Chapter 141
Another month glides past on the ice of a lingering winter… while I simmer gently in the blazing Spanish sun. In fact, I simmer for brief moments before beating a retreat to cooler, shadier places. My heat tolerance has disappeared and despite a longing to be en el sol, the sun and my skin are at odds these days.
Spain. A glorious return to a land that is amazingly green. Recent mad weather resulted in torrential rains blasting southern Spain. Globally newsworthy deluges of red mud from Sahara dust left the entire area grimy and striped with red- brown stains. Once brilliant white pueblos are now tinted with Saharan colours, each conventionally dry riverbed we pass over or near still runs with water, sometimes full to the width of the ramblas. This is unheard- of. The now green countryside would normally be browner, ochre, desertified with sporadic patches of resilient greenery. It’s extraordinary. The flowers are abundant and the sense of unfettered energy bubbling away at the surface of this land is profound.
Ireland, where my brother and wife retreated from the Brexit chaos. They are now happily ensconced in Kilkenny. I wanted to visit Ireland decades ago, but it took me nearly sixty years to get there – to celebrate our illustrious parents’ 60th wedding anniversary. From the rubble of COVID, our dispersed family managed to wend various winding ways to this ancient city in the south-east of the emerald isle. What a melting-pot of historical events, stories, adventures and exotica! If you fall over in Kilkenny it’s likely that your feet will be in one pub and your head in another. Live music every night somewhere, a plethora of beers and whiskeys for those thus inclined. My brother swapped a chapel in Cornwall (restored and converted into a very cool living space) for a tiny terraced house with minuscule rooms, a single bathroom with less floor space than you can imagine… but walking out the back into the garden… it’s about 12 feet wide, but goes on for ever. The reconstruction of the back yard has become an epic project.
My sister-in-love has dug out brass bedsteads, knuckle-dusters, cobble stones, an abundance of old beer bottles and other sundry historical finds. She has built trellises and dug water features, re-faced walls and painted them a rich, pungent red. The far end is now a covered space, almost liveable in itself. All kinds of flowers will decorate this space in good time. Ahh, it makes one yearn for a slightly more temperate clime when surrounded by such gardens.
And then… the castle, the dower house, the grounds. We toured and discovered, walked, talked and watched. Since I was in the company of my folks, I enjoyed the guided tours that Mum arranged. The most impressive man took us around the castle and his obvious depth of knowledge and vivid interest in the history of the place was wonderful, imbuing the experience with another level of interest and immediacy. Here, “the greatest knight who ever lived” resided at one time – Sir William Marshall.
Most of the information that flowed to us has evaded my memory, but the sensation of being immersed in such significant history was wonderful. The restoration work is impressive. In one room they managed to restore half the original hand-painted wallpaper and pencil in the remainder of the design so one can stand in the middle with a sense of awe at the level of expertise, at the vivid colours of the original, the vast expense gone to impress visitors.
In the main hall, a 12-foot long grey marble table, an original item, too heavy to move out, used not only to lay out the capes, coats, hats and mantles of incoming travellers, but also to lay out the dead. The deceased were kept on a cold table for some time to ensure they really were dead and would not sit up from a long sleep and surprise people.
The long gallery was designed to house the Butler Family’s paintings. I believe there were somewhere above 500 originally. The entire wood-ribbed roof is painted and decorated with mythic and local images – original paintwork hundreds of years old still vibrant and evocative.
A few minutes’ walk away, we resided in the Dower House of the Butler family. Ours was a fabulous room overlooking the gardens and castle itself. At the end of the day exploring all this amazing history, we (myself and parents) retreated to our antique room to watch an episode or two of Downton Abbey, feeling as though we could turn and find Maggie Smith behind us about to give us a Dowager’s dressing-down for being so poorly dressed and uncouth.
Rothe House in the city offered more insights into the running of the town and the arrival of the Normans, the exotica that was traded around the world to Kilkenny. As we wandered around the upper floors imbibing the reek of history, I entered an attic room where I found two women sitting at a structure resembling a giant loom. Before them on the wall hung a cartoon (a directional painting) about six feet wide by five feet high… the ladies were stitching a tapestry of the image before them… almost at the end, they have about six more inches to go. I discovered this was the final tapestry of a group of fifteen.
The Ros Tapestry project began in 1998 involving over 150 volunteer stitchers, several of whom passed away during the creation of this stunning project which rivals (and was inspired by) the famous Bayeux Tapestry. Creativity and community spirit on a grand scale come together to depict the history of at least four counties heavily influenced by the Normans – Wexford, Waterford, Kilkenny and Carlow. The completed fourteen tapestries are displayed in the castle. Stunning.
I could go on at length, but I must stop or Lowell will edit me out. Hit me up if you see me in passing and I’ll tell you more.
With gratitude and love, Kat Dancer
bodymudra@gmail.com
403-931-3866 (h)
+1 415 525 2630 (c)
