the Aran sweater myth

(Teach Synge, Inis Meáin.)

I'm always embarrassed to discover a mistake in my guidebook. I may be well traveled in Ireland but I'm certainly no expert, and I am aching to get back to work on the revision so I can correct all the gaffes I've found so far. (Alas, it's been postponed indefinitely because of the economy.)

The latest error concerns the Aran sweater myth, which is so pervasive that it was even included in some of the cultural history books I used for reference. I propagated it thusly on page 339:

In John Millington Synge's heart-wrenching one-act play set on the Aran Islands, Riders to the Sea, a young woman realizes that the clothes of a drowned fisherman (found on the shores of Donegal, and buried there) are those of her missing brother when she notices the stitch she herself dropped while knitting his socks. Art imitates life on these islands, for each family used a unique pattern when knitting pullovers (called báinín, "baw-NEEN") for their fishermen in the all-too-likely event that one should be lost at sea.

You probably won't see any shawls, crios (woolen belts), mairtíní (stockings sans feet), or other traditional garb outside the Aran museum, though the scarves and gloves sold in the shops are no less cozy for their lack of authenticity. Of course, the most popular seller remains the fisherman's sweater, knit in the traditional unbleached wool or a variety of jewel-toned yarns, but you have to wonder if the sweater pattern used by Sarah Flaherty and other speedy native knitters is one designed specially for the tourists.

Otherwise, as Pat Boran wryly notes, Aran jerseys are "now worn almost exclusively by German hippies, University College Dublin science students, and on RTE soap operas."

This story (about cable patterns being used to identify drowned fishermen) was circulated by the head of an Aran knitwear company in the 1930s. Kate Davies, the very talented knitwear designer and textile historian, has enlightened me here. (The distinction must also be made between a family cable pattern (false) and identifying one's own handiwork.)

Sinkhole Alley (First Month's Free!)

I haven't had all that much to say lately; most of my knitting projects are for Christmas and therefore top-secret, and I'm still stalled on my reading list thanks to an incredibly disturbing scene in Suite Française. (Yes, it is a book about war, but this scene horrified me for a different reason. I'll persevere, and tell you more about it once I've finished.)

My research reading is going swimmingly, however, and I thought you might enjoy this excerpt from Chapters of Dublin History:

Close by Old Church Street on the west were three streets worthy of some notice. The first was the Hangman's Lane, a name naturally not much relished by the inhabitants, and consequently corrupted into Hammond Lane, which it is still called.

In the same way Bumbailiff's Lane, off New Street, on the south side, became the meaningless Fumbally's Lane. There was another Hangman's Lane from Kimmage to Dolphin's Barn, where Tom Calvin, the hangman of '98, is said to have lived. It is now called the Dark Lane. Dublin also contained such names as Cutthroat Lane, Murdering Lane, Cutpurse Row (Corn Market), Hell, near Christ Church, flog Hill (St. Andrew Street), The Common Lane (Watery Lane, now Brookfield Avenue), Gallows Road, Gallows Hill, Gibbet Meadow, Dirty Lane (Bridgefoot Street and Temple Lane South), Dunghill Lane (Island Street) and Pinchgut Lane. Some 18th century street-names were even coarser; yet, they were the recognised official names, figuring in postal addresses, and found in maps and directories. The age of refinement was yet to come, and it has already reached its extreme point in renaming Dublin streets and lanes.

How'd you like to live on Dunghill Lane?? It was actually on the map--that's what really gets me!

Glendalough

(Continued from Waterford retroblog.)

I have a fond memory of the first time I went to Glendalough, in May 2000. I'd started chatting with an American guy on the bus down from Dublin, and once we'd checked into the hostel we had a drink at the hotel pub, then went for a walk in the graveyard in the dusk. It was deliciously spooky—and that night I stopped feeling homesick. (It was my first time traveling on my own, which admittedly took some getting used to.)

These photos are from May 2006, when I was researching the travel guide: two views of 'St. Kevin's Kitchen' (so called because the little tower reminded somebody of a chimney), and a view of the round tower, which is 30 meters tall. St. Kevin founded a monastery in this valley in the 6th century, but most of the ruins of the 'monastic city' date from the 11th and 12th centuries.

Onion Pie, mmm mmm!

My sister and I are doing some of the cooking for Thanksgiving this year, and today I baked this simple-but-delicious savory pie for the first time. My grandmother used to make it for family dinners.

3 cups sliced cubed onions
3 tablespoons butter
2 eggs
1/2 cup evaporated milk
1 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon pepper
1 pastry shell

My favorite pastry recipe is from David Tanis' A Platter of Figs, which yields two crusts and is equally great for sweet and savory:

2 cups flour
2 sticks of butter (cut into thin slices)
1/2 tsp. salt
1 egg, beaten, and enough cold water to make 1/2 cup

Mix the flour, butter, and salt, then add the egg and water. It'll be a little sloppy, so you'll need to throw in a bit of extra flour to make the whole thing come together. This dough needs refrigerating for an hour.

Anyway, back to the filling instructions:

Sauté onions in butter until tender. Pour in pastry shell. Beat eggs slightly then add milk, salt and pepper. Pour mixture over onions. Bake at 425º F for 18-20 minutes or until golden brown.

Some notes:
--This recipe makes a 9" pie.
--I added some cumin and fresh basil to the basic recipe.
--I used both yellow and red onions.
--The two pies were in the oven for just about half an hour.

(I'd rather not use disposable pie pans, but I am making six.)

High time for a new hat

My grandmother needs a new hat. Every winter she wears this terrible tatty gray thing that has to be twice as old as I am! So I scoured the Ravelry database looking for the perfect beret, but none of the free patterns seemed anywhere near as lovely as Ysolda's Gretel—which is, of course, worth every penny and then some. I was a bit overwhelmed by the tubular 2x2 cast-on at first, but it's like all things in knitting: once you get the hang of it, it's easy-peasy.

