Continued from Gene Courtney, Part I.
I had mentioned that I had just finished a tour focusing on great Irish authors. Joyce, Yeats, Wilde, Heaney. He mentioned to me that the next time we do the tour, we should include his own work which was a book of salacious poetry. He seemed perfectly serious about this recommendation. He then went on to recite one of his poems from memory. It made fun of a local resident who drank too much. I am sure that if he got to know me better, he would write one about me. Something about getting lost on the hill and not making it back alive.
As we walked down, I marveled how his pace was effortless. He was proud of the work he had done to create the Hillwalking Club. He complained about the horseback tours that use the same trails. He said they ruined the trails.
Dingle was no longer the tiny speck that it had been before. We were almost there. One of Gene’s other notable skills is his ability to fill the air with the sound of his voice. Whether it was one of his poems, stories about his bakery or the town, a joke, or a history lesson, it was endless. It was only interrupted by my laughter (at the appropriate places, I hope).
One joke he told spoke of a reporter from the days before cell phones. The reporter had heard that you could call God from special phones that were placed at holy sites around the world. The reporter would visit these sites only to find out that the long distance cost of the call was astronomical, a whopping $17,000. The reporter finally was in Dingle and he was told the call was only ten cents. Asking why, the reason given was that it was a local call.
We finally made it to the entrance of the graveyard. There is a gravel parking lot there and then a winding path. He mentioned to me the story of how 40 years ago the graveyard was restored for tourists and residents alike. I didn’t know what to expect. Would there be several headstones? Would it be vast like a large cemetery?
Suddenly, we were there. Gene, who had been talking the entire time, was now silent.
The graveyard was tiny. It was surrounded by a low stone wall. Yellow dandelions were popping up everywhere. The site was shocking. It was likely that over 7,000 bodies were buried there, mostly victims of hunger. The size of the graveyard made it clear that the bodies would have to be piled on top of one another in order to keep the graveyard small.
There was a tiny chapel there that Gene and I sat in. He respected the silence. We heard nothing but the wind.
After sitting for a spell, Gene offered to give me a ride back to town. I promised him that I would visit his bakery the next day for his doughnuts, which I did. Since then I have sent two other sets of travelers to his bakery. Gene is still talking.
Create your own stories when you meet people along the way on our Discover Ancient Ireland tour. Find out more here.
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