"Though my soul may set in darkness, it will rise in perfect light;
I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night."
-Sarah Williams, "The Old Astronomer to His Pupil"
Sunday, October 28, 2012
Today we went to the Cliffs of Moher, though many of us opted out because of the weather and from yesterday's trip to Inish More. After a two hour bus ride we finally made it to the Cliffs, which are indeed insane. Like the Cliffs of Dover we had bad luck with the weather, but it made the trip more memorable. The first half hour was okay, though the gray clouds were rolling in at an alarming pace.
The pictures don't look quite as majestic, but these cliffs are HUGE. I learned today that they were not only used in The Princess Bride, but also in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Hundreds of white birds flew in graceful loops all around the cliffs.
We walked around for an hour or so and explored the cliffs. People were crazy and were walking along the edge, but not anyone from our group. Soon the rain started pouring on us in hard splatters. Because the wind was gusting over 40mph we couldn't take out our umbrellas, so we had to brave the wind and rain. It was so windy that the rain blew sideways and looked like mist.
By the time we got back to the coach we were all pretty wet. Even though the weather wasn't the greatest it was still fun to go. Besides, we all made Princess Bride jokes and made a plan to watch the movie again sometime soon. Tomorrow we head back to Northern Ireland. We have loads of homework to do before getting ready for our mud run on Wednesday!
Apologies for the lack of updates. We've been pretty busy the past two weeks, what with a Dickens research paper to write and places to see! I'm writing about Dickensian character doubling, specifically focusing on Estella and Biddy from Great Expectations. Currently, I'm writing from our hotel in Galway, Ireland, where we are spending the weekend.
Deciding what to write about for this blog past was hard, since we've done so many things. I could be serious and write about the serious topic of the British Troubles, or even of our experience with the Benedictine Monks hanging out down the road in Rostrevor (Northern Ireland, which is a completely different country). Going to all five services with the monks was quite an experience and is worth blogging about. Oh, and the monks happen to love our college, so they've been really nice to us. I could also write about daily life with this crazy group of people, but again it's another blog post for another time.
For the past 9 weeks Chris, one of the professors, has been making jokes about how this is the "prison semester." Last week in Dublin we visited Kilmingham Jail and earlier this semester we visited another jail for a presentation on Oscar Wilde. However, we've been arguing that this should be called "the monastic semester" because of the number of monasteries we've visited.
The Republic of Ireland is a beautiful country, and I wish we were spending more time here. As part of our brief stay in the Republic, and as part of the Christian college curriculum we've been touring ancient ruins of monasteries. Irish Christianity is known for its Celtic influences, especially in the form of High Celtic Crosses. At first I thought, "well, they are just crosses, whatever." I didn't realize how HUGE these things are:
Granted, I'm a pretty small person anyway, but I hope this gives you an idea of how big these things are.
The Galway seaside at 9:30am.
Today we took a day trip out to Inish Mor, one of the Aran islands off the coast of Ireland. We got up early to catch a shuttle to the harbor, where we then caught a ferry to the island. Because we're so far north the sun has been rising at 7:30am, which confuses me when we have to leave early.
The highlight of the day was undoubtedly hanging our heads over a 300 foot cliff, although I didn't. The sheer cliff face made me nervous, Danielle was brave enough to face death.
Danielle doesn't mind. Nope.
The scariest moment, though, was when a small dog walked right up to the edge. We thought he was going to jump, but he was just a brave little dog.
Tomorrow we are visiting the Cliffs of Moher, which are better known as The Cliffs of Insanity from The Princess Bride. Instead of a 300 foot drop it's a 700 foot one. So it's a pretty full weekend, and these outings are optional, but why not visit the Cliffs of Insanity?
I do have a presentation for Dickens to prepare for later this week, so I will work on my presentation notes before getting ready to face the Cliffs of Insanity. On Wednesday we will be participating in a charity mud run, which shall be cold but (I'm hoping) fun! Just know that we are having a blast in Ireland and are all singing drinking songs that our host in Northern Ireland taught us. So I'll end this blog post with a traditional Irish drinking song:
Gosh, I didn't expect to find Internet here, but now it's stable enough for us to do research and make sure we have next semester's schedules all figured out. We've been here for about a week and have had some amazing experiences already. We spent the day in Dublin yesterday and I have many thoughts about that literary city, but Rostrevor is an interesting village in itself.
Later, when I am not so weighed down with Dickens research, I will write about "The Troubles" in Rostrevor, our hosts' stories about the conflicts in this little village, and of how my trip to Kilmingham Jail in Dublin broadened my understanding of the British-Irish conflicts.
