December 28, 2017
On the Ireland portion of this trip, I am very pleased to have my whole family and my sister with me. After an early morning arrival at Cork we had some breakfast and got ourselves oriented. We decided to visit Blarney Castle, which is a short drive from Cork. It was rather cold and as we arrived at Blarney Castle it started to snow (1). We climbed up to the top of the Castle to kiss the Blarney Stone to receive the gift of gab. To do so, you must hang upside down over the edge of the Castle.
The story is that Queen Elizabeth kept asking Lord Blarney for assurances of his loyalty and received nice sounding, but equivocal responses. She became exasperated with some other member of the aristocracy for similar equivocation and exclaimed what he was saying was "all Blarney." Hence began the legend of kissing the Blarney Stone, and the use of the word "Blarney" to signify nice sounding words with little meaning.
(1) Snow is fairly rare in this part of Southern Ireland. The Irish weather service posted warnings for 2 cms of snow, which is slightly less than an inch.
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