Holiday Turned Pilgrimage (Part 2)

Where do I even start to describe the awesomeness of Irish culture? There are so many remarkable and intriguing aspects of it. For example, the fact that the Irish language survived after so much English oppression is wicked-notable and just goes to show the people’s love of their culture and stubborn refusal to speak any way other than their own (and, honestly, I love me some good hard-headed determination). I learned so much about Irish culture during my short time there, but what stood out to me in particular were bogs and Irish music.

I’m not going to lie: when the tour guide kept going on and on about bogs and how great they were, a fair bit of Dutch skepticism entered my brain. “What is up with these marsh people? Why in the world are they so proud of a water-logged countryside? Surely it would be better if it was drained and the land reclaimed; just get some polders in there.”

A colorful example of a Dutch polder. This one grows beautiful flowers.

via GIPHY.

My internal feelings about walking on soggy ground.

via GIPHY.

And then the guide told us all about turf cutting.

Yes, I know it’s dirtier than coal and far less efficient as an energy source, but there’s something so fascinating to me that the actual land you live on is your source of fuel. Want to light a fire? Go grab a bit of hacked-up land and burn it. Literally.

It was also cool to see the process mid-harvest. That said, the guide noted this particular crop was quite late in the season as most people had already finished hauling their turf home. Indeed, I saw several stacks ready for winter use under tarps nestled next to houses on the tour in County Galway.

A field of turf. You can see where it was cut from the ground and how deep it goes.

The process of stacking turf like this is called footing. Turf is stacked this way for drying because it's not so much the sun that dries the crop but the wind that can flow between the gaps.

For more information on turf, including all the vocabulary built around it, you can check out the YouTube video below.


I won't blame you if you don't want to watch all 46 minutes of this video. But if you're like me, you may have gone to see what the most re-watched bit of this video was, only to find out that it was a couple of chickens fighting with each other. I kid you not, a whole audience group watched these two hens attack each other and thought "let's watch that again!" I hope you too are asking

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Moving on. At the risk of sounding like my tour guide, some really fascinating things have been found in bogs in addition to turf, like ancient roadways constructed out of wooden planks. At some point, people stopped using them and they were swallowed up by the bog, but because of the humic acid produced in bogs, it slowed the decomposition of organic material, causing the trackways to last a lot longer than if they were exposed to other elements. The same thing is true for pickling fruit. Aaaaaand of human bodies discovered in these bogs...

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Now, I'm a JRR Tolkien fan, so as soon as I heard the term "bog bodies," I immediately thought of the Dead Marshes with all those long-dead slain soldiers in The Lord of the Rings. I honestly used to think this was a Middle Earth thing because it's a fantasy novel and JRR Tolkien made it up. But no, this is a very true chemical process found in peatlands around the world.

I'm so fully on the "bogs are awesome" train, but I'll carry on to the other cool bit of Irish culture: their music. I'm not talking about U2 (although they are really cool). I'm talking about the uillean pipes.

The uillean pipes are classified as bag pipes, but unlike Scottish bagpipes that the musician blows into, Irish uillean pipes are inflated with the musician's elbows (it's what the word uillean means in Irish), which makes it more difficult to play but no less hauntingly beautiful to hear when played by a master. I was privileged enough to watch Gerard Fahy play one of his own compositions on the uillean pipes before seamlessly transitioning as if it was nothing to another instrument he seemingly keeps in his backpocket at all times.

I don't normally thank myself for recording events because I tend to live in the moment rather than focusing on capturing it, but this was definitely a unique experience for me that I've already re-watched several times with fond nostalgia, and it always brings me goosebumps. The video quality is not so great, but I hope you enjoy it nonetheless as the audio is decent enough. Not captured: my eyes stinging with tears.



I was so overwhelmed with emotion after that show that I searched on Amazon to see how much uillean pipes cost and if there would be a way to learn playing them myself. However, I forgot that my husband and I share an Amazon account and he can see what I've viewed. He quickly reminded me with one text message that we live in a condo unit and learning how to play bagpipes in a city setting would most certainly violate some kind of noise ordinance, let alone auditorily molest our second floor neighbor.

Busted.

I suppose I'll just have to be content with this blog to channel my love of Irish culture for now. I can't wait to return next year to write more about everything I've learned. In the meantime, I still have 2 posts to cover about Irish history and the people I met in September. Until then, stay tuned!