Because the Internet is so spotty in Ditchingham, I don't normally make blog posts there. Nothing much is happening besides research in Norwich, massive amounts of Dickens reading and walking through the cornfields. On the way back from Canterbury we took a detour to the White Cliffs of Dover.
It was a rainy day, and we ended up getting soaked hiking to the Cliffs of Dover. But the Cliffs have plenty of literary significance, so we did stay long enough to recite some poetry. We also made King Lear jokes because we're terrible people.
On Monday we're flying out to Ireland. We won't have Internet for three weeks, but oh well. Lots of things are planned for us when we get there. More on that later.
Canterbury is probably my favorite city so far, even though it is fairly touristy there is something about this historic city that compels me to want to come back.
As I've said before, Canterbury is historically a place of pilgrimage, and as pilgrims we walked into the Cathedral. While we didn't walk the Pilgrim's Way barefoot, we did a number of other things pilgrims (even today) still do. If you announce yourself a pilgrim to the Cathedral staff, they will allow you to visit the shrine of St. Thomas Beckett (where his body used to reside), which is fenced off from the general public. The staff acknowledged us as literary pilgrims. The Archdeacon herself gave us a candlelit tour of the Cathedral after Evensong. As she read excerpts from T.S Eliot's essays we walked through the Roman crypts, visited the murder site of St. Beckett, and visited the two places where the saint's body historically lay.
This hipster picture of St. Thomas Beckett's shrine during the Candlelight Tour was taken by Danielle.
Visiting the Cathedral as a pilgrim rather than a tourist is a completely different experience. In one sense you are aware that this is a journey thousands of others have made before you since the 12th century. You come to the space with a purpose other than checking off another site off your check-list, for the purpose that the Cathedral was originally made for. The sick came to be healed. Others came to seek purpose in life. So as we circled around the candle shrine for St. Thomas Beckett holding candles, I began to wonder why pilgrims come to visit the shrine.
The first thing we did, however, was attend Evensong, and the Archbishop of Canterbury just happened to be there that night. Evensong in the quire was fantastic. The next morning we took a normal tour of the Cathedral, where I took pictures of cats.
Taken outside in the cloister, where the monks hung out.
The Paladins of Chivalry, a medieval historical re-enactment group, also happened to be on their annual pilgrimage to the Cathedral as well. So we saw people dressed in armor walking around and Cathedral staff looking bewildered. Later we visited the Pilgrim's Hospice, where poor pilgrims to Canterbury could stay at little or no cost.
For over 800 years pilgrims of all kinds stayed at the hospice. Now it is a museum, though it is still run by the clergy. As English students we of course recited the General Prologue of the Canterbury Tales, and afterwards went through The Canterbury Experience, which was like its namesake: QUITE THE EXPERIENCE.
Chaucer will haunt you in your sleep.
Basically it was a museum with creepy figures like this. The audio tour took you through 10 stories (thankfully in modern English). It was fun, mostly because I had forgotten how great some of the stories are. The Wife of Bath's tale is probably my favorite, although I had also forgotten how scandalous the Miller's Tale is.
Canterbury is the grand-daddy of English literary and Christian pilgrimage sites. Stratford-Upon-Avon is a pilgrimage site for Shakespeare lovers, but Canterbury takes the cake. Watch the video below for a good dose of English literature to introduce yourself to Canterbury's literary heritage.
For those unfamiliar with Middle English, these awesome folks are rapping the first 25 lines of the general prologue of The Canterbury Tales. In rainy April twenty-nine people begin their pilgrimage to Canterbury to see the blessed martyr Thomas Beckett at the Tabbard Inn in Southwerk, London. There they devise a storytelling contest, and the winner will receive a free dinner upon their return.
Most English majors are able to recite the first 25 lines of The Canterbury Tales in the original Middle English. Canterbury became part of the pilgrimage road because it is on the way from England to Rome, but it became a pilgrimage site on its own after the death of St. Thomas Beckett.
Aside from The Canterbury Tales, which is one of the most influential pieces of literature in the English language, Canterbury has also influenced other pieces of work. David Copperfield continually travels to Canterbury in the Dickens novel of the same name. Even Dan Simmon's sci-fi novel Hyperion uses the same frame narrative as The Canterbury tales.
Pilgrims typically walk the last two miles to the Cathedral barefoot, which some of us (me included) plan to do this weekend. It's expected to rain this weekend in Canterbury, but I expect there will be some who will brave the rain and make the trek to the Cathedral.
