Studenda Mira

The current, holiday edition of The Economist has a good read on Fastnet Rock , the southernmost point in Ireland. Little more than a jagged hunk of slate protruding from the Atlantic, the Vikings called it Hvastann-ey ("Sharp-Toothed Island"), while its Irish name is An Charraig Aonair ("The Rock that Stands Alone"). Since 1854, it's been home to two successive lighthouses. The current one has been (sometimes just) standing against the fury of the ocean since 1903. The chief foreman of its construction, a stonemason named James Kavanagh, was singleminded in his devotion to his duty: He lived on the rock continuously for ten to 12 months of each year from August 1896 to June 1903, sleeping on a damp bed of rock close to the landing strip in quarters carved out of the rock face, known to this day as “Kavanagh’s hole”. The project ultimately cost him his life: Seven years of living in a hole in the rock, progress frustrated by maverick tides and his delayed shi...

They had to start the rounds early, because by midday, the locals' reserve of holiday cheer would be depleted. If yours was the first roving band of wren boys to come to a house, you'd do well, but if you were the third or fourth, they might not even answer the door, no matter how well you sang. After the novelty wore off, you were just another beggar, and this was a banner day for beggars. My father, the postman's son, would wear his Sunday best, save for some walking shoes and a bright green scarf around his neck. The latter was his lone concession to an ancient tradition that would have dressed their leader, an older boy with a strong baritone, in straw and blackface and festooned my father with every piece of colored ribbon from their mothers' dressers. In the town, some of the more established wren boys still bothered with the old trappings, often to the detriment of some poor wren. My father's wren boys were more pragmatic. The town was two miles away an...

The Irish Examiner has an item about the discovery of a 20-acre ring fort in County Cork, Ireland: Radiocarbon dating shows that the ringfort was constructed about 1200BC, confirming it as the oldest known prehistoric ringfort in Ireland, according to Prof William O’Brien of University College, Cork. This puts its importance on a par with prehistoric sites such as Dún Aengus on Inishmore and Mooghaun, Co Clare. Hat tip to Archaeoblog .

The World Monuments Fund has released its annual list of the world's 100 most endangered historic sites. Iraq's sites get top billing, as do Machu Picchu and Ireland's Hill of Tara , which is infamously threatened by a highway construction project. That Chicago Tribune article is mistaken about the Tara project, which would not actually go through the hill. Ireland may appear to be busily ignoring its heritage in favor of its economic boom, but they're not quite that far gone...yet. The highway would be about a mile from the site, but its reasonably supposed that many undiscovered Tara-era sites are imperiled by the construction. As it happens, the highway project was temporarily halted in April after preservationists discovered an Iron Age temple.