Blarney Castle is beautiful. Majestic, Scenic, with an air of Foreboding that, ironically, draws you in. The climb towards the Blarney Stone, and the kiss that will leave you babbling for seven years, or say the locals, is ghostly and claustrophobic, and yet, romantic. Imagine, you are climbing stone steps used and reused for centuries at a time. I climbed these very steps, stood at the top of the castle breathing in Ireland’s beauty and cold air, and then kissed the stone that will have me never shutting up.
Upon arrival, as I walked onto the grounds of the castle, I was overtaken by the realization that “this isn’t Kansas anymore.” It wasn’t the majesty and beauty of the castle that gave me this realization, it was the feeling the grounds gave me. There was a sense of history upon the grounds: guards, servants, and families at play. This was someone’s home. Children ran on these grounds, played on these grounds. Love was made in the bedrooms, fights were fought on the grounds, lives were lived. And now, it is one of the biggest tourist destinations this side of Ireland. The tourism does not take away from the fact that 500 plus years ago, this castle was in fact just that, a castle. Those who lived in it centuries past called it home.
Walking the path towards the castle, I imagined what it would be like to have lived on these grounds and felt overwhelmed. I was standing on centuries of history, none my own, staring at breathtaking beauty. The green around me was unlike any green I had ever seen, the trees were beautiful, and the creek that ran through the grounds reminded me that the water I stood looking at, littered with coins full of wishes people have made and hoped to have fulfilled, was once a part of the livelihood of those living in and around this castle. It was quite an eerie feeling; a feeling that put my own 20 year history into perspective: would I ever be able to leave behind this much history? Would my life build something as lasting as the castle standing before me?
I can’t describe what it looked like, and a picture will not do it justice, but I shall attempt to capture the image I got by sharing an image I snapped. One more moment in centuries of history, this time seen with my own eyes…
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