A visit from a Notre Dame friend studying in Paris for the year pulled me away from essay-writing and a flurry of research for part of this weekend to explore Trinity and Dublin with her instead. She was intrigued by my campus because her experience of European universities on the continent so far has been that they do not have campuses but operate out of buildings strewn across the city. Trinity College is quite the opposite: we have a black wrought-iron gate surrounding the perimeter of our campus, with just four exits into the city, three of those pedestrian-only. Since we are located in the heart of the city, security is taken very seriously. In the evenings, only one entrance is open, and you must be a student with a valid student ID to enter campus after midnight. Because of the constraints imposed by the gate, the interior of the campus is rather haphazard, with stone and brick buildings crammed in together where ever the architects can fit them. We have a few small, grassy quads, but here we call them “squares” and we’re not allowed to walk on them, let alone play ultimate Frisbee or have a barbecue.
The old Trinity library, a 65-meter chamber lined from the floor to its vaulted ceiling with very old books, is home to the Book of Kells, a famous 9th century Irish bound manuscript of the four Gospels in Latin. Irish monks produced many such religious books, renowned for their ornate illuminated letters. The monks spent hours painstakingly painting exquisite Celtic designs, animals, and symbols in vibrant golds, greens, reds, and blues to make particular passages and words stand out. I like to think of the illuminated manuscripts as the Irish version of the gothic cathedral, a way to draw the Christian’s attention to contemplate the goodness and beauty of God through intricate and beautiful art. Like statues positioned in the cathedrals so that only God can see them, some of the designs wrought by the monks are so miniscule or complex that the human eye cannot take them in. Some of the designs are so elaborate that you can barely understand the word they were meant to illuminate. It is incredible to think that these tomes were produced by meticulous monks who had only candle light and a compass to aid them, at a time when Ireland was an agrarian country of just 500,000 people.
Dublin continues to enjoy a vibrant culture to this day. I love living in this city. On Sundays the whole perimeter of Merrion Square, one of the parks in the city centre, is lined with original artwork for sale, some of it depicting Dublin. Notre Dame runs its Dublin program out of one of the old Georgian homes on the south side of Merrion Square- in fact the house which belonged to Daniel O’Connell, called the “Emancipator” and the “Liberator” for his role in forcing the British to give Catholics their civil and political rights in 1829. Bronze statues, both serious and fantastic, litter the city: Molly Malone, or “the tart with the cart” as she’s affectionately known around here, wheels her wheelbarrow outside of Trinity’s gates towards Grafton Street; James Joyce leans crookedly on his stick, fedora cocked to one side, squinting through his spectacles just off O’Connell Street; Cuchulainn, Ireland’s mythological hero, in his last moments of life, is displayed in the General Post Office which served as the headquarters for the 1916 Easter Rising; and on O’Connell Street Charles Stewart Parnell points at the old maternity hospital, Daniel O’Connell wears his white powdered wig of bird poop, and James Larkin stretches his hands out to heaven. There are dozens of them. And then there are the statues just pretending- real people in exact costumes, painted head to toe and standing perfectly frozen until someone throws them money to make them perform.
Dublin has broad, low streets. Much of the Georgian architecture remains unchanged, especially on the upper floors of businesses. The city tolerates only one skyscraper, providing good, clean views of the architecture all the way down the street. Some of the main streets, such as Grafton Street, and areas in Temple Bar, actually do not permit cars, so it’s lovely to walk down the middle of the street at all hours of the day and night, listening to the buskers- guitarists, singers, and even an 8-piece orchestra- and watching the street performers. It’s a fantastic place, full of music and color and vivacity. And it’s even easier for me to see its beauty and feel proud of its exuberance when I’m showing it off to someone else.
I took the ferry from Dublin to Wales this past weekend with my friend Angela to relax and see some castles. Unfortunately, both of us were thoroughly wrapped up in writing term papers during the preceding week, so neither of us put much thought or research into the trip. I’ve gotten used to figuring things out as I go along, but Wales is not a good country for that approach. It is not nearly as touristy as Ireland, in part because its economic situation is not nearly as rosy. We found out the hard way that bus and train services are extremely limited on Sundays and late at night, and internet and phone service are undependable, but I’ll leave that to its place.