I stuck with the smallest size because I figured I'd need a third ball for the next size up, but because I used larger needles than called for I think the beret turned out somewhere between fitted and regular, which is perfect.

Pattern: Gretel by Ysolda, fitted size.
Yarn: Rowan Felted Tweed Aran, ivy, 2 balls.
Needles: #6s for the ribbing, and #9s.
Raveled: here.

I think this beret looks great knit in a proper tweed, too; I'll knit one for myself in Kilcarra eventually. (It's one of my favorite yarns, from a mill in County Donegal.)

The Cloisters

I'm in New York all this week, and taking the opportunity to do a few things I don't usually have time for when I'm only up for a night or two. I can't remember if this was my third or fourth visit to The Cloisters, but at any rate I love being able to pretend I'm back in Europe for a few hours. It was gloriously warm and sunny out, entirely too spring-like for late November.

The Bonnefont Cloister and herb garden.


These ladies have always been my favorites of the collection. They're early 16th-century reliquary busts; here's a better photo.

One of many spooky characters carved in the capitals of the Cuxa Cloister.

Tomb effigy of a knight in the Gothic Chapel.

(I'm skeptical.)

Waterford retroblog

Last week I got my tickets to Shannon for Shelley's wedding in Westport (and general catch-up in Galway), plus Ryanair tickets from Knock to London to hang out with Seanan over New Years. This got me thinking about the little road trip he and I took two years ago, when we spent a couple nights in the guesthouse at Mount Melleray Abbey outside Cappoquin, County Waterford.

I'd got the notion of a monastic retreat from H.V. Morton's In Search of Ireland, published in 1930. (At the time I was working on a story idea, and though that story's on the back burner now my experience there was still very worthwhile.) The English travel-writer outlines the history of Mount Melleray like this:

In 1830 a band of Trappist monks expelled from France arrived on the slopes of the barren Knockmealdown Mountains with 1s. 10d. between them! They made some kind of shelter and a little oratory. The peasants came from the hills to do a day's work for them. Their farm-lands grew. They became known for their good works. Rich men made wills in their favour, and so, gradually and within one hundred years, the penniless settlement has grown into a large, prosperous, and obviously wealthy community. Their farm-lands are a tribute to their energy and their knowledge. They have made what was once a wilderness a place of corn and fruit; and grass, where fat cattle graze...

We went out into the garden and into the grounds. There are rows of open graves. At first the visitor does not understand what they are. He has to be told that it is part of a Trappist's duty to dig his own grave...

(I hope that, like the vow of silence, this excessively morbid practice has been discontinued. At any rate, we walked the grounds and didn't see any ominous holes in the ground.)

Long after Morton's visit to the abbey, in August 1985, three local children claimed that the Virgin Mary appeared to them in a grotto just down the road. We took a walk down there too, where there's a sheltered area for masses and all the usual religious bits and bobs, candles and prayer-cards and suchlike.

The whole time we were at the monastery I only took pictures of the splendid old windows in my room. I wanted to document our visit, but not at the risk of offending the monks; after all, we were meant to be pilgrims, not tourists.

The first night we got up at 4am to hear the vigils sung in the chapel. I think it was more of a chant, but at any rate it was a rather surreal experience to be rising at the sound of church-bells in the middle of the night. I was too lazy to get up the following night, although I'd wanted to.

In H.V. Morton's time, the monastery offered more than just a quiet retreat; the writer describes being woken in the middle of the night by another guest gone delirious for want of a drink.

Father Brendan, the guestmaster, I have been told, is one of the greatest living experts in the treatment of dipsomania. I believe that when a drunkard goes to Melleray he is given the amount of liquor to which he is accustomed, but in reduced quantities every day until, at the end of the cure, he is drinking water. But it is the moral influence of the monastery which pulls him through.

The voice whimpered on for half an hour or so and ended in silly babbling laughter.

The monks we met—those few who were delegated to interact with the guests—were such lovely old men, warm and welcoming, with a great sense of humor. We had simple, filling meals in the guesthouse dining room, and at the end of our stay we just slipped an envelope into a box on the guestmaster's door.

After Mount Melleray we drove to Ardmore, where we'd planned to spend the night, but it turns out absolutely nobody (save us) visits Ardmore in the low season. The lovely B&B I'd stayed at in May 2006 wasn't open, nor was the old hotel. But we visited St. Declan's and did the cliff walk before leaving, of course. Ardmore is far and away my favorite spot in County Waterford.

(Angels in the graveyard; St. Declan's Church; a close-up of Adam and Eve; the view over Ardmore Bay; Seanan on the cliff walk.)

So we spent the night in Dungarvan, where we had a delicious dinner at The Tannery (the portions were rather dainty though), and the next day we drove to Glendalough.


Seanan had never been to Glendalough, which surprised me—I figured it was the sort of place you'd visit on a school field trip even if your parents never took you. It's one of those rare tourist destinations that somehow manages to feel completely unspoiled; but that probably has much to do with it being so near Dublin, so most people only come for the afternoon.

Anyway, we had very nice eating and sleeping there too, at the Wicklow Heather (a great meal every time I've been there) and at Heather House, which is owned by the same folks. The village of Laragh is only a kilometer away, and that's where most of the accommodation is, plus a convenience store and petrol station. I've never been to the pub in Laragh, but I've heard the grub isn't very good. Eating at the Wicklow Heather is a no-brainer. And we got to have breakfast there too!

(I'll post better Glendalough photos at some point. The foliage was really pretty—we were there at the beginning of November—but my pics from this trip don't do it justice.)