One Month Back

I suppose that I am still sort of grieving our time in Dublin. We've been back a month and I can't really explain how I have almost no time. Well, it feels like there is very little time. I'm not complaining, we came back to a full and lovely life. But we definitely have a division of labor -- Sheila jumped right into four (is it five?) cases and is working around the clock, and I've been back to mom/taxi duty for the kids. They really aren't THAT booked this summer, but it still feels like quite a bit to do, getting them from here to there. Sheila is trying to do work a bit differently. She has a case in St. Paul, so is out of the office quite a bit dealing with that, so we steal a lunch together here and there. We have followed through with the bodhran lessons! This has actually been really fabulous. We get a bit of time together each week, and I love the instrument. We take lessons at the Center for Irish Music in St. Paul. It's nice to be there and to be around people who appreciate the Irish culture. Johnny is taking regular drum lessons and is quite interested in the bodhran, so I hope we can get him connected with Irish music one way or another. I really, really miss our friends in Dublin and am trying to hear their voices (and wonderful accents) soon (Dervla and Ann Marie - let's get a skype or face time set up with you and the kids, please!).

I am also working my way through Trinity. I had hoped to post regularly about the book and have quite a few pages dog-eared, but I was not as disciplined as I had hoped I would be. I am nearly halfway through and Seamus and Conor have just headed up to the "booley house" for their summer stint as sheepherders. I looked up "booley house." To "booley" sounds like an Irish term for upland summer grazing, but the hut that Seamus describes (and a picture I saw on the Internet) seems like they used one of the ancient houses I found in our travels. Here is the description:

"The booley house rested in teh shade of a fine grove of larch before a stream which found its way down from Slieve Sneigh. It was a wee circular affair, about eighteen feet in diameter, built in the beehive manner by stacking corbeled stones without mortar and covered by a sod roof" (p. 271).

Here's the picture I found, supposedly from Achill Island:

And more description:
"A dozen or more dilapidated buildings were interspersed about the meadow. When we were wee wanes Daddo Friel told us these were homes of fairies who had been angels once and were evicted from heaven for their pranks. Later, when we were growing, he told us it was most likely an encampment of Finn MacCool and later yet he identified them as ruins from Biking invasions. More than likely they were nothing but old booley houses of our ancestors" (p. 272).

Then, further on in the same passage (as well as a few other times so far in the book) Uris makes reference to "tinkers."

I had heard of Irish Travelers, but never the term "tinker". From Wikipedia: A tinker was originally an itinerant tinsmith, who mended household utensils. The word is attested from the 13th century and may be of imitative origin. Some travelling people and Gypsies adopted this lifestyle and the name was particularly associated with indigenous Irish and Scottish Travellers. 

I HAD heard the term "knacker" in an email from a friend one day in reference to a bunch of "knackers" down at the forty foot. I had no clue at the time. I think she just meant hooligans of some sort, but I found this term linked up with my quest to understand "tinker": "Travellers are often referred to by the terms tinkers, itinerants, or, pejoratively, knackers in Ireland"

A knacker is a person in the trade of rendering animals that have died on farms or are unfit for human consumption, such as horses that can no longer work.^[1] This leads to the slang expression "knackered" meaning very tired, or "ready for the knacker's yard", where old horses are slaughtered and the by-products are sent for rendering. A knacker's yard or knackery is different from a slaughterhouse, where animals are slaughtered for human consumption. In most countries Knackery premises are regulated by law.

Of course, I am taking this a bit too seriously.

I hope to keep up my thoughts on Trinity!! In the mean time, I'm missing you, Ireland!