Castles, Follies and Four-Leaf Clovers

Adventures along St Declan's Way

Author: Rosamund Burton

The fascinating and funny story of one woman's delightful ramble along Ireland's St Declan's Way - an ancient pilgrims' path - battling the mist and the rain (often longing for a warm fire and stiff drink) with just an old photocopy of a map to guide her.

Rich in history, castles and larger-than-life characters, St Declan's Way is one of Ireland's best kept secrets.

Rosamund's adventures begin when she is lent a map of the ancient highway and pilgrim route St Declan's Way. Intrigued she returns to Ireland. Setting off from the famous Rock of Cashel in County Tipperary, she travels through small towns and villages, across the beautiful Knockmealdown Mountains, to the town of Lismore with its spectacular castle, where her family used to live, and then on to the fishing village of Ardmore in County Waterford.

Battling the rain as she follows narrow country roads, little used tracks and overgrown paths, she traces the footsteps of St Declan. From a day at a horse fair to climbing mountains and tracking down fairy forts, she captures perfectly the local characters and castles, miraculous wells and talking statues, the broken dreams and local legends. Stories of goddesses, ghosts and fairies are intertwined with the eccentricities and daily lives of everyday people - this is a journey full of the surprises that only Ireland can offer.

About The Author

Born in Ireland, Rosamund grew up in England until her father got a job with the Duke of Devonshire. Ros and her family then moved back to Ireland into the East Wing of Lismore Castle, possibly Ireland's most spectacular castle (Lismore is on St Declan's Way). Rosamund was able to immerse herself in this forgotten corner of Ireland with its mix of derelict mansions, and the larger than life locals. In 1994 Rosamund came to Australia to work for and later manage the Mind Body Spirit Sydney festival. For the last few years she has worked as a freelance journalist and writes for a wide range of newspapers and magazines.

Introduction

People are quick to tell me I’m not Irish, but if you were to put a label on me it could say, ‘Made in Ireland’. I was born here and Ireland has shaped me for over half my life.

Part of the reason for walking along the little known St Declan’s Way from the Rock of Cashel in County Tipperary to the fishing village of Ardmore in County Waterford was to rediscover the Irish part of me.

Although it’s named after the saint who converted so many people in the region to Christianity, this ancient route is neither Christian nor pagan, but transcends both of these. Along the way I found sacred wells and holy springs, walked up narrow mountain paths, down main streets of towns and villages, and hacked my way along overgrown tracks beside rivers.

I also discovered that other worlds coexist with ours— worlds of miracles and mysticism. I visited the statue of the Virgin Mary at Mount Melleray grotto which in 1985 over a period of ten days was seen moving and heard talking. I learnt about the miraculous bin at the Cistercian monastery that never emptied and provided grain for both the monks and the poor for months during a time of famine. I saw a photograph of the little fairy hat found at Castle Doddard on the Knockmealdown Mountains.

In Ireland people are civilised like nowhere else in the world. In an era when social interaction is increasingly no longer given time, here people naturally start a conversation whenever there is an opportunity. Like the man I was sitting next to in a restaurant who told me about the donkey that smoked cigarettes and a pipe.

It’s easy to lose our connection with ourselves, others and also our environment. Caught up in an increasingly frenetic world of money-making and career-building our minds are forever focusing on the future, and fearful of what it might bring, that the present moment is often lost.

Walking everyday I was continually brought back to the joy and glory of what was happening here and now. The sheer delight in the national game of hurling, when the Waterford team made the All-Ireland final for the first time in 45 years. The Irish love of horses, seen during a day at the Tallow Horse Fair. The heartfelt recognition of the divine present in every moment by a small convent of Cistercian nuns.

I was made aware of the interconnectedness of life. I could see the impact that the demise of the local chicken business was likely to have on the whole community. Here history is part of everyday life. People often refer back a hundred fifty years, frequently four hundred, and it’s as if St Patrick, St Brigid and St Declan are living still. In this small area of rural Ireland people’s lives are intricately interwoven with each other and have been for generations, often in ways that are totally unexpected. It was Sir Walter Raleigh, who once owned Lismore Castle, that planted the first potato in Ireland, little knowing the part the tuber would play years later in the country’s cruel fate.

I visited many of the Norman castles along the way, which are now either inhabited by colourful, eccentric Anglo-Irish, or are ivy-covered ruins in the gardens of their large Georgian houses. In the pouring rain I stood in front of the exquisite and totally incongruous Hindu style Gothic gate lodge and bridge of Dromana, where the gatekeeper turned away King Edward VII.

