The boat rocked on the waves as a dinghy whirred past. I looked out the window. A small clump of iris grew on a low stone seawall. Across the inlet, water trickled from a pipe over mossy stone. There was silence among the boats tied up at Killaloe. The modern library at the top of the harbor was closed. I could see the cathedral on the hill. It had been built by Donal Mor O'Brien, High King of Munster from 1168 - 1194. Before that, Kincora, the royal palace of Brian Boru was alleged to have stood there.
How had we come to this place, sleeping on this gently rocking boat, as the small gray town around us came to life? Six small grey baby swans, cygnets, floated past.
I looked in the cabin where my daughter lay sleeping, dark curls tangled around her cheeks, small dirty fingers holding her ragged "Blue Baby" from home.
Somehow, I had managed to marry one of the few remaining Irish Jews, I with the passion for Medieval literature and history. Ireland had never expelled its Jewish citizens, many of whom had long been in Cork, and the relationship between the Jewish community and the Catholic Irish was one of tolerance, perhaps because of the similar histories of oppression. Although James Joyce was not Jewish, Bloom in "Ulysses" had been, and on June 16 Joyce fans celebrate Bloomsday. Barry had proudly pointed out the Martello Tower, the beach where Joyce had walked, where Stephen Daedalus ("Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man") had seen the woman in the water. It was then he had his "epiphany." I always thought of her as Deirdre, the soul of Ireland, and when our daughter was born, we named her for that passionate, stubborn, and beautiful woman.
I had fallen in love with Irish history on my first trip. Barry and I walked hours up a gradual slope to Dun Aengus, a fort overlooking the Atlantic, a half-circular wall surrounding it on one side, a precipitous and scary drop to the seas lashing dark rock hundreds of feet below. They would have been safe here, the Firbolgs, those first Irish people who were there before the Celts, before the de Danaan, lost in myth and mist. I set down my new spouse's heavy camera bag, sure he had married me to serve as a cart-horse like those sturdy Aran ponies that took tourists around the island. I was overwhelmed with a sense of history and on every trip thereafter couldn't wait to drive to one more dolmen, one more ringfort, walk through yet another pasture.
On this trip, we had gone to Donegal, stood at St. Columba's shrine, explored narrow winding roads that seemed thousands of feet in the clouds, and looked down on fields, thornbush hedges, endless weaving lines of sheep splotched with colored dyes so their owners could round them up at the proper time. Then we had rented a lake cruiser to explore Lough Derg.
Deirdre. May you never have sorrow, I thought. Irish citizen without a drop of Celtic blood in her veins, she was as passionate about her second homeland as I was. No wonder she had been drawn to the harp. It took only a few notes of Laurie Riley's harp at a concert to win her three-year old's heart. The harp, however, was not to come for many years. Eventually, as harps do, it prevailed, and an L&H Folk Harp joined the family for her ninth and October birthday.
Many Highland Games, Rennaissance Fayres, and Creativpe Anachronism Society gatherings later, we had come to Ireland. This time, bearing a harp. She and I would leave, seven weeks later, sated with music, knowing she was part of this island, this history.
Numerous phone calls, letters to Ireland and to advertisers in the Folk Harp Journal later, I was given the name of the Irish Harp Society (Cairde na Cruite) and wrote. I received no answer. Then, several months later, I picked up the phone to hear, "Grainne Yeats here." She sounded 16. She had called from her Florida home to say she was sending a brochure. It would be another year before we went. In the meantime, Barry's brother had discovered several other workshops we could attend while there. Getting information about harp happenings (this was four years ago) was no easy feat even in the home of the harp with Irish family to help.
Obviously, one has to have a harp. Peter's quest for a rental harp yielded nothing. The music stores on Grafton Street, had no harps for sale, although they could order an Aoyama if we wanted to buy one. Now, of course, we know that there are many harpmakers in Ireland. The Irish Harp Society promised they would come up with something but after several months, had not. (Eventually they came up with the loan of a beautiful historic harp given the Society by Edward Witsenburg.)
Not willing to leave this important item to chance, I decided to find a small lap harp that we could carry with us. Several makers offered designs for 22 string harps that would fit into overhead airplane bins, but no one could deliver one between February and June, when we were leaving. My sister, in Atlanta, told me there was a harpmaker near Emory University, Robert Cunningham by name. We recognized the name, for a group called Dawn Treaders had played several times at Highland Games and used a Cunningham Harp. We liked the look and sound of it. A quick week-end trip to his workshop yielded a harp-in-the-making, a beautiful cherrywood 26 string harp. He would string it lightly with nylon for travel, and could have it by the time we left.
Deirdre, more familiarly known in our house and to her friends as "Flippy," enjoyed Mr. Cunningham's work shop. She sniffed every bit of wood she could see, had the ever-patient Mr. Cunningham lay out his pattern on the floor of the shop so she could see how big the harp would be. He showed her around his house and let her play on a harp that was ready to go to its owner, and explored his house. There were crooked harps, bent harps, sad, broken harps for repair. There were Medieval and Renaissance instruments, instruments from many lands, most of which he had made.
Mr. Cunningham also made a base for the harp. This converted it from a lap harp to one which could stand on the floor. A bolt through the center of the stool fitted into the base of the harp. It was stable and light, but had eventually to be shipped in a cardboard box filled with music and jackets. We could have had it made with folding legs, but didn't think of that.
That done, we ordered a case, again after much research, from David Kortier. Fiberglass and alumninum were beyond our budgets, but David had a lightweight case made of styrofoam type material, lined with red like a violin case, and covered on the outside with a waterproof zip cover. It had webbed carrying handles. Harp and case together would weigh eleven pounds.
We would go as a family to the Irish Harp Workshop. Barry knew he could keep himself busy with his photography. I thought I might try to take one of the many courses offered at the same time at the Irish Countrywoman's Society where the workshop was to be held. We would drive around Donegal which we had not toured, and after the workshop would take an Emerald Isle 35 foot rental boat on the lakes. Barry then he would then return home, leaving Flippy and me to go on to Tubbercurry and Keadue. A crippled lady and a child! Only in Ireland, I thought, could we travel so safely and without concern. Someone would always help us.
I decided not to make train or bus reservations, since everyone assured me nothing in Ireland would be so crowded that we couldn't get to or stay wherever we chose to go. With Peter's help we found places to stay in Tubbercurry and Keadue, and sent reservation deposits to the Irish Harp Society, which was held each summer north of Dublin outside Drogheda in a town called Termonfeckin.
Clothing, toiletries, medicines, all had to fit in a single small wheeled suitcase. Harp, stool, and suitcase, along with Flippy's backpack, were all I thought we could manage on the narrow-aisled buses and trains. Barry had his own suitcase for his much bulkier (typically Irish, I thought) clothing.
So, here I was, on a boat looking at the hill where in 1002 Brian Boru had been declared Ard Ri, High King. The next morning, we would return to Dublin before setting out to Tubbercurry and Keadue on our own.
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