Historians take note!

On Saturday we took a "religious history tour" of Galway. This was not some fool guided tour with a bored kid with a memorized script. Mike knows this guy named William Henry who is probably one of the smartest men I've met (outside of Dr. Ringenberg and a few others). He was a fascinating and hilarious Irish man who's written loads of books (seemed like one on almost everywhere he took us, but the more famous ones are this book and this book, on Galway and WWI. It was wonderful to have this tour because he showed us all these fantastic historical and archaeological things that have been right under our noses this whole time. Did you know that the building I live in was once a barracks for the infamous Black and Tans? He took us to an ancient 6th century monastery that you would expect to be hidden miles out in rural Gaeltacht Ireland, but no St. Odram's monastic settlement of Roscam is a mere seven minute drive from city center! Buried in an old cemetery on Michael Collins road in Ballybane are revolutionaries from the war for independence. Surrounding it are imposing and modern apartment complexes threatening to consume the history within it. St. Augustine's Holy Well holds stories of Christianized Druidic practices from the 5th century as well as a brawl and a brush with the Gardai in Willy's childhood as he and his friends realized that coins were tossed in the well!

We heard so much in such a short time, there was no way even if I had taken notes that I could have remembered it all. Truly a remarkable man keeping alive the memories of a fascinating town in a historic land. He was so passionate about his work- especially the parts on remembering the Irish who fought in the trenches of WWI and were hated for defending their land when they returned to the anti-British revolutionary climate of postwar Ireland.

Here are my various pictures of the afternoon.