The morning was filled with breakfast and wandering around the wonders at the National Museum of Archeology.

The gold jewelry, the history of the country is so wide and deep that the brain can barely comprehend.  With findings back to 3300 BC and Vikings, kings, faeries, and mythology I don’t think a museum can even begin to convey the scope of the land.

The Tara Brooch, ahhh….  Why wouldn’t they let me take it home again?  It would look adorable on the scarf I am wearing.  The dig at Tara angered me, to take a burial hill that goes back 5,000 years and excavate it.  It is wrong, even more wrong than the excavation of the pyramids.

Why?

The pyramids would still stand at the end of the excavation.  The burial cairns are rocks and tunnels which will never be the same.

The other part of the museum that I had a hard time with the interpretation of is the burial or dropping of items into a bog as a sacrifice.  To see sacks of gold and silver as ritual sacrifices does not resonate with me.  It seems more likely the protection of wealth and livelihood in time of war and the owners being the loser in the battle prior to claiming their hidden treasure.

And finally was the statute, in a shadowed area overlooking the railing and the gold below.  Not write up, no information, no history.  Just a statute with the face eroded by time sitting there.  It caused a shiver of awareness as if I was in the presence of something otherworldly.  It’s eroded face stared at me, it knew me.

Clonmel Sheela, Co. Tipperary

Now I sit having afternoon tea at the Shelbourne.  One of the true pleasures in life.

The ending of my day was storytelling and dinner at the Brazen Head.  The Brazen Head is the longest standing pub in Ireland going back to the 1100’s.  Otherwise known as tourist central.  Everywhere you go in Ireland they chat, they talk, they make you feels as if you have always been going there.  Here you are a customer, take a number and be served.

However, Johnny, the storyteller for the evening, was amazing with the gift to silence and hold an audience.  To draw us into a world of stories.  The art of storytelling is so lost in the states.  But this reminded me why I want to write.  I want people to be mesmerized, to become, to be a part of that snapshot in time.

My companions at the table for the evening were an extended family of 8 who decided to join one of their members in Ireland for 7 days since they were running a marathon.  Each and every one of them were a caricature on their own.