JOHN MAHONEY

The scenic coast road from Kinsale to Skibberreen is both scenic and narrow, with narrow, deep drainage ditches on both sides, often hemmed in by ancient stone walls covered with brambles and other rich green vegetation.

Beware, North Americans, when you drive in the Republic of Ireland, where steering wheels are on the wrong side of the car, and all the cars and trucks and busses and tractors are on the wrong side of the road, and sometimes you must pull over, way over, to allow an oncoming vehicle to proceed without banging the hell out of your car. Do not say you weren't ever told.

When we passed Clonakilty we looked for the road to the Drombeg Stones, a circle of upright megaliths more than 3000 years old. The stones are in high country, up a narrow, winding road built for donkey carts but now used by tourists. The above cautionary paragraph applied.

The photographer Paul Caponigro once told me, while I was viewing his inspiring images of Stonehenge, that the stones will speak to you, if you can slow down enough to listen.

I believe that the flat, altar-like heel stone that experts say was used to mark the solstices, also served as a platform for sacrifice and as I ran my hand over the surface I almost felt the bodies of the past giving up their spirits for their community.

Nearby, archaeologists unearthed three stone circles. Two contained round huts with steep, conical roofs of thatch, they opined.

The third contained a spring of fresh water and and a stone cooking pit. They did a test by heating rocks and putting them in the stone-lined pit. The water boiled in less than half an hour, the joints of meat were fully cooked in several hours.

It is not difficult, there on that Irish hillside overlooking the checkered fields and the glint of the ocean in the near distance, to imagine the joyous feasting that went on when the men brought home a deer from the hunt.

I feel that way at breakfast when the plate arrives with the egg, the sausages, the fine Irish ham, the black (blood) pudding, the spicy minced pork nugget, the toast, the soda bread, the fresh honey, the pots of tea...

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