County Kerry

2003 - Michael O'Connor with two of his seven horses.  Michael ran trips with a horse drawn jaunting car up the Gap of Dunloe which is a narrow mountain pass running north-south in the Ring of Kerry.

That day we had Harry the Horse for our trip.  I had initially been quoted €50 but as I was on my own he halved the price!  Michael kept up his talk for the duration of the two-hour excursion telling me about a spot where the leprechauns live (a fact, he said, the Americans love to hear) and other folklore stories.  He took me inside a deserted and roofless two-storey building, pointing out the size of the stone slabs, the application of render which was partly missing, the lintels and fireplaces.  The piece de resistance of his architectural knowledge was to get me to align one eye to the edge of the outside of the building and to take note of the symmetry of the stone work.  He claimed that it was not even one degree out of alignment.  He remembered when, some forty years earlier, the owner had sold tea and coffee from out of a window of the house.  The left hand side of the building had housed a posse of the Garda, there to protect the comings and goings along the Dunloe Gap.

Michael pointed out where the cotton grass was growing, pink heather too.  Sometimes white heather could be found set against a backdrop of the great purple MacGillycuddy Reeks (a long range of mountains) and the Leprechaun mountain to the right.

Michael prefaced every remark with 'Gal' and even taught me to say hello and thank you in Gaelic.  I wrote everything down and now, finally, I'm referring to my diary entries again.  That day was the 15th August 2003. 

35mm Colour Negative