We spent Saturday in a town in northern Wales called Caernarfon, remarkable for Caernafon Castle and the ruins of Segontium, the westernmost legionary fort of the entire Roman Empire. The differences in attitude the Welsh have towards the Romans versus towards the invading British are striking. The Romans were the first people to ever conquer the Welsh, and after their defeat, the Welsh became submissive to Roman rule. They came to have so much respect for their Roman occupiers that many of their mythological heroes were said to have Roman lineage. On the other hand, the Welsh, like the Irish, still harbor a large amount of hostility towards British rule and British culture. Reading up on Welsh history on the ferry ride over was remarkably like reading Irish history: they both have their militant and cultural nationalists, who are active even in very recent history. Wales, however, has the decided disadvantage of being attached to England.
On the subject of England, I’ve begun to suspect that it’s actually the French, not the English, who contributed the unquenchable drive to conquer and colonize to the British identity. It was no English king, but William of Normandy, who conquered Wales to begin with. Following that, Wales became one of the most heavily-fortified countries in the world, as the British monarchs endeavored to stomp out any potential rebellion. Edward I built a series of castles no more than a day’s march from each other, for maximum security. Edward I built Caernafon Castle as one of these. More French than English, having married Marguerite of France and conducting much of his business in French, Edward was the most successful British king in the endeavor to tame Wales. Having promised the Welsh people a king over them who spoke no English or French, he arranged for his son, Edward II, to be born at Caernafon and crowned the first “Prince of Wales,” not yet having a word of English or French (or any other language for that matter).
Caernafon is one of the most impressive castles in the world. Its towers are polygonal, not round, and made of bands of different coloured stone, to echo the walls of Constantinople, of which one of Wale’s mythological Roman heroes was said to have had a dream. The structure is huge, set on the mouth of the river, and impenetrable, having been successfully defended by only 28 men once. Walls extend from the sides of the castle to surround the old town, in which no Welshman was allowed to live under Edward’s reign. We wandered freely through its maze of corridors, passageways, and towers for about an hour, enjoying views of the town, the water, and the mountains from its top.
Despite cultural, political, and religious oppression from Britain, Wales has tenaciously hung onto its native Welsh language. About 20% of Welsh people still speak Welsh fluently. Moreover, Welsh is not confined to the aging population; it became quite normal for Angela and me to walk down the streets and hear people our age chatting away in Welsh. We enjoyed it immensely because we studied Irish together at Notre Dame for two years, and while always told that Welsh and Irish were closely related, we have never been able to see how that could be true ourselves. When written, the languages look very different; Welsh in particular is striking for its double “l”s and apparent shortage of vowels (“w” and “y” actually function as vowels full-time in Welsh). However, as soon as we figured out the Welsh pronunciation system, the similarities became obvious, even just at the level of vocabulary. We could recognize an incredible number of Irish and Latin cognates (leftover from Roman occupation). Some of my favourites were “ysgol,” (Welsh) and “scoil” (Irish) for “school,” and “pysgodyn” (Welsh) and “piscis” (Latin) for “fish.” We even asked directions to the Catholic Church from two men who obviously spoke Welsh more fluently than they spoke English.
Walking around the Roman ruins was an incredible experience, though they don’t look like much more than just stones on a hill. But when you know what you’re walking through, it’s incredible to think that these stones sheltered Romans! Perhaps the novelty will wear off a bit when I visit Italy in the spring. The Romans are intriguing. Objectively, you have to admit that they are reprehensible: they forced their government, culture, and language upon less-organized peoples throughout the whole known world; they arrogantly assumed that their values and traditions were the best ones, not just for themselves but for everyone else too; they pushed their borders farther and farther to obtain more wealth to support the lavish lifestyle of the rulers in Rome; they were consumed by greed, power, and luxury, and pursued technological advance without any moral constraint. Frankly, I find it insulting to the Romans when in contemporary political discourse people compare the British Empire or current American foreign policy to the Roman Empire; the achievements of the Romans, even without considering how primitive other civilizations were in their time, are staggering. I think I almost understand how the Welsh could respect these conquerors, but it’s still strange.
After visiting the castle and the ruins, Angela and I endeavored to locate the Catholic Church. We were successful, after losing ourselves in Caernafon in a cold, heavy rain for about an hour. After locating St. Helen’s, we decided to return in two hours for the Saturday vigil Mass. We spent the intervening time desperately trying to find a way to make our Sunday evening ferry. Holyhead is only about two hours away from Caernafon, but we had discovered that morning that bus and train services are extremely limited on Sunday, and it appeared that the earliest train route would bring us to the ferry as it was pulling away. We also had very little information to go on, since we had managed to locate a printed timetable of trains for Wales, but could not find a bus schedule and received no answer when repeatedly calling the bus companies. We had no internet access either, because everything closes by 1 p.m. on Saturdays in Wales, and the place we were staying had none. Finally, in an act of desperation, I texted Andrew Haynes back in Dublin to go online and find us a bus home, and he managed to produce one single route which would get us to Holyhead in time via bus, once again saving my travel-worn life. Immediately after he signed off, both Angela and I inexplicably lost cell phone reception for the following twenty-four hours. We set off for Mass with a deep sense of gratitude and relief.
