By Eileen Casey
Transcript
It’s a Saturday, late August. Cashel awakens from slumber. Like most country towns, there’s no hurry; part of its charm. Surrounded by place-names such as Cahir, Boharlahan, Holycross, Fethard; Cashel is a jewel in County Tipperary’s crown. The tourist brochure tells me it’s a great place to shop and my arrival coincides with a four letter word season I truly love. Shop windows mirror light, enough to magnify and illuminate large red 50% off signs. So appealing. As are words I’m adding to my language store; Larkspur Park Sports Complex, Brú Ború Heritage Centre, Rossa Pottery, High Kings’ Loop.
Here can be seen The Hackett Effigies and Old Medieval Town Walls at Bolten Library, famous for its collection of antique books; now housed in Limerick University. There, Cashel’s Palace Hotel, where Theophilus Bolten lived in splendour. Memory unpacks a name from my own family history. Theophilus Wallace, a Victorian gentleman my great grandfather Robert worked for in the town of Birr where I grew up. I come from a long line of stonemasons and so, am deeply interested in architecture. There’s a famine wall here in Cashel, further reminder of Robert. His skills saved his family from the worst starvation of 1848. Arthur Guinness had his first job in Cashel. Another link to my history. My daughter Rebecca is an archivist at Guinness Headquarters, St James’ Gate, Dublin.
Ultimately, people make up a town. Its atmosphere. Its quirks and foibles. Although Georgian Birr is my touchstone, I see similar ladies under hair dryers in salons or having their nails done. Or drinking coffee with friends at tables on pavement cafés. Mothers in supermarket or corner shop ponder the age old question: What to buy for dinner? Especially Sunday dinner, always a family occasion. Men wait in cars, contemplating the great mysteries of life or listening to the radio while wives or girlfriends prowl the shelves for bargains, a favourite occupation of mine.
Outside a betting shop, a man reminiscent of a punter in my Midlands home, smokes a cigarette and paces up and down the street, waiting for the results to come in. A dead heat, an ‘also ran’ or a ‘straight win’. Who knows?
By afternoon Cashel is bustling, like mallards among rustling reeds. Townspeople and visitors alike are visible on streetscapes, others out of sight beyond shop doors or glimpsed as shadowy outlines behind glass. I buy sandwiches and a takeaway coffee and park up near The Rock, arguably the town’s most famous landmark. This limestone outcrop has the most complete Romanesque church in Ireland, a 13 th century Gothic Cathedral. I wonder what the outline of The Rock looks like under moonlight, a bright orb illuminating ghostly shapes from the past. Or how it continues to bear the brunt of winter storms.
Today is warm, after yesterday’s rains washed the streets clean. I think of the River Suir, swollen with trout and salmon coming upriver to spawn the next generation. There are few children on Cashel’s streets today. Perhaps they are away on holiday, a late summer hurrah before school opens. Saturday scents, the prime day in the weekend calendar, drift around me. People nod in my direction, greetings in their smiles. Horse country’s not far away in Fethard, reminder of Johnathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels and his legendary respect for equines. The history and geography of Cashel are both interesting and intriguing.
At the Heritage Centre a large-scale model of the town can be viewed. On permanent display; the Royal Charters of Cashel, King Charles II 1663 and James II in 1687. A perfect entrance to The High Kings Loop, a walk that begins on Lower Gate Street, heading out onto the new tarmac pathway on the Golden Road. The walk takes in such views as Hore Abbey and The Rock of Cashel. But that delightful prospect is for another day. It’s almost time to leave.
I’ve never danced here or had my first romantic encounter. Never went to school or experienced any other milestone I treasure in my life. And yet, I know this town. Already, I’m planning my return to this welcoming hiatus in the Golden Vale.