I slept in the Connemara Mountains that night, in a Gaeltacht (an area of
Ireland where Gaelic is routinely spoken and actively promoted – if you’re ever
in the mood for a brainteaser, I recommend that you try figuring out what
recycling goes into which bin when they’re all labelled with Gaelic and nothing
else).
The next morning, after washing my socks in an icy lake (I
pinned them under rocks in a little inlet and let the waves do most of the
work), I continued on to Donegal, and having two happy accidents on the way.
The first was seeing the grave of W B Yeats, which I’d hoped to visit but
thought I’d run out of time, so was quite delighted to find myself reading a
sign pointing me to a beautiful old church by the road in County Sligo. The
cemetery wasn’t his original burial-place (Yeats died in France during World
War II), but it was an ideal place for a man with a deep love of Sligo to end
up – in sight of mountains and fields, surrounded by trees and birds, and with
sunlight slanting through the trees. As I left, I noticed an old man carefully
removing a twig from a grave which was already meticulous. It bore a woman’s
name, and a date of decease from 2009 – his wife, I imagined, as he gently
walked up and down across the gravel which covered it, making sure everything
was in perfect order.
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| Laundry day. |