Hands down, my favorite moment of the trip took place in the Glasgow Cathedral. While the church is impressive, in the garden-variety-gorgeous-old-building sort of way that becomes almost ho-hum as one journeys across Scotland, it was a particular scene from the history of the place that touched me in a way I’ll never forget.
Following the Reformation in 1560, many Scottish churches were vandalized or destroyed in a wave of anti-Catholic violence. The Glasgow Cathedral was no exception; the mob came, the Catholic iconography was looted and burned, and the Cathedral itself was in danger of being razed. And then a small miracle took place: the collective members of the city’s trade unions stepped in, took up arms, and placed their bodies between the vandals and the building. And the standoff went to the guildsmen.
Standing in the old church, gazing in awe at the collective labor of thousands over centuries, one can almost hear the thoughts that must have inspired them, these masons, smiths and glaziers. As if they held their tongues and allowed the madness to rage around them until finally stepping in and saying:
“Enough is enough. This is our work. This is our fathers’ work, and our fathers’ grandfathers’ work. Our grandsons will live and die in service to this monument, this place that shows what we, as humans, are capable of creating when we set aside our base impulses and strive to shape our surroundings in such a manner that acknowledges something greater than our individual selves. And it will not be destroyed today by your petty, violent passions. We are better than this.”
Part One: Dublin at Dawn
We flew into and out of Dublin; it’s Jennifer’s favorite city and it seemed as good a starting point as any for a trip across Ireland and Scotland. Someone, somewhere, must have decided that a transatlantic flight should logically terminate at 5am, so we landed with nowhere to go and several hours to kill. We took a bus to the city center, hoping for breakfast, and found nothing but deserted streets and quiet, pre-dawn light in the middle of the busiest part of what is normally a bustling city. We wandered the narrow streets hauling all of our luggage, freezing our asses off, and generally feeling a bit like we’d stepped into another reality. But we got a lot of cool photos out of it.
Phil Lynott has a statue in Dublin. Apparently Thin Lizzy was much bigger over there.
The only person we saw for the first hour or so.
I really want one of these posters.
The great schlep
Asleep at last
After a most satisfying breakfast at Bewley’s on Grafton Street (and a long nap for the kids in the booth), we went to the station and caught our bus to Warrenpoint. Warrenpoint is located right at the widening of Carlingford Lough, the fjord that forms part of the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic. It’s a truly beautiful spot; the Mourne Mountains of the North and the Cooley Mountains of the South meet to form a narrow sea channel and we spent many a contented moment gazing at the moon and sun as they passed over the gorgeous blue-green water.
The town itself is small, with around 7,000 residents, and predominantly Catholic. The boys were intrigued by this all-consuming distinction in that part of the world; whenever they met a school friend of the cousins, the first question was always “Catholic or Protestant?” Apparently “neither” isn’t an acceptable answer, so Kieran started answering “Jewish.” Brevity aside, it’s a distinction that cost the lives of 18 British troops in 1979. The Warrenpoint ambush was the largest single-incident loss of lives for the British during The Troubles.
These days, however, it’s a pleasant spot. We spent a few days wandering around, drinking late-morning coffees, burning peat or coal fires in the sitting room, and letting the boys catch up on some much-needed cousin love. On St. Patrick’s day we went off to the pub where more than one person noted that I didn’t look like any of the other men there; short and dark-haired seems to be the predominant phenotypic in that part of the world. It was a fun evening, though. I got a kick out of the fact that I was sitting in Ireland watching the locals using a Japanese party machine to drunkenly display their love of American Country and Western music. It’s a small world, after all.
