Kim Batchelor

Writer of magical realism and other imaginative fiction

Knitting Stories

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“Let me show you how it’s done,” the knitting woman said. She knitted a series of stitches before she came to a point where she slipped one stitch from the needle. While the single stitch sat untethered, she knitted the one just beyond it before slipping it back on the needle creating the twist in the fabric.

In a small shop on Inis Mór (also known as “Inishmore,” or ‘big island”), one of the Aran Islands off the west coast of Ireland, the woman showed me how to do the honeycomb stitch, a pattern I liked so much that I included it in a scarf I’m knitting. The difference between my knitting and hers is that when I’ve done similar cable stitches, I’ve relied upon a cable needle to hold those loose stitches in place. I prefer a hook that keeps any stitches from unraveling before I bring them back to the needle. This woman, a skilled practitioner, didn’t knit the piece too tightly to put the single stitch at risk. She had the confidence to simply let the stitch stay apart until it was time to bring it back into the design.

The Story Behind the Designs

The Aran Islands are known for their knitters. Anyone who appreciates a beautiful sweater know of the Aran designs. The women have traditionally designed sweaters unique to each of their families. The men of the family fish its rugged coastline. When one of those men does not return from a day of fishing because he’s been washed out to sea, he can be identified by the design of his sweater if his body washes on shore.

A Brush with the Famous

After I bought from the first knitter a cloth that described the meanings behind the different patterns, I went next door and met another knitter who talked non-stop while sorting through her sundry items. “I’d rather you knit your own sweater than buy one from me,” she told me when she heard that I had started knitting one that I’d left at home. Then she went on to describe the celebrities she’d met: Amy Adams and Stephen Spielberg, and Sharon Stone who was taller than the first two. All had bought the woman’s work, she said. She told me of rescuing two newborn baby lambs in brutally cold weather by slipping them inside her sweater, grateful that the ewe hadn’t given birth to triplets as she had before.

Designs of My Own

At a third shop, I bought yarn that left the feel of lanolin on my skin, two needles and a quick suggestion as to how to knit a hat. When I returned to the ferry, one of the drivers milling about before the next schedule trip thought it was funny I had purchased yarn there. “There aren’t any sheep on the island,” he told me. I just smiled, thinking about the woman, the ewe, the two lambs, and all the sheep I’d seen along the way. I continued to roll the thread into a ball and waited to begin the trip over the water to return me safely to the dry mainland.

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The Otherworld in Killarney National Park

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When I used to imagine Ireland, I had two visions. One was of rolling green hills filled with cows and sheep. Another was of a more mystical place, a land of forests that held secrets amidst the foliage lining paths that weave through the trees.

The rolling green hills of the first vision were prominent as we drove across western Ireland last May, carefully navigating the curving roads. Then, on an overcast day, we happened upon Tír na mBeo, the land of the living, the Otherworld of Irish mythology. Or maybe the luminescent leaves of trees and strands of sunlight through the upper branches of a small ringed forest were just the boundaries of that place known only in legend. Killarney National Park, a stunning gem adjoining the city of Killarney, seemed so different from the miles of green countryside that we’d passed on the way there.

I took photo after photo, but only a few came close to doing justice to the dreamlike spaces within the park. We opted to spend time there immersed in nature rather than joining the traffic on the nearby Ring of Kerry, a 180 or so km drive around the Kerry Peninsula. The hours we spent in the park, a large lake ringed with forest, following paths that threaded through the trees until we ultimately arrived at the Torc Falls, were some of the most memorable and visually stunning of the trip to Ireland.

I found the wood where my fictional character Lyric Doherty lives in a cottage with her father Michael and her brother Padraig. A voice in those woods calls her from sleep to alert her to small gifts that later link her to a lost loved one. I stood at the foot of the mountain where another character, Andrew Devlin, climbs in the evening, hoping to glimpse the sliver of sea that might link him to his mother who disappeared long before. Both characters populate the Mists of Na Crainn, ‘na crainn’ meaning ‘in the woods’ in Gaelic.

The book is still in revision for future publication, and I knew it would never be finished until I actually travelled to Ireland to see the country that inspired it for myself. No matter that the fictional Village Na Crainn is wholly a product of my imagination. Killarney National Park brought into full view the setting of the novel as a gift.

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Hunger as Memory

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Mutton Island Famine MemorialEnglish-speaking tourists, most from the United States and a few from Canada, filled the tables in a room on the second floor of the Brazen Head, Dublin’s oldest pub. The event was billed as an evening of storytelling, tales of faeries and folklore and legends of the country of Ireland. The first course of soups and fish cakes had not yet been distributed when a young woman stood before the group, greeted everyone and began her series of tales with some historical background. Very early, the topic turned to the Great Famine.

