Lough Tara in her Castle

Okay so this is about a week after the fact..... But last Tuesday was FIELD TRIP DAY! Seriously though, a lot of fields.... And I took pictures! But I won't show them all to you =)

So the first spot we went to was Loughcrew with [pronounced: LOCK; equivalent to LOCH as in LOCH NESS]. Loughcrew is a site with about 30 passage tombs. There are way more on the surrounding hills, with about six on the hill we visited. Passage tombs are tombs in a hill at the end of a passage (yeah, it's that simple). They are the little bumps on the tops of hills all over Ireland. The tombs were built a LOOOOOOONG time ago by the original peoples of Ireland in about 3000 BC. Due to some of the artwork on the tombs, archaeologists believe that the people who made them worshipped the sun in some manner. All of the tombs were very elaborately built, not in the architecture, per se, but in the alignments and the difficulty that was gone through to get the quartz (that has now disappeared) from about 80 km away from the site. And they didn't have roads then. Although the roads they have now wouldn't make it THAT much easier. Anyways, all the tombs line up with some other tomb, sometimes kilometres away. Others solarly line up with certain days of the year. Loughcrew lines up with the equinoxes... equini? ... the vernal equinox and the autumnal equinox. By line up I mean that on the sunrise of the equinox, whichever one, the sun shines down the tunnel, though all the rocks in the passage, and makes a square of light that follows specific artwork at the back of the tomb. And yes I went in and yes I have pictures:

That is the hill at Loughcrew that we visited and went inside. It is called Cairn T.

Me in the entrance to one of the tombs, inside the hill. They would cremate the bodies first and then place them on the floor in the little room behind me. You can see some of the art work as well. All the artwork will have been made by rock on rock since they had no metal. But, they did use sandstone as opposed to the quartz that was for the outside of the tomb. So kudos on that forethought.

This is the artwork at the back that would be illuminated. The yellow squares and arrows show the outline of the path, and the grey line on the bottom is thanks to paint.

And this is me next to some more art work that was outside. It used to be inside, but this particular tomb caved in. There were a few more caved in ones around the hill, but this one had the best swirls. I would show you some more pictures of inside the tomb.... but they are mostly just because I was geeking out at the structural work. So yeah....

NEXT

Next we went to the Hill of Tara. Tara has a long and boring history (no, it's pretty cool actually), but I'll stick to the basic original reason it was picked, aided by a picture =)

First, the island known of Ireland and Northern Ireland was the whole world to the first people who used Tara. Tara was the center of their world. It's not very high up, but you can see very far and in all directions. I think we were told almost a fifth of the island. ANYWAYS, because of all that, Tara was used to determine the High King. It is important to note that he was never really a political ruler, but more of a religious intervener between the people and the gods. To be High King you had to:

1.) Be a perfect specimen of a man, no blemishes, blights, strongest, fastest, smartest, etc.

2.) Have perfect judgement. If someone else can prove one of your judgements wrong, you won't be hired.

3.) Be able to part two stones for your chariot to go through. Note: The stones were about wide enough for a man to squeeze through, so good luck with that.

The last and final test was if your hand or foot touched the Lia Fail (Stone of Destiny) the stone will scream out your name if you are the true High King.

There are other stories that tell different events or tests that had to occur, and this is quite thinned down, but they all have the same idea: it was a mystical title and the High King was a predestined thing. Think Sword and the Stone and the King Arthur stories.

And this is a picture of me pushing over the stone. Yeah, I've been working out.

The last place we visited was an untouched medieval castle. It wasn't redone to look how it used to, it has only had safety railings and stairs put in to walk through it safely. Unfortunately, by the end of the day I was running out of steam and we had an irritable tour guide so I didn't really pay too much attention. Maybe that's fortunate for you.... Also means less pics... But here is what I do remember:

• One of the oldest castles in Ireland
• Built by the Normans
• Odd shaped castle as it had 12 corners, which makes it more susceptible to attack. It is a shaped like a square cross, with corners in between. Or like a square with square towers in the middle of each of the four walls.
• To build it the walls, the builders worked in a spiral way, as opposed to like chunk by chunk.
• The walls are almost as wide as three of me. The walls are basically big enough for a hallway to be in between them.
• There is a ghost.
• OH! I remembered the good story!

Okay, good story:

So medieval castle equals dark, dank place, which allowed rats, varmints, and many gross bugs to not just live, but thrive. Also, there was no such thing as indoor plumbing. But people still ate, digested, and excreted. This led to basically a whole corner of the castle being used for people to sit above and.... well pee and poop into. There was no drainage system, so this stuff just sat at the bottom of the castle in this big hole basically. But it didn't just sit. One poor guy had the unappetizing job of stirring the mixture. Why you ask? For, get this: SANITATION PURPOSES. The excrement of about forty people over how ever many years equals a lot of gross. But the gross decays and breaks down and releases chemicals such as ammonia. These were allowed to float back up to the hanging garments of the castle dwellers and killed every living flea, tick, fly, louse, or whatever thing was living in their clothes. I was impressed. But I still like soap and indoor plumbing. Or they just went over the edge and allowed it to stream down the white sides of the castle.... yeah.... gross.

Alright, so now I am only a week behind. Stay tuned! I'll let you know when we are again on the same page ;)

Later,

Anna