UCSC Extension Multimedia and Web Design Certificate - Final Project

Project Plan: Erin Dreams

Elsa DieLöwin

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Erin Dreams

Dublin
Avoca
Browneshill dolmen
Clonmel
Scale 20 miles
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Avoca, Browneshill Dolmen, and Clonmel

Meeting of the Waters
{text as below}

Journal text

August 2, 1998

 After a skipped breakfast packing up and checking out, our early start driving south was lost to a wrong turn. We picked up currants scones, milk and juice at Texaco and ate in the car on the way out of Dublin to Avoca and Clonmel.

 One of the guidebooks has suggested going through the Sally Gap from south to north, but we did it backwards. We climbed hills finding pine forest with signs of logging, came to a heath with crossroad that truly seemed to be the middle of nowhere, then drove down again past a magnificent waterfall. When we pulled off to take in the falls and surrounding hills, there was a bench where a woman sat holding a posy of heather blooms. I asked if the bench was a bus stop and she said no. She lives in the first house down the hill, and walks out every Sunday. She gave me the heather posy, so I gave her a picture of a waterfall in our woods (in Felton, California).

 Coming down into Avoca we saw two Travelers' caravans, brightly painted carts pulled by horses.

 We stopped at Meeting of the Waters, which was a pleasant park, but it somehow seemed too tamed for the poem quoted on a marker there:

 Pressing on to Carlow, we stopped at the Browneshill dolmen. It looked like it had stood on many stones, but one side had fallen, so it's now a bit like a lean-to.

 We got into Carlow and stopped at the TIC for a map, but they were closed. We saw a kiosk that recommended a restaurant called The Plough, but never found it. Stopping at yet another Texaco, the woman there had never heard of the place. We got set up to head to Clonmel. In our looping around, we passed Carlow castle, which was a heap of rocks, mostly.

 We drove through Kilkenny to Clonmel and checked into the B&B. Rita brought us tea and cake in the lounge where we watched the Munster Cup final between Kerry and Tipperary. Kerry won, 17 to 13.

 The dinner we had at the Buttermarket was good, after which we walked in the rain around town to look for the way back to the B&B because O'Connell St. is one way just at the town wall. We went back to the car and still I made a wrong turn, sending us in circles to get out of town center and back to the B&B to bed.

August 3, 1998

 At breakfast we met two women, one from Tipperary and the other from Tralee, and we had a nice chat. They said that the gift of heather was good luck, and encouraged us to go into Northern Ireland, just avoiding the Belfast and Derry areas. We left Clonmel into rain and drove up to Cashel.

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Meeting of the Waters
by Thomas Moore
from Irish Melodies, vol.1, written 1808
via Richard Kopp

There is not in the wide world a valley so sweet

As that vale in whose bosom the bright waters meet

Oh the last rays of feeling and life must depart

Ere the bloom of that valley shall fade from my heart

Ere the bloom of that valley shall fade from my heart

Yet it was not that nature had shed o'er the scene

Her purest of crystal and brightest of green

'Twas not her soft magic of streamlet or hill

Oh No 'twas something more exquisite still

Oh No 'twas something more exquisite still

'Twas that friends, the belov'd of my bosom were near

Who made every scene of enchantment more dear

And who felt how the best charms of nature improve

When we see them reflected from looks that we love

When we see them reflected from looks that we love

Sweet vale of Avoca! How calm could I rest

In thy bosom of shade, with the friends I love best

Where the storms that we feel in this cold world should cease

And our hearts, like thy waters, be mingled in peace

And our hearts, like thy waters, be mingled in peace