Mass at St. Helen’s may have been my favorite part of the trip. The first three things which I saw when I walked through the doors of St. Helens were: the Crucifix, a statue of the Sacred Heart, and a statue of Our Lady of Lourdes, just like the one in Notre Dame’s own Grotto. I felt right at home, a world away. I have been frustrated for the last two months with the way the Irish speed through Mass: the priest doesn’t wait for the responses, and the people all mutter them to themselves, almost under their breath. I feel like I stick out like a sore thumb, because I’m used to America in general and Notre Dame in particular, where we pray articulately, loudly, and in unison. There also seems to be no standard in Ireland to determine when you stand, sit, or kneel at Mass; everyone just does whatever they want to do. Then everyone scurries away as fast as they can after Mass, fearful of having to actually talk to each other. This has been my experience at every Catholic church I’ve attended in Dublin, and it was a rather rude awakening after Keough Hall dorm Mass.
As soon as Angela and I walked into the church in Wales, however, an elderly woman turned around in her pew to welcome us. The Welsh spoke more slowly at church than I’ve ever encountered, all together, like they were savoring every word. It was very peaceful. It was a very warm environment; we talked to the priest after mass, who was also very friendly. I was very impressed to see the church doing so well. Few people realize the extent of the persecution of the Catholic Church in Wales. For a century and a half after Henry VIII’s rebellion, there wasn’t even a bishop within Wales, and very few priests. Many priests and faithful laymen were martyred. When a priest said Mass in Caernafon in the 1860s for the first time in hundreds of years, an angry mob gathered outside the house where it was being celebrated and threatened to tear the house apart. Later, another mob tried to stone the town’s two nuns. Fr. John Hugh Jones, a member of the Oxford Movement, eventually began a Welsh-medium Catholic school in Caernafon, the only of its kind in the world. The parish was also strengthened by becoming home to Italian POWs and Catholic evacuees from Liverpool during WWII. St. Helen’s has been an enduring source of unity and strength, and the parishioners are obviously grateful for this period of relative flourishing.
After Mass, we spent the evening in the pub of the oldest inn in northern Wales, eating Welsh cheese, drinking Welsh beer, and toasting ourselves by the fire. We spent most of Sunday on buses, traveling through the stunning Welsh countryside. I have seen few natural wonders as beautiful as the thick clouds wreathing and settling lightly on the peaks of the Welsh mountains, sending tendrils of mist to drip down their sides, with bogs at our feet and castles in the distance. We also got to drive over a bridge which I studied in my freshman math class when we were doing a unit on bridge engineering, which was cool. We made it safely to Holyhead, where we had a cup of tea at The Eagle and Child Pub, a delightful discovery, since both of us are huge fans of C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien, who met every week in a pub of the same name in Oxford. Then the ferry took us back to Dublin, both of us rather anticipating a nice, boring day of research and writing in the library after an unexpectedly adventurous weekend.
For my last spot of traveling before my end-of-term essays drive me to hole up in the library for the next three weeks, I took a quick trip this weekend to meet up in Glasgow with my friend Teresa Nesbitt, who is studying in Notre Dame’s Rome program this semester.
Honestly, I did not care for Glasgow as a city. The people were very nice, and the weather wasn’t as bad as it could have been, but the city is very industrialized and the buildings are surprisingly young (except for the 12th century cathedral). I was really perplexed as to why I didn’t see any buildings that were older than the 18th century, so I did some research when I got back home to Dublin and learned that Glasgow was bombed heavily during World War II, and that as recently as this past June, a leftover unexploded bomb was found outside of a school, which had to be evacuated. I am rather surprised that I did not see any commemoration of what the Glaswegians suffered during the War. Though now I do recall seeing a statue of a fire-fighter looking man wearing a gas mask outside of the central railroad station in Glasgow, with no plaque explaining its significance, and I imagine that the memory is still vivid enough for those who live there that a plaque would be unnecessary.
