Day 4 - Dublin

Big history day. We took an 8 hour tour out to the countryside. Matt was our chatty and informative tour guide. Our destination was the neolithic “passageway” mounds dating to 3200 BCE and standing stones. Interesting after my Brittany tour of neolithic stones Les Alignments de Carnac, dating to 4800-4300 BCE. Pic 7.

It was a beautiful day. Matt was very informative having done this tour for 13 years. A highlight was walking through a mound passageway to see a demonstration of the sun rays piercing the blackened interior for 17 minutes at the Winter solstice.

We also toured an abbey (in ruins after the reformation done by Henry VIII) and a graveyard with a High Cross which has carved details from the bible.

As the trip comes together we are piecing together the complex history of Ireland:
1. “The Famine” or “The Great Hunger”. The British like referring to it as a famine. And a blight did infect the single breed of potato, often grown in poor or even boggy soil. BUT, the British were the land owners, the Irish tenant farmers, and the British shipped grain and cattle and other provisions out of the country ignoring the conditions they had created and could have alleviated. Booo. Ireland’s population still has not recovered its prior level. .
2. Women. The Catholic laundries continued into 1995.. Women could not hold civil service jobs until 1980. Although protestant women could attend Trinity College in 1904, the Catholic church banned any attendance, man or woman, until 1970 (the same time as UVA allowed women). Now 20,000 students attend.
3. Economic Hardship. Despite independence in 1949, unemployment continued above 12% through 1960. 1949 is not celebrated as an independence day in part because of economics and in part because of the subtle change from “home rule” to self government.

From 1974 - 1988, unemployment rose from 6% to 16%. From 1981 to 1990, about 450,000 people emigrated, reflecting economic hardship. Only then and until 2008 did unemployment dramatically decline only to resurface to just below 16% in 2012, now down to 4.7%.

The most interesting thing is that the consistent attitude is “move on.“ Folks don’t dwell on the past or past economic hardships but celebrate the present. This attitude makes Ireland a special place to visit and to enjoy.Read more