Totally Irish, Vol. 2 The Medieval Castle

Ireland is loaded with castles and, what we refer to as, “castley-bits”, the great stacks of stones that are scattered about across the countryside. They’re so common they’re in people’s backyards and in cow pastures. Sheep graze over the top of them. They’re everywhere. You may hear about the romantic side of castles but what our guide told us today is that the romantic image was conjured up just a few hundred years ago when the great great grandson of the original Lord de Lacy would use the castles for nothing more than secret romps with his "lacy" entourage. But when the castles were actually lived in, when they were actually used, they were, as our guide put it, “killing machines”. Whoa.

I’ve discovered that there’s loads of really interesting information out there about what life was really like for those damsels in distress and knights in shining armor, so I won’t go into it here. I just wanted to take the opportunity to talk about poop.

I just took one of our visitors to Trim Castle this past weekend. I’ve been there before..a few times. It’s pretty close to our house, it’s a cool-looking castle, it’s where they filmed parts of Braveheart, and they do some pretty interesting tours, so it’s wound up on our heavy rotation list.

There’s this one tour guide that I like in particular. He’s a refined, middle-aged man, very well-spoken, and has one, possibly, glass eye. As he’s waiting for the dawdlers to gather, we chat about how the area’s changing and he’s always got some choice words for the development taking place in the village. The juxtaposition of the bad, modern architecture with these kinds of castley-bits is, well, disturbing to some. But, the people gather, and then we get to the good part.

He’s already described the structure of the castle, how it was built for defense, this is where the Lord and his family slept, this is where they filmed that one scene in Braveheart, yadda yadda yadda.... Then he points to the hole in the floor. That is where the Lord of the manor shat, you see. And, as opposed to the internal plumbing that everybody else’s shat would flow into, the Lord’s shat went directly to the exterior wall (I take this opportunity to scan the faces of the tour group). Why’s that you ask? Well, displaying the royal shat in such a manner was a means of presenting to the surrounding serfs and occasional guests (?) that these folks ate well and were, therefore, better than them. Displaying ones shat as a means of exercising dominance. I hadn’t thought about that before (think about the application of this technique at the office....). And, if this didn’t do the trick, when they had really important guests, the “poopsmith” (the guy that stirred the poop in the internal holding tank) would paint the rich shat on the wall surrounding the castle entrance. A big, fecal “Howdy Do!”. Quite.

And then I take the opportunity to scan the tour group again. They’re LOVING this! All the kids that were yawning and picking their noses before, are now completely intrigued...asking questions...fully engaged. Husbands? LOVING it! The ladies? ...pretending to be appalled.

I LOVE this tour. I wave goodbye to our tour guide and tell him I’ll see him the next time we have guests in town....maybe next time we’ll have a pint.