Dublin to Kinsale September 14, 2025

We packed more in to today than planned. It’s 10 PM as I start this so I’m going to be brief. Basic report:

– Met Dave, our driver/guide on schedule at 9:30 AM

– Drove to Kilkenny. Saw the Castle

– Drove to the Rock of Cashel. Saw the Castle

– Drove to Kinsale. Dinner at Kitty O se’s with live music

Kilkenny was not in our original itinerary; it was a substitute, but since we were driving by, we did our original target: the Rock of Cashel’s castle. Kitty O’s had live Irish music going when we arrived at 7 PM. A second guy started at 8:30 and was going strong when we left at 9:30.

The second guy played some Irish but mostly popular tunes. He polled the audience: people from all over, New Zealand, Pennsylvania, Scotland, Boston, Canada, you name it but hardly anyone from Ireland stepped forward. “Sweet Caroline,” Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash sung with an Irish accent and rhythm brought the house down.

Castle-wise, the origins story is pretty much the same. Early Celtic kings and invading Vikings up until the invasion by Normans in 1100 AD were built of wood. No remains to be seen. After, they were built of stone, just like in England an Europe. Rich noblemen built and maintained them as fortifications against rival kings.

The 2nd Earl of Pembroke, aka Strongbow, started construction of Kilkenny Castle in the 12th Century. Stongbow is buried at Dublin’s Christ Church Cathedral. I probably stepped on his grave yesterday.

James Butler, Third Earl of Ormond, acquired the castle and expanded it in 1385. The Twenty-fifth Earl of Ormond sold the contents of the family’s castle in 1939 and sold the greatly deteriorated castle itself to the town of Kilkenny for £50 in 1967. It’s been fixed up to approximate late 19th century furnishings and is operated by Ireland’s Office of Public Works.

Turns out the grandmother of Ann Bolyn, Henry VIII’s second wife, was a Butler. Small world.

How would it feel to sell a castle your family had called home for 600 years? For me, it was like visiting a Gilded Age mansion, one owned by wealthy individuals far above the average Joe’s humble abode. In this case, the family, frequently absent living in London, owned the castle during the Great Famine and the War of independence.

The Rock of Cashel is a Limestone outcropping on which a castle, church and cathedral were built. The Devil, legend says, bit off a chunk of a distant mountain and, disgusted by its taste, spit it out to form the Rock of Cashel. Geologists say otherwise, but what do they know?

The original Norman castle was gifted to the Catholic Church early on. The bishop, at one point, grew tired of living on top of the windy, rainy, cold hill and built a mansion in town at the foot of the Rock. Climbing the hill daily to conduct as many as five masses a day grew tiresome, so he built a cathedral in town, abandoning the cathedral on the Rock.

Unlike Kilkenny, the ruins at Cashel are some of the best medieval ruins in Ireland, dating from the 12th through the 14th centuries.

David, our guide, listed three Englishmen he despises: Oliver Cromwell, Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher. The Iron Lady’s stubbornness greatly lengthened The Troubles of 1969 – 1998. Winston Churchill sent an army of murderers and rapists to fight in the Irish War of Independence. Oliver Cromwell sent marauding armies to subdue the Irish in the 17th century, acting as Lord Protector of England in the absence of a king. He had the previous guy, Charles I, beheaded.

Cromwell’s army attacked the town of Cashel. The greatly outnumbered soldiers, the monks and many townspeople were holed up in the castle. Cromwell’s army took no prisoners. Upwards of 2,000 people are buried in unmarked grave on or near the Rock.

Our drive today took us near the town of Athy, hometown of Ernest Shackleton, the Antarctic explorer whose grave site we saw not long ago on Grytviken, South Georgia Islands. And another coincidence: the first woman to be convicted for witchcraft was Cashe’s Alice Kyteler in 1324. She escaped so they burned her housemaid, Protella de Meath, in her stead. That set the precedent for Salem, MA a hundred or so years later.

There, that’s our day with hardly any history lesson. Aren’t you grateful?

Dave’s a great driver, historian, storyteller and guide. We’ll see Cork with him tomorrow.