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Ireland's Fetching Dingle Peninsula

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By BILL O'BRIAN

The Washington Post

Published: May 18, 2008

A blustery breeze buffets the terrace of what is undoubtedly the westernmost cafe in Ireland - in all of Europe, really, presuming you don't count Iceland.

Atlantic Ocean waves are crashing into the majestically craggy coast. There is not the slightest break in the pillowy gray clouds that are so low you can almost touch them and so enveloping they almost embrace you.

The salt air is mild, and the Irish mist sweet. The expanse of grass being scarfed down by the sheep grazing across the way is archetypal Kelly green.

A palpable sense of history emanates from the landscape. And from the people, too. Their thick brogue hints at an ancient language making a comeback these days.

I'm on the patio of the Tig Slea Head cafe playing fetch with a dog named Banshee. Banshee belongs to Marlene Tomasy, a 50-year-old from Germany who immigrated to Ireland this decade.

Tomasy, who bakes the cafe's delicious cookies and pastries on the premises, tells me she rescued the brown Lab-collie mix a little more than two years ago. Somebody had abandoned him in the surf on a local beach, in a plastic bag, with six siblings. They appeared to be about 3 weeks old. The others were dead, drowned. He was still breathing. Thomasy took him home.

Banshee is as excited as I am relaxed. He'll go on retrieving his slimy, fluorescent green tennis ball as long as I toss it into an adjoining field.

"He loves the tourists, and they love him," Tomasy says. "I happen to think he is the most photographed dog in Ireland at the moment - and he knows it."

Ireland's Revival

Somehow, playing fetch with a reclaimed dog owned by a German woman amid the humble antiquity of the Dingle Peninsula in County Kerry, about 140 miles southwest of Galway, feels right. It seems to embody the island nation today. After all, Ireland, which just 30 years ago was still backward and poor, has experienced a remarkable economic revival and an influx of immigrants in recent years. Yet it remains a simple, traditional, outdoorsy, carefree place - carefree as a game of fetch.

My wife and I ended up at the cafe because Barbara Carroll, co-owner of the Milestone House B&B in Dingle town, told us that the Slea Head Drive west of town is one of the most beautiful circuits in Ireland.

"It's only 22 miles, or 35 if you take the longer loop," she says, "but give yourself three hours."

The short loop took us six hours.

Not by design, but because everywhere we stopped we found ourselves lingering. We lingered at the ruins of Dunbeg Fort, which sit on a sheer seafront promontory and date from 800 B.C. We crawled into a small opening in the rampart that led to a primeval room - a man-made cave, really, roughly 7 feet high and 6 feet across. But what was it for? What was life here like then?

We lingered more than once at the side of the road just gazing, as if in a dream, at the verdant pastures delineated by ancient stone fences.

We lingered at the cliffs of Dunmore Head, overlooking Coumeenoole Strand, where the 1970 epic "Ryan's Daughter" - a poignant World War I love story - was filmed and where winds pummeled us as the surf rumbled ashore with mesmerizing force.

We lingered at Clogher Strand, where we saw a seal in the cove and an island known as "the Sleeping Giant" reclining in the distance.

We lingered at the Gallarus Oratory, a small stone church erected sometime between the sixth and 12th centuries, where we marveled at its construction and its shape. It was built using dry-stone corbeling, a method that involves no cement or mortar but results in airtight and watertight walls. The minute oratory resembles a boat (keel up). And you don't have to be religious to sense that you're standing on sacred ground.

Sacred, too, particularly in Irish literary circles, are the Blasket Islands.

A collection of stony dots just off the western edge of the peninsula and accessible by ferry only in summer, the Blaskets are tiny. The largest (by far) of the five named islands is just 31/2 miles long and two-thirds of a mile wide.

Literary Legacy

The islands' population during World War I was roughly 200. But steadily, residents left, many for America, and by 1953 the population was zero.

Yet, from 1929 to 1936, Blasket writers managed to produce three classic works of Irish-language literature: "The Islandman," by Tomas O'Crohan; "Peig," by Peig Sayers; and "Twenty Years A-Growing," by Maurice O'Sullivan.

The historical, linguistic, architectural and natural elements of the Slea Head Drive, and how intrinsic they all are to this mountainous finger of land, became clear at the Blasket Center. Walking out of the museum devoted to the legacy of the abandoned islands, I realized this: Although many Americans with surnames similar to mine visit Ireland to get a firsthand sense of their roots, I was getting a firsthand sense of the roots of Ireland itself.

In fact, the western half of the Dingle Peninsula is a gaeltacht, a region of Ireland where the majority of residents speak Gaelic (aka Irish) as their first language. In Dingle and the handful of other federally recognized gaeltachts, there seems to be a resurgent linguistic pride similar to that of the French-speaking Quebecois in Canada.

So much so that, even though about 95 percent of Irelanders speak English, the republic's constitution designates Irish as the national language; a 2003 law requires all government documents and services to be provided in Irish; a controversial 2005 federal decree mandates that the government list place names only in Irish on signs in the gaeltachts; the number of Irish-language-only schools is on the rise; and the European Union last year recognized Irish as an official language.

As a practical matter, though, while you stay on the left side of the narrow road as you negotiate the tight twists and turns of the Slea Head Drive in your rental car, the only Irish phrases you'll need to know are go mal and tog go bog. The former, which is painted on the pavement, means "go slow." The latter, which appears on road signs, means "slow down" or, more literally, "take it softly."

Take it softly. Linger. Inhale the sea breeze. Bask in the heritage. And, if the opportunity arises, enjoy a game of fetch with a playful canine.

INFORMATION

•Dingle Peninsula Tourism, 011-353-66-915-1188; www .dingle-peninsula.ie

•Irish Tourist Board, 1-800-223-6470; www .discoverireland.com/us

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