Arctic Adventure Part 16 - recharging the Blarney Stone

Near Cork, Ireland lies the castle Blarney.

I'm pretty sure the guard watch tower does not actually lean.

The Blarney Castle dates back to 1446 and boy-o-boy it is everything you want an old stone medieval castle to be. Big, bold, imposing, and it sits in the middle of beautifully kept luscious green grounds (although parts of the gardens are quite dangerous - more later). The grounds are magnificent, however, don't get too impressed - it rains a lot in Ireland. You won't see a single lawn sprinkler on the Blarney grounds. In Ireland plants constantly compete to grow and thrive.  By contrast, in Arizona (where I live) plants only compete to be the first to die after being brought home from the nursery. 

As you enter the castle grounds you get a jolt of modern rules:

Later this was to be quite amusing - go to the Blarney website and you will be treated to a beautiful drone panorama of the castle and grounds.  I guess they didn't want competition.

The trees in Blarney are affectionately taken care of.

Each tree has it's own sweater to keep it warm in winter. In the height of summer, the natives take turns fanning the trees by hand to cool them (let the blarney begin). 

As you approach the castle you begin to notice details. First of all, the stone masonry work is flawless. 

There's a reason Blarney castle is still standing after over 500 years - it was built by solid professionals.

The second thing that starts to creep into your consciousness is that this really is a medieval castle. We tend to somewhat romanticize medieval times. This works well at medieval fairs and in movies. In reality, however, people in medieval times were often nasty, brutal, and lethal. You didn't get to live in a castle because you were a nice guy who made good investments. You got to live in a castle because you were the baddest dude around.  People like this always have enemies.  Enemies that you don't outright kill, need to be contained - as in locked up in a dungeon. There was little incentive for them to treat prisoners well. And they didn't.

Iron gateway to hell

If you think a dungeon looks like this - you're watching a Harry Potter movie

The reality of the Blarney dungeon is much worse. Ceiling height is about 4'.  Do not tour the dungeon if you're claustrophobic (or have a bad back).

Prisoners, however, never got to see it like this - obviously the lights are a modern addition. 

There's no even, flat floor.  There's no heat.

There's no plumbing (but in those days stench was the norm)

The very back of the dungeon (80 feet or so) is the only place you can stand upright.  It became a target for taggers, however, curiously they all used the same white paint.

  

So what about the Blarney stone? According to legend, kissing the stone endows the kisser with the gift of the gab (great eloquence or skill at flattery). So how did this legend come about? Weeeeellllll good luck trying to get straight answer. Here's a few stories to pick from:

• ^{An early story involves the goddess Clíodhna. Cormac Laidir McCarthy, the builder of Blarney Castle, being involved in a lawsuit in the 15th century, appealed to Clíodhna for her assistance. She told McCarthy to kiss the first stone he found in the morning on his way to court, and he did so, with the result that he pleaded his case with great eloquence and won. Thus the Blarney Stone is said to impart "the ability to deceive without offending." MacCarthy then incorporated it into the parapet of the castle.}
• ^{Another story suggests that the stone was presented to Cormac McCarthy by Robert the Bruce in 1314 in recognition of his support in the Battle of Bannockburn. This legend holds that this was a piece of the Stone of Scone and was installed at McCarthy's castle of Blarney. Although colorful, this folk legend does not account for the fact that it supposes that the stone was removed from Scotland 18 years before Bannockburn, and modern analysis suggests that the stone is not related to the Stone of Scone.}
• ^{Another legend suggests that Queen Elizabeth I requested Cormac Teige McCarthy, the Lord of Blarney, be deprived of his traditional land rights. Cormac travelled to see the queen, but was certain he would not persuade her to change her mind as he wasn't an effective speaker. He met an old woman on the way who told him that anyone who kissed a particular stone in Blarney Castle would be given the gift of eloquent speech. Cormac went on to persuade the queen that he should not be deprived of his land.}
• ^{Another story holds it was acquired during the Crusades and brought to Ireland.}
•  ^{Another tale claims it was made from the same material used at Stonehenge (nope).}
• (this tale is the only real one) it's a carboniferous piece of limestone.  In 2014, geologists from the University of Glasgow shed some light on the Blarney Stone’s heritage when they concluded that the famous rock is made of 330-million-year-old limestone local to the south of Ireland.

