The Monkey made it to the far west of Europe when he visited Inishmore, the largest of the three Aran Islands, some 45 kilometers off the west coast of the mainland. Isolated and rugged, the Aran Islands have been inhabited since as early as the Bronze Age. Their limestone masses rise from the churning sea and contain beautiful windswept scenery, significant archaeological remains, and a unique cultural linkage to ancient Gaelic customs, including the Irish language. These are detailed in the captions and photos below.
On Inishmore, the Monkey was fascinated by the countless tiny pastures sealed in by stone walls. There are reportedly more than 1600 kilometers of these dry stone (mortarless) walls on an island that measures a mere 14 kilometers in length. Here, the Monkey poses on one such wall with a gorgeous Irish land- and sea-scape in the background.
Inishmore is home to a number of ancient ring forts. The largest and best known of these is Dun Aengus, which consists of three irregular semicircular stone walls that edge up against a 100 meter cliff that falls into the violent waters of the Atlantic below. Researchers are unsure how old the forts are or who built them; they are at least from the first century BCE, but archaeologists have discovered Bronze Age pottery fragments at Dun Aengus that would date it as much as seven centuries older! The leading theories as to who built the ring forts is that it was a Celtic people called the Fir Bolgs. Here, inside Dun Aengus, the Monkey hangs on for dear life in the high winds, with the high cliffs just beyond.
The Monkey inside the inner walls of Dun Aengus. He visited during a downpour, but managed to convince his traveling companion Schlepp to pose for a photo. You can see that shot here.
Another shot of the Monkey at Dun Aengus on Inishmore. One of the mysteries surrounding Dun Aengus and similar ring forts is its purpose. While its massive walls and surrounding fields of jagged rocks stuck at angles in the ground suggest a mighty defensive position, the fort is built at a great distance from fresh water and thus could not have withstood a long siege. And just as researchers don't know who built the forts, they are also unsure who might have besieged them. This led to theories that Dun Aengus, with its stunning cliff-top panorama and inner stone platform, might have been a religious or ceremonial site. The stones are thus far keeping their secrets.
The Monkey pauses by a sign on Inishmore showing words in the Irish language. The language developed in Ireland as a result of the arrival of Celtic peoples from Central Europe around the 6th Century BCE, when they were expelled by the technologically superior Romans. Despite the British colonial period and the imposition of the English language, this ancient language has survived into modernity. As historian Breandán Ó hEithir has pointed out, "Of the Celtic languages surviving today—Irish, Scots Gaelic, Welsh, Breton and, theoretically at least, Manx and Cornish—Irish is the only one with an independent state to support it."
Irish nationalists in the late 19th and early 20th Century were ecstatic to "discover" the Irish-speaking population and the traditional rural lifestyle of the Aran Islands, looking upon them as a sort of cultural time capsule (though there were pockets of Irish speakers in the west of the mainland too). Today, Irish is still spoken here and is in fact somewhat resurgent throughout the country, with authors, poets, and musicians writing in the tongue, and new television and radio stations broadcasting Irish-language programming. On paper, at least, Irish is the first language of the Republic, though English is accepted too.
On Inishmore, the Monkey encountered some goats in a small pasture enclosed by gray fieldstone walls. It seemed a classic image of Ireland, and the Monkey stopped for a photo.
The Monkey inspects the handicraft of the inner walls of Dun Aengus. The walls are 4 meters thick and 5.5 meters tall, and no mortar or binding material was used in their construction. They are in marvelous condition given their age and the strength of the open ocean winds and gales that have slammed into them for centuries.
For now, that concludes the Monkey's travels in Ireland. But there is no doubt he will return to beautiful Eire quite soon.
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