Before going to Ireland, like most people I’d heard of the potato blight and the famine that resulted from it. The famine started 175 years ago and lasted approximately seven, causing a wave of immigration from Ireland to the United States and other countries. I never realized, though, just how much it still impacts the people of Ireland as a perpetual melancholy that hovers like a ghost above some places.

A stop on Slea Head Drive on the Dingle Peninsula and a trudge up a hill revealed the famine cottage built in the 1800s and home to two families, one of which was the brother of a woman named Mary Long. Nearby is the burial spot of six children who died at birth, possibly because of the poor health of the family. The cottages themselves reveal odd little mannequins inside which lessen some of the impact, but the empty cottages stand on their own as testament to a difficult existence. While not much is said of the fate of the actual families, it’s clear from standing on that ground how difficult life must have been for many under normal circumstances. How catastrophic it must have been when the potato, their main source of nutrition and payment for their land, failed.

The most poignant reminder on my recent trip to Ireland lay further north. In Galway, we strolled along the beach at Galway Bay until we came to a park named in honor of Celia Griffin, a girl of six, who in 1847 walked thirty miles with her family from Connemara to Galway. According to an inquest held after Celia collapsed in the street and later died:

It appeared in evidence that the poor creature had been reduced to extreme poverty and that the family to whom she belonged, eight in number, were in the same pitiful condition. She had been recommended to the Ladies of the Presentation, by Rev. George Usher, as a fit object for relief, and accordingly she and her two sisters received a daily breakfast at that excellent Institute. They met Mr. Usher on the Rahoon road about a fortnight ago, but famine had so preyed upon her feeble constitution, that, on the morning of Wednesday, she was unable to taste food of any description – so that on the post mortem examination made by Doctor Staunton, there was not a particle found in her stomach.

Just beyond it stands the old Galway lighthouse, the last landmark of their homeland seen by many Irish emigrants who left by boat when they set outFamine - Ship Captains for the United States and other countries.

During the Great Famine, over a million Irish died of starvation and related diseases. An estimated 1.5 million left Ireland. The ships that carried them were known as ‘coffin ships’ because up to a third of the immigrants they carried died during the passage. It’s no surprise that the devastation of those years would have such a lasting impact. The spirit of little Celia and others who suffered her fate continues to haunt both the collective memories of the country’s citizens and the thoughts of visitors alike.

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Margaret MacKenzie Shineman

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Margaret McKenzie ShinemanOn a cold May day in a steady drizzle, a small group gathered in the cemetery outside the St. Multose Church in Kinsale, Ireland. Sheltered by black umbrellas, they stood at the grave of someone who for more than 100 years was identified only as “An Unknown Victim (Woman).” A small group, including the descendants of victims and survivors of the same tragedy that took the young woman’s life, paid homage to her. That morning, a gravestone changed that designation over a century after her body was identified, a gravestone bearing the name Margaret MacKenzie Shineman.

I wonder about the details of the life of this woman who immigrated to the United States from Scotland, moved to Wyoming, and there met James Shineman, the man who would become her husband. She must have looked forward to seeing her mother again after a long time, to surprising her with her visit. Margaret and her new husband originally booked passage for the trip on a boat that was conscripted by the British government for service in World War I. When she was rebooked, the ship line upgraded her to second class, more comfortable lodging. Unfortunately, that boat, the Lusitania, was doomed by the firing of a German U-boat torpedo just a few kilometers off the shore of Kinsale. Margaret’s body was found at Kinsale, her husband James’ body washed up in nearby County Clare. Readers of Eric Larson’s excellent book on the sinking of the Lusitania, Dead Wake, might remember her story.

Margaret MacKenzie ShinemanThe sinking of the Lusitania on May 7, 2015, merited only a line or two of mention in my high school history book. Learning the stories of those like Margaret gives life to that horrific tragedy that took almost 1200 lives, 90 of them children, in the waters of the Atlantic. What moved me greatly is how at least some in this small town in western Ireland still commemorate the event more than a century after it happened. They remember, even as the rest of the world has moved on.

Most poignant is how this memory has endured by honoring the remains of one woman, whose hopes and dreams and promise of a life ended in one shattering moment on a clear day in May.

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Driving Ireland: Twelve Tips

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Slea Head Drive outside Dingle, Ireland
Slea Head Drive outside Dingle, Ireland

When planning our recent trip to Ireland,  the one thing that concerned me most was how to get around. Should we take a bus? Limit ourselves to train travel? Or should we rent a car, as so many travel sites suggested?

