Collins Barracks, now National Museum of History
This is Dublin in December. The days are short, the sky dramatic. Especially when you are slightly jet-legged. First task of the day: purchase a week long pass to ride the older Dublin Area Rapid Transit system, which runs along the Coast, north and south. Include in purchase the LUAS, which stand for I know not what, which runs diagonally out to newer suburbs.
When done, hop on LUAS to Collins Barracks because on this trip, sans children, I can spend as much time as I like in museums! The LUAS runs through all the fascinating sections of Dublin: past the Abbey Theatre, past Smithfield, site of the old markets, through Four Courts, the legal center of the realm, beyond Hueston Station and across the Liffey.
I ride the DART down to Dun Laoghaire, where I'm to have dinner with my cousin, David Boyd-Barrett, his wife, sister and niece. What a grand start for a family history research adventure! Our wine for the evening is a bottle of Chateau Mac Carthy and a bottle of Chateau Barrett, the names of our ancestors.
David's niece is being transferred to San Francisco, so we are looking forward to showing her and her husband around. Perhaps the sight most legendary in Irish homes is an AGA with cloths dryer lifted above, and David's sister's kitchen is my idea of domestic heaven:
Dinner in this cozy setting set the tone for the entire visit. Conversation is an art developed to its highest form among the Irish, and this night lasted past mid-night and the last train. Sensibly, we all took taxis home.
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| Table setting at Leopardstown. |
Next morning, I was up bright and early to take the Luas to Leopardstown, one of the several race tracks in the outskirts of Dublin. Irish horse racing is quite different than what I'm used to. Much of it is jumping race, on turf, over long distances. It is thrilling and, if you love horses, as I always will, gorgeous to watch. A renowned, retired Irish horse, Istabraq, for whom the day's racing was named, was there for a visit, and paraded around the paddock. Unlike breeding syndicates for horses in the US, he's a gelding, so no further duties are required of him.
So far, my adventures were sheer pleasure, but then I took myself to Kilmainham Jail.
Interior Kilmainham Jail
Kilmainham reminded me of the power of architecture. The graceful classic revival columns of Georgian Dublin civic architecture are missing here. Instead, the fist of the British Empire is revealed in immense limestone blocks and iron staircases. My first Dublin visit ended at the library of Trinity College Dublin. Here my great great grandfather, James M'Carthy, enrolled in 1833. Evidently, he never showed up for his examinations. They keep a record of those kind of things. Trinity College Dublin also has a record of informants reports on the Young Ireland Confederate Clubs of the 1848 Rebellion. It seems the British knew at least as much about there activities than they did, but for research purposes, I noted no reference to James, and boarded the afternoon train to Limerick.