So how do you kiss the damn thing? First you have to get there. I thought the Blarney stone looked something like this:

This is, of course, Excalibur stuck in the rock (hey a magic rock is a magic rock, right?) 

But noooooo.  That'd be too easy.  The Blarney stone is way up at the top of Blarney castle.  Way way up at the top.

right at the top

telephoto shot from below. The actual stone is right at the bottom, where the two iron bands surround the wall.By Srleffler - English wikipedia [1], Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3632675

Climbing up to the top of the castle isn't for the claustrophobic.  You have to ascend a very narrow (one person at a time) solid stone spiral staircase (you descend a separate spiral staircase).  At the entrance to the up staircase is a sign saying that once you start the climb up - you can't quit. There's no way back down (of course there is, but this adds to the tension and eliminates those who aren't quite sure if they can cope)

Because of all the people, it's a slow ascent. Lucky me, we got halfway up and the guy in front of me (Bob, 260 pounds, from Oklahoma City, never met him before but a squeezing, treacherous staircase is a conversation starter) stops.  

• "Bob, are you OK?".  
• "No." 
• "What's wrong?" (please God, don't let this wheezing old gentleman be having a heart attack)
• "My pants are falling off and it's so narrow I can't reach them"

Friggin' lovely. So I had to help him (ah, the joys of EMT training). Finally we get to the top.

They do a good job of cleaning the stone (thank God!). If it became a vector for hepatitis, herpes, etc. it would kill one of Ireland's biggest tourist attractions.

Kissing the stone involves more that just climbing to the top of the castle, bending over and giving it a peck.

The stone itself (seen between the two green marks on the iron) is built into the parapet of the outer wall.  The wall was built this way for a reason.  The hole is called a machicolation - a French term for hole in wall through which you can dump rocks, boiling water, hot oil, etc. on people attacking (or trick-or-treaters after you've run out of candy).

These days you kiss the rock from the inside.  In older times someone hung you by your ankles over the outer wall for the smooch. If someone had done that to me I wouldn't have received the gift of blarney - I'da been reduced to a babbling vegetable.

"In the Sherlock Holmes radio dramatization "The Adventure of the Blarney Stone" (first broadcast on 18 March 1946), a man attempting to kiss the Blarney Stone falls to his death. Holmes' investigation reveals this as a murder, the man's boots having been surreptitiously greased before the attempt." (hey, not everything Sir Arthur Doyle wrote was good)

To properly kiss the stone you lay on your back, grasp the two vertical iron bars, yank yourself forward, lean way back and try your best not to look down. Quick peck and reverse process.  

It is IMPOSSIBLE to do this gracefully.  The lovely attendant grabs you by the coat to make sure you don't panic and do a header down the hole.

On the way back down you can explore the castle at your leisure.  This is an archer port.

Two story (drafty) master bedroom.

more narrow steps

On the castle grounds you will find a curious (and deadly) garden.

some poison.....(this is marijuana) 

This is the stuff in absinthe (illegal in the US).  You have to ingest quite a lot for it to be toxic - the alcohol will likely do you in before the wormwood does. William Shakespeare referred to Wormwood in his famous play Romeo and Juliet: Act 1, Scene 3. Juliet's childhood nurse said, "For I had then laid wormwood to my dug" meaning that the nurse had weaned Juliet, then aged three, by using the bitter taste of Wormwood on her nipple.

250 species of wolfbane - some toxic as hell.  The Eskimos used harpoons tipped with it to hunt whales.  Japanese used to hunt bear with poison tipped arrows.

The castor beans contain ricin - eating 4 - 8 will do you in, however it takes 80 to whack a duck (God love the internet). You can distill out the ricin.  At one time it was considered as a possible weapon of mass destruction, but at 1,000 times less toxic than botulinum toxin (the gold standard of WMD) is isn't practical.

Tastes awful, pretty toxic, used to treat insanity in medieval times. Some reports of it being used in sieges to poison the water supply (in small doses it will give you a helluva case of hurricane gut)

Eating yew will kill you in a couple hours.  There's no antidote. Caesar wrote about one of his generals committing suicide this way rather than be taken prisoner. 

Only poisonous to witches

Next up - Irish odds and ends, Scotland