Ireland #6

Ireland #6
Our day