixty, with oiled iron-grey hair and the flush of a pint or two on his cheeks. He was dressed very well for a night at the pub in a blue suit, tie and cufflinks, and his shoes were brightly polished and shiny. After humming a few bars to himself, he began a song of his own, and the noise once again died down so all could hear it.

Seth and I were reminded of the night before in Cork. We both wished Dad were with us when the guy in the Hi-B sang. Now, in Killarney, the same thing was happening, and it looked like Dad couldn’t be happier. The old man did one more song and then quietly resumed his seat. We listened to the seisun for a while longer, then Dad and I decided to go back to the hotel. Seth wanted to hang out for a while, so we left him there.

On the way out the door, Dad and I stopped at the old man’s table. I quietly shook his hand and thanked him for the fine tunes. He seemed embarrassed and a bit shy, but his grip was strong and he looked me in the eye when he smiled.

A block from the hotel, Dad and I heard some singing coming from an alleyway. We wandered down to investigate and found a small group of musicians (no piper there either) playing to an outside crowd. We watched the last ten minutes or so of the seisun, then returned to the hotel and to bed.

Tomorrow: The Ring of Kerry.