This is also a journey of belonging. What it means to belong on many levels. As humans we yearn to belong and yet we also long for freedom. We are forever trying to balance the two. I found what started as a walk became a pilgrimage, which gave me not only a greater understanding of what it means to belong in a community, but also, to my complete surprise, to the church, which I thought I’d left behind me many years ago when I turned to meditation and Eastern philosophies.

I don’t usually get lost, but I always lose my way in Ireland. I think it’s synonymous with the country, as even the tourist board promotes it as part of the Irish experience. Walking St Declan’s Way, despite the map, I got lost many times. Also, because my journey was not only a physical one, but emotional and spiritual, it was fraught with twists and turns and blind alleys, and in many ways was like that loved Celtic symbol, the labyrinth. And the times I felt most lost were often when I was closest to my destination.

If you would like to walk St Declan’s Way after reading this book please don’t be put off by where I went left when I should have gone right, or turned back when I might have gone on. With each person’s footsteps the way becomes clearer, but also the gift of getting lost is you never know what you might find.

1

The map

Many years ago an Irish friend lent me a map of an ancient highway which threads its way along quiet country lanes, grassy tracks and riverside paths, passing a string of castles and fairy forts, small villages and miraculous wells. Stretching 60 miles between the fishing village of Ardmore on Ireland’s south coast and the town of Cashel in County Tipperary, this age-old pilgrim route was made famous by Ireland’s beloved Saint Declan, who pre-dates Saint Patrick. I instantly wanted to walk St Declan’s Way, but it wasn’t the right time. So I photocopied the map and filed it away.

When I’ve all but forgotten my dream I have a small window of opportunity to return to Ireland and follow this historic way. Excited at the possibility of this adventure I take the photocopy out of the drawer where I’d stashed it years earlier. My heart sinks to see the black and white copy has faded over time. I realise I could never find my way using this sad piece of paper.

What’s worse is that the friend who lent me the map originally has now died, so I have no idea how I can get hold of a copy. For a moment I fear this is just a pipedream. But I decide to ring the local Irish tourist office to see if someone there can help me.

‘I’ve heard the path is very overgrown,’ is all Norma, who answers the telephone, can tell me. She would love to walk St Declan’s Way, she adds, but can’t help me find a map. As I stare at the photocopy on the table in front of me I can’t think who else to ring or what to do next. Then I notice in the bottom corner the name of the company that produced the map and a telephone number. I dial it, and a man called Barry answers.

Barry tells me he did the walk ten years ago, but from what he’s heard the way marks are now faded and the path has not been maintained. He remembers the map, but it’s out of print. However, he gives me the number of Richard Lincoln in Ardmore who, he says, might be able to help me. Delighted to have this lead I make the call and ask to speak to Richard Lincoln.

‘He went to Africa yesterday,’ the woman at the other end replies promptly. His departure sounds very finite. There is a long silence on the line. Before I hang up, in a final punt I explain that I want to walk St Declan’s Way and am looking for a map. It transpires that Richard is a gas engineer working in Africa for a few weeks and I am talking to his wife Mary. She tells me that Richard’s mother, an historian, spent 30 years retracing St Declan’s Way. Mary owns Ardmore Pottery and suggests I drop in and pick up a map. I can hardly believe my luck. Especially when I explain I am on the other side of the globe and she offers to post a map to me.

As I ponder on her spontaneous generosity, I realise how often in Ireland people go out of their way to help others. It’s one of the many traits that I cherish about this country. Despite the fact I live half a world away, part of me will always belong to Ireland. Perhaps it is the pain of unrequited love, the way this country has of welcoming me with open arms and yet at the same time always holding me at arm’s length, constantly creating within me the sense that, although it is where I was born, I do not really have a place here. Ireland is like a lover who always gives me the most magical time, but does not believe in marriage and living happily ever after. So, despite returning again and again, mesmerised by its beauty and its people, its myths and its history, and always feeling that there is nowhere more wonderful than this, I am always thrust back out into the world.

Nothing is forgotten here. The past is always present. The numerous ruins, slowly decaying in the wind and the rain and dotted across the country’s green face like small scars, stand as constant reminders of what has occurred over the centuries. I love the vibrant greenness and rugged landscape of Ireland. I love its numerous freshwater springs presided over by the Virgin Mary or heralded for their healing properties. And the acknowledgement of ghosts and fairies and other mysterious phenomena in Ireland I think has given me a recognition of the mystical, and an understanding that not everything that occurs in life can be explained.

