Giants Causeway Limerick

Giants Causeway Limerick

Here we are in Giant's Causeway
Where 40,000 columns of basalt rock stand today
The volcano erupted
The larva cooled
But before there was science
There was the Legend of Finn McCool

It is called the Giant's Causeway

It was made by Finn McCool
It's really just the start of a stepping stone tool

To get across to Scotland
To fight with Bennadonner

Through many disagreeements
They pulled each other asunder 

He took the cloth much 
And try and try as he may
He never his his target
But he made us our Loch Neagh
The mud landed in the water

And with all the might he can
He only then succeeded
In making the Isle of Man

 

 

So he took to playing the organ
And over here are his piples
He played the Sash,  Derry's Walls and Billyboys
And started loads of fights

Cause the Scottish giant thought that this were his tunes


Little did he know that the music for Ireland bagpipes
 Come from across there Near Dunloe

A Tour of the Antrim Causeway

Belfast -- an Old City of Conflict is now a New City of Cool

"People are building bridges.  The most important bridge been built is in each and every person...It's important to being part of the solution, not part of the problem."

As a teenager growing up in Georgia, I heard a lot of news of the centuries-old conflict in Northern Ireland.   The problem is, I really didn't understand it.  To me, this conflict was similar to the enduring Israel-Palestine conflict with no end in sight.  Sadly, the news seemed so remote, with no direct, personal impact, and I felt so detached.  I never expected to visit this country with my own eyes -- it was never on my radar scope, up until now.

So when I found out I would be visiting Mark and Lee (friends who I met at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival in DC three years ago), I realized there was a lot to learn.

Belfast is known for its troubles and religious conflict.  For over 25 years, the IRA was very busy here.  On Bloody Friday 1972, the IRA set off 22 bombs killing 9 people and injuring about 120.  The city had not experienced such a day of death and bloodshed since the German blitz of Easter Tuesday 1941. Nearly 1,000 lives were lost and 100,000 people became homeless.  One main fault was that when the bombs dropped, people did not know what to do.  There were no bomb shelters.  They did not know whether to run, hide or stay in their beds. The IRA hoped they would be just as successful in catching the government and the people unprepared in hopes of getting Northern Ireland out of the UK.

Truly, there was only one main pursuit: The Irish Republicans wanted a united Ireland. However, there never such a state as a united Ireland.  After all as a detached foreigner, I didn't truly understand what the big deal was, other than the name and the unity.  Truly, Northern Ireland and Ireland enjoyed an open border where citizens could cross either side freely without having to produce a passport.  So what's in a name?

Background

The conflict between the Catholics and the Protestant isn't  really about religion.  It stemmed from differences in social classes. The majority of the population in Ireland was Catholic.  They never underwent the church reform that England did in the 1500s.

Hostility arose between Catholics and Protestant when England began to establish plantations in Ireland and act as a colonial power.

The Legend of the Giant's Causeway