Day 7 – May 16 – Friday: The Book of Kells and the Hairy Lemon

These are "thumbnail"-type images, and you can get a larger view by clicking on them.

The Book of Kells is the main attraction of the collection of Celtic writings and manuscripts housed at Trinity College, Dublin. It was transcribed around the year 800 A.D. by Celtic monks, who made copies of the Gospels and other books. Besides the displays explaining how the scribes’ work was done, there is also an impressive library of old works (the Long Room)…floor to ceiling (two stories high at least). No photos were allowed so the best I can do is point you to web site of the Trinity College Library.

1) Part of the Dublin Castle, where the Chester Beatty Library is located.
2) The sunlit entryway to the Library.

Nearby, there is another impressive collection, in the Chester Beatty Library at Dublin Castle. In a way, this was even more impressive. Many of the works on display in the section on Christianity were less artistic and elaborate, but they were older and more practical. They were parts of the papyrus manuscripts of the New Testament, some dating as early as AD 200. One manuscript (p46, p47) was the oldest known written piece of the New Testament until the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls. I enjoyed trying to read the Greek, and another interesting exhibit was two pages from a 4^th century Greek-Latin dictionary and Greek grammar book, apparently produced for Latin speakers who wanted to learn Greek. I gave thanks to God for the faithful scribes who copied the Scriptures faithfully and kept them alive and in existence, and by piecing all the bits and pieces together, scholars have been able to reconstruct the text of the original Greek. I thought about how some of those bits could have been written by someone whose grandparents personally knew someone who knew one of the Apostles personally.

For lunch, Abbie and I decided to try one of the interesting pubs in the downtown Dublin area. Even if the food turned out to be not the best, the name itself was a real attraction. Who could resist eating at an establishment with a classy name like “The Hairy Lemon”?

The food was good, by the way, and the interior decoration was appealing. The pub, it seemed to us, had been formed by uniting adjoining buildings and there were stairways and rooms in a sort of massive labyrinth. We were to find this was not uncommon in the various pubs we ate in.

As we went around the town and through a park close to where we ate, I was on the lookout for unusual sights. Today's picks include:

1) The floor in the entrance to Trinity College. The hexagonal-shaped cross-cut wood blocks are about 4" (10 cm) across, unlike any flooring I had ever seen.

2) On this trip I've also been doing a lot of duck hunting. I've shot quite a few, in fact, and some of them many times. This was probably the same one in both pictures.

3) We've also seen swans several times, and today I had the chance to take aim at one. This is the same one in both photos, I know.

And in the category of Irish Light and Shadow, I submit these:

As we stood waiting for the bus to return to the hotel, I overheard a couple in the line next to me discussing something. After a while, I turned to them and asked them (in Portuguese) what part of Brazil they are from. They looked so shocked to find someone speak to them in Portuguese in Dublin. (For those of you who keep records of such things, they are from Manaus and Fortaleza.) After their initial shock, they remarked on my European Portuguese accent (after 31 years, something must rub off); the curious thing is that people in Madeira and on the mainland comment on the traces of Brazilian Portuguese accent in my speech (after 31 years, there must be some things that never rub off).