I adore the Irish humour and the phenomenal natural wit and ability to make conversation. I laugh in Ireland in a way I do nowhere else. People feel it is their duty to entertain you and amuse you, and also they naturally want to talk to you. I love the acceptance of people’s eccentricity and idiosyncrasies here. Whenever I’m back in Ireland I am amazed by people’s intelligence and acumen, and the refusal of the Irish to conform and kow-tow. After growing up in England with its hierarchical class system, I think Ireland has given me a true understanding of equality. Whatever someone’s background or social standing there is an innate self-esteem inherent in its people and despite its turbulent history, an absolute refusal to be subservient to someone just because they are in a position of power.

That said I am driven mad by the pettiness and the divi- siveness caused by religion. Like many I struggle to accept the pain and misery that people find themselves in because they think they should do the ‘right’ thing. The loveless marriages. The young lives lost looking after manipulative parents. And then there are the intelligent, talented people who turn to drink and end up blubbering alcoholics. Sometimes I want to weep and shake people out of their pathetic complacency and force them to change.

With the period of rapid economic growth from the mid 1990s for just over a decade, known as the Celtic Tiger, Ireland became a far more vibrant place, but also a victim of its own progress. More families with two cars meant more traffic and new motorways and fewer old men in tweed jackets riding black bicycles along narrow country roads.

Ireland has changed considerably in the last 25 years, and a certain wildness has been lost. No longer are small boys riding through the streets of Dublin on the back of lorries. There are fewer street hawkers although the women with their stalls at Moore Street are still singing out the prices of their fruit and vegetables, and no doubt the candid woman on the fish stall rebuking a customer fingering the cod: ‘Them’s fish, not pricks. They don’t improve with the handling.’

Some say people cast off tradition and savoured the taste of materialism. One woman summed it up. Talking about a local whitegoods shop, she said, ‘You’d see things in there you never saw before and it would fill you with wanting.’ Now the Celtic Tiger has been shot in the foot and the global financial downturn has hit Ireland particularly hard. Once again the Irish are emigrating in their thousands to find work and opportunities overseas, while so many of those who remain struggle to make ends meet.

But my journey is not just through Ireland today, but a trip back in time to a world of saints, fairies, ghosts and other mysteries, and deep into the heart of Ireland’s spirituality and sacredness.

When I tell Irish friends I am walking St Declan’s Way I get a f lurry of emails warning me about the perpetual rain and graphic descriptions of f looded towns. I know the Irish often wile away beautiful sunny days with stories of the terrible weather, but I actually like the Irish rain, particularly if it’s soft. The droplets are so fine it’s like being sprayed with a light mist, which permeates every pore of your skin. Whenever I’m out in that soft rain I feel as if I’m having an expensive beauty treatment. Perhaps that is why during the wettest Irish summer for 150 years I have decided to undertake this walk. I tell my husband, Stephen, that from all accounts St Declan’s Way is in parts very overgrown, and it might mean a fair amount of hacking through brambles and nettles. ‘Thank God St Patrick banished all the snakes,’ he remarks. Then, despite the promise along the way of plenty of pubs serving pints of cool dark velvety Guinness, announces that he won’t be joining me.

Introduction xi
1 The map 1
2 Coming home to the castle 7
3 On my way 13
4 Perfect potatoes 19
5 The Rock of Cashel 23
6 Books and bishops 27
7 Brigid 32
8 Raths and a heavy backpack 39
9 Good boots 45
10 The Legend of Knockgrafton 53
11 The kindness of strangers 58
12 The cottage and the well 63
13 Backtracking 70
14 Castle Grace 78
15 Lost on the mountain 85
16 Bay Lough and Petticoat Loose 92
17 Pepperpots and fairy apparel 100
18 Up the Déise 107
19 Moving statues 115
20 The miraculous bin 121
21 Limping in halfway 127
22 The Tallow Horse Fair 135
23 Saints, sinners and a fur stole 143
24 Lismore Castle 149
25 Pre-match fever 157
26 A cloistered existence 163
27 Dawn chorus 170
28 Déise disaster 175
29 Battling the undergrowth 178
30 Detour to Tourin 184
31 Decked out for a dinner party 189
32 Sir Richard Keane and the pact with the devil 193
33 The Road of the Saints to the Road of Slaughter 200
34 Deluge 209
35 Turkeys and chickens 218
36 Dromana 222
37 The Bog of Hags and the holy well 230
38 Stepping stones 237
39 The fairy fort and the high road 243
40 You cannot draw blood from a turnip 250
Information for someone wanting to follow
St Declan’s Way 259
Helpful books 267
Acknowledgements 269

ISBN: 9781741759525
ISBN-10:
Number Of Pages: 288
Publisher: ALLEN & UNWIN ACADEMIC
Format: Paperback
Language: English
Dimensions (cm): 19.8 x 13.0  x 2.100
Weight (kg): 0.27
Audience: General