When we made the decision to rent a car, that opened up a series of questions in my mind that no web site I ran across could adequately address. Actually, it boiled down to one question: what problems would we encounter driving in Ireland and how easily could we address those?

An on-line search helped identify some potential issues. Irish roads are narrow. Irish drivers drive on the left instead of the right. Cars for rent are generally manual transmissions as opposed to automatics. And I believe I saw mention of how fast Irish drivers drive.

My spouse did all the driving, I will confess up front, even though I’d intended to share in that responsibility. Instead, I took on the role of navigator and backup alert system. If you are assigned that role, remember these four things:

  • As you sit on the left side of the car, you will perceive foliage and walls to the left as being closer than they really are.
  • The tires will sometimes squeal against the curb on the left and occasionally said tires will go up over the curb verifying that your perception of their close proximity will be correct.
  • You will often, at least initially, find yourself attempting to reach for a phantom steering wheel and maybe even pressing your foot against a mythical clutch pedal.
  • No matter how hard you try, you will periodically scream out. Since you’re not really in the driver’s seat, feel free to self-medicate with a good craft beer or hard cider to take the edge off and reduce the urge to flail your arms and loudly express the view that you are about to die.

My spouse who did the driving offered the following perspective:

  • Driving on the left isn’t that hard to get used to, although turning into the correct lane, especially turning right, does take some getting used to and requires some thought at intersections.
  • A very experienced driver of a manual transmission may still have trouble operating the clutch and getting the transmission into the right gear. (This, by far, was his biggest challenge.) Foot pedals are where you’d expect them to be but the gear shift is on the left.
  • The passenger riding to the driver’s left is no help when he/she cries out in a panic. Except for the exceptions mentioned above the driver knows what he/she is doing.

In general, there are several other things I wished I’d known ahead of time:

  • The freeways are great and easy to navigate. We took two, one between Dublin and Cork and the second from Galway to Dublin, roads designated with an ‘M.’. After first driving a car in Ireland, getting on the freeway fairly quickly makes it easier to get used to driving on the left. The freeways are divided therefore preventing driving head-on into oncoming traffic. Once on the freeway, exit on the left and stay in the left lane if you would like to drive more slowly than traffic.
  • The speed limit on many roads, even many rural ones, is 100 kilometers an hour. The driver should always take into consideration that this is a ‘limit’ and not a ‘floor.’ Yes, Irish drivers drive very fast, even around blind curves, but they will pass you if you choose to drive more slowly.
  • Always look both ways before proceeding. Our one close call was near the center city of Galway when we inched forward through a gap in traffic only to encounter a speeding car in the lane beside the one where traffic had stopped. Fortunately, the driver was able to brake in time.
  • If you choose to take the ferry between Cork/Dingle and Killarney/Cliffs of Moher/Galway rather than going through Limerick, just remember
    The Ferry
    This ferry on the way from Dingle to the Cliffs of Moher/Galway in Ireland is an alternate to Limerick traffic

    that the ferry sails once an hour, and also that each ferry holds many more vehicles than you’d think. We’d overhead someone in the car line waiting for the next ferry say that only nine vehicles could get on the ferry. As far as I could tell, all the waiting cars made it on, including a large gasoline truck—many more than nine vehicles.

  • And some roads can be very narrow, especially off the main road. Outside Dingle on Slea Head Drive, which is little more than one lane, we encountered a beer truck coming the opposite direction. Except for that one encounter, though, making the lovely drive was the best few hours we spent in Ireland.
Killarney National Park, Ireland
Killarney National Park, Ireland

Although my spouse isn’t eager to drive again in Ireland, and we think we will be happy on a return trip to take a bus and use tour companies, our trip would have been much more restricted if we hadn’t hand the car. Having a car was useful when we visited Killarney National Park where we spent as much time as we wanted walking the paths and making our way to the Torc Falls, as well as having a decent lunch in the visitor center. As mentioned before, Slea Head Drive is beautiful and we had time to take in the different spots in the circuit at our own pace and according to our interests. The Blasket Islands Center was beautiful and fascinating. We spent time looking through the poignant famine cottages, and saw a museum or two and the ancient bee hive houses along the way.

If you plan to visit the Cliffs of Moher from Galway, you might have someone else do the driving. We drove that same route going to Galway and were happy to be on the side of the road away from the steep drop offs, having arrived at the cliffs coming from the south.

However you go, however you travel through it, don’t miss a trip to Ireland in all its green lusciousness and with its extremely friendly people, the friendliest I’ve ever encountered in my travels. Whether you drive yourself or let someone else do it for you, visiting the country will definitely be worth your while.

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