Irish Mythology

     This weekend has been full of adventures.  On Saturday, we visited the most touristy and stereotypical place in all of Ireland--The Leprechaun Museum.  Yes, that's right.  There is a Leprechaun Museum in Dublin.  If I were Irish, I would try to eradicate every mention of those nasty little buggers, but here, they profit from them.  In the museum's defense, however, it was very interesting and surprisingly informative about Irish mythology. 

     If I can remember correctly, they believe that Ireland was originally inhabited by the Light people, a wonderful race that loved, well, light.  In those days, Ireland was sunny and beautiful, with glorious weather year-round.  Scotsmen from the north envied Ireland for its great weather (as Scottish weather was notoriously bad), and decided to invade to get the land and its weather for themselves.  They defeated the Light people, but agreed to split Ireland in half.  The catch--the Light people had the underground half.  The Light people, furious, took away the sunny skies of Ireland, leaving it as cold and dreary as it is today.

     The Light people became the greatest enemy of man (specifically, Irishmen).  It is said that the hawthorn and holly trees are sacred to them, and whoever cuts them down will be cursed.  This belief is still so strong in the Irish people that when JFK was building a house in Ireland, he had to get Welsh builders to build it because there was a single hawthorn tree on the property that needed to be removed.  And that, my friends, is when the Kennedys began having their tragedies, and all because of a single hawthorn tree (or so Culchies say).

     Aside from the mythology, the museum was quite fun.  It began with a model of the Giant's Causeway, then led you into a fantastic room where you magically became the size of a leprechaun. 

The model of the Giant's Causeway.  The real thing is up in northern Ireland (and I'm going to see it soon!).

In the giant's chair.

     Then, on Sunday, I had two adventures.  First I visited St. Steven's Green, a Central-Park-like oasis about 2 minutes from my apartment.  It was lovely.  There were winding paths and statues and duck ponds with extremely insistent birds, along with the general beauty of perpetually green grass.

The whole time, the kid was shrieking "Shoo! Shoo, birdies! Shoo!"

This statue commemorates the infamous famine.

Disturbing fountain statue.

There were swans in the bird pond!  My inner 5-year-old was dancing.

Stone courtyard in the middle of the green.

    We also visited the Chester Beatty Library, which houses a rare collection of old manuscripts and books. I saw the oldest known copy of the Gospel of John (180 A.D.!), along with incredibly old copies of the other gospels.  There was also an Egyptian papyrus scroll with love poems on it (1100 B.C.!), ancient Qurans, a Chinese emperor's robe, along with thousands of other books and manuscripts.  The grandmotherly tour guide talked faster than a teenager, which was a bit disconcerting, but I'd still like to go back and take another look at the Gospels.