A Literary Excursion: Sligo, Donegal, and Derry

Last weekend we left on a few day trip to the northern part of Ireland, into the provinces of Ulster and Connaught, to visit some literary locations that are dealt with in a lot of the works we are reading this semester.
Our first stops of the day were in County Sligo where nobel laureate and national poet W.B. Yeats spent a lot of his childhood summers and is buried. We stopped at Dooney Rock forest mentioned in his poem "The Fiddler of Dooney" and we also saw the Lake Isle of Innisfree from the poem of the same name.

In Dooney Forest 

Dooney

The Lake Isle of Innisfree

Our next stop was in Sligo town to see the Yeats museum (but not actually go inside...ok?) and a statue of him. It's really cool; it is made out of words from his poetry.

Mr. Yeats

After that we stopped in under the mountain Ben Bulben, at Drumcliff cemetery to see Yeats' grave.

"Cast a cold eye on life, on death, horseman pass by."

 Then we made our way over to Glencar Waterfall which was absolutely stunning and the perfect day to go. I got some amazing slow shutter shots of it because of how overcast it was. He mentions the waterfall briefly in his poem "The Stolen Child."

Glencar Waterfall

 By the end of the day we made it to Donegal town where we were staying and saw the castle there for a few minutes before dinner and hanging out at the hotel.

The next day we went to Donegal outskirts and Derry to see some spots we read about in Seamus Deane's novel Reading in the Dark.
Our first stop was the ring fort Grianan that dates back thousands of years and is mysterious since no one really knows what it was originally used for.

Grianan

Once we made it into Derry our bus drive Brian gave us a tour of all the murals and city spots. If you don't know, Derry was a major city involved in the Troubles of the 1970's in Northern Ireland over a lot of tension between loyalists and nationalists, Protestants and Catholics. It is still a very broken city and has a somber tone. Also because we visited on a Sunday it was eerily quiet and morose seeing all of these murals depicting such hard times.

Two of the incredible murals in Derry.

Overlooking the broken city of Derry. New life springs up.

A tribute to Bloody Sunday and the victims of that terrible day.

The next day we visited Lough Derg, also known as Station Island or St. Patrick's Purgatory, which is a site of pilgrimage for a lot of Catholics, but also anyone that feels like taking a few days away from the world and focusing on God. It is a very intense 3 days during the summer where you don't wear shoes, participate in a vigil all night, stay up for at least 24 hours straight, and recite the "Our Father," "Hail Mary," and "Apostle's Creed" in front of 9 different stations multiple times throughout your stay. We read a long poem by Seamus Heaney that revolved around the idea of Station Island and confronting your ghosts from the past.

The Labyrinth and Basilica at Station Island

The whole trip went really fast, but it was a nice break away from lecture in the classroom for multiple days in a row. This next week we are doing a lot of reading, studying, writing and having a final exam on Friday. 

Until next time,

Max