But regardless of the city, the main purpose of my trip was to catch up with Teresa, one of my oldest friends at Notre Dame since we met in the very first week of our freshman year through the Honors Program. After exploring the city on Saturday afternoon, we spent most of the evening hiding from the rain in a well-lit pub, talking about our experiences abroad and eating haggis, neeps, and tatties, the local cuisine. To eat haggis in Scotland was one of many lifetime ambitions which we share. Haggis is a hot, mushy dish of sheep’s heart, liver, and lungs, boiled in the animal’s stomach. It doesn’t sound attractive, but it’s delicious; so much so, that I would eat it on a regular basis if it were readily available. Tatties, unsurprisingly, are mashed potatoes, and those were the creamiest mashed potatoes I’ve had in my whole life. Neeps is still a mystery to me. It was yellowish-orange in colour and looked like mashed potatoes in consistency; initially I thought it might me a type of pureed squash, but the taste and texture weren’t right for that. Whatever it was, it tasted good.
The next day was Sunday, so our top priority was locating a Catholic church. This was a new experience for Teresa, because in Rome she can’t spit without hitting a Catholic church. In the British Isles, where I’ve been spending most of my time, it’s rather more difficult. While there are a lot of church buildings, most of them are no longer Catholic, and many have been converted to secular uses. For example, in Dublin, after the Church of Ireland (the Irish version of the Anglican Church) took over St. Patrick’s Cathedral and the Catholics built a new church building called St. Mary’s, the Catholics would not bestow the title “Cathedral” on the new St. Mary’s, because they still consider St. Patrick’s to be the rightful Catholic cathedral. St. Mary’s is called the Pro-Cathedral, a term I have never encountered elsewhere.
As a consequence, I have a rather unfortunate list of general questions I run through when I’m trying to figure out the current function of an old church building, which, I am afraid, sound rather irreverent if one is being mindful of the delicate duty of ecumenism. Teresa thought the guessing game I regularly play was pretty funny, since she never has to think about it in Rome. Part of the complication is that Christians of other denominations often call their churches after a saint, and Catholic churches often do not put “Roman Catholic” on the signs for their buildings. I’ve asked locals for directions to the local Catholic church before, only to discover when I arrive that what they actually pointed me to was the Anglican one.
We were irritated on Sunday morning to discover that the Underground did not open until 10 A.M., meaning that we had to walk under and over a few highways to get back into the center of the city from the hostel (luckily there was hardly any traffic), but it ended up being lucky, because otherwise we wouldn’t have walked straight into St. Aloysius Catholic Church at 9 A.M. in time for the opening prayers. It was one of those delightful occurrences that seem to happen to me so often: the church was gorgeous on the inside, and besides St. Aloysius, it also had a side alter dedicated to St. Ignatius of Loyola, who has become particularly dear to me since going abroad. I have to say that the rest of the congregation was more than a little puzzled by our appearance. We had tried to determine for ourselves while standing outside of the church whether or not it was Catholic, and we just could not decide, so finally in desperation we asked a couple of elderly men who were walking in if it was Roman Catholic. When they said ‘yes’, I’m afraid my reply was “Sweet!”. The congregation was mostly over the age of seventy, and we got several funny questions after Mass about why we were here, not in Glasgow so much as in St. Aloysius, with our over-stuffed backpacks and wind-blown, travel-worn appearance.
After Mass we walked to St. Mungo’s Cathedral, which is right next to the Royal Infirmary (as a Harry Potter fan, I can’t believe that this is a coincidence), and we greeted the statue of Dr. Livingstone with appropriate presumption. The Cathedral is not very large, but it does have some of the most impressive stained glass I have ever seen, including a large depiction of the Creation, featuring Adam and Eve, and another window of episodes from Moses’ life. A choir was practicing before services were to start there, and a woman waiting for the service to start urged us to attend, but we wanted to explore the necropolis overshadowing the Cathedral. It’s just across a drained river bed from the Cathedral, a huge hill covered over almost every inch by elaborate tombstones and mausoleums from the past three hundred years. They were very different from the tombstones in the graveyard of Glendalough in Ireland, which were very simple and uniform.
To warm up after, we had tea in the Willow Tea Room, famous for its unique art nouveau decor, and we visited the Museum of Modern Art. I was a bit disappointed in the latter, because it was not modern art so much as contemporary art, the former of which I have studied and enjoy (similar to the way in which I enjoy analytic philosophy) and the latter of which leaves me baffled. However, Teresa is an Art History major, so it’s always a treat to contemplate art with her. I loved the Willow Tea Room, especially the chairs with the really tall, straight backs and very clean lines, and there was some neat stuff involving glass, color, and lighting in the “contemporary Scottish crafts” section of the museum.
Besides the haggis, I would say the other highlight of the trip was walking past some bagpipers playing Queen in the street as we were leaving. Glasgow ultimately left me with the impression of a city with a serious identity crisis.
