My Trip To Ireland, part I

[funlvnman]

This is the one I have. I absolutely love this song.
Most of it is in English, towards the end they sing a part in Irish. I'll send it to you and perhaps you'll be able to teach me the meaning and pronunciation.

Rich

Forgot to mention that I am learning the song for the acoustic guitar. I'm a beginner and not too good so far. My goal is to be able to play accompianment for my friend Jay at next years St Patty's day festivities.

[O'Callaghan]

Took me a while to find the picture of the 'hieroglyphs'. I was expecting some sort of system of writing, but these are just pictures of horses. Hieroglyphs are symbols used in picture writing, like Chinese or Ancient Egyptian.

The Vikings didn't use hieroglyphs. They wrote in the Norse version of the Runic alphabet, which has some recognisable similarities even with the Roman alphabet, but not quite enough for you to read it without studying it a little. If it was something written in runes I'd be able to read it as such, but I just mean the letters, I'm not so hot at Old Norse, the underlying language.

English was also written in a slightly different version of the Runes, before the Romans taught monks to read their own languages in the Roman alphabet instead.

There are chalk horses on hillsides all over England, usually much bigger than these, so they can be seen from far away, and without riders, but some chalk men as well. Mostly there's only one very large figure. So these Irish ones are a bit different. Not sure if they are chalk, either. I doubt they are Viking, but my reasoning is that I haven't heard of anything like these in Scandinavia. That doesn't mean there aren't any of course. I'm no expert. I don't think anyone knows who made the English chalk horses. Or why.

[thanmuwa]

Galway! Ireland! Hooray! I'm gonna like this thread. But one small thing. The portal tomb is called Poulnabrone, and was never used in druid rituals.

Poll na Brón by the way means "hole of the sorrows". The rest of the text is ltalking about the structure of the portal tomb and surroundings.

[thanmuwa]

Westering Home

Chorus..
And it's Westering home, and a song in the air,

If it is this version of "Westering Home" you are interested, rather than "Trasna na dTonnta", then may I suggest this avenue of research:

Closeup:


The back of the label (or the box) has the words of that version on it (at least it did with the last bottle I got) so you could commit it to memory every time you had a wee dram . I can confirm it is very tasty too, a nice mild Islay.
(Images from here)

[funlvnman]

If it is this version of "Westering Home" you are interested, rather than "Trasna na dTonnta", then may I suggest this avenue of research:

Closeup:


The back of the label (or the box) has the words of that version on it (at least it did with the last bottle I got) so you could commit it to memory every time you had a wee dram . I can confirm it is very tasty too, a nice mild Islay.
(Images from here)

Looks mighty fine. I hope I can get it here in Tucson. We have wierd import rules in Arizona.

[thanmuwa]

Looks mighty fine. I hope I can get it here in Tucson. We have wierd import rules in Arizona.

Do you mean they ban some single malts and not others? That would be wierd!

[funlvnman]

Do you mean they ban some single malts and not others? That would be wierd!

That would be very weird. The import rules dictate which distributors can sell which products. I have asked one the local shops if they could get me some Glen Ord and he said no. He can't even order it. How silly is that!

[Niblox]

I want to post a bunch of photos, so I need to do it in several posts.

Last summer, my family took a trip to Ireland to assist my wife's boss in teaching therapists in Ireland about EAT, Equine Assisted Therapy. It is a technique that uses horses in administering psychiatric therapy. The basic technique is to try to get the horse to do what you want, and in the process you learn things about yourself. To date I've been the "offical" photographer for the EAT events rather than a participant. I have learned so much from just watching. It's a truly amazing process.

Anyway, while we were there I took some photos that I want to share. I joined XM after going to Ireland and only recently realized that I have not shared my photos.

Enjoy.

Rich

Druid Princess Burial Mound, somewhere betwween Galway and the Cliffs Of Moher. The top stone weighs 6 tons. The burial mound is 6000 years old.




Cliffs Of Moher


Little Cliffs Of Moher

6000 years old? that will be just around the time that Archbishop Ussher said the world was created....

[Darkislander]

Really nice shots. I will be off to Northwest Ireland in June.

[thanmuwa]

Really nice shots. I will be off to Northwest Ireland in June.

Cool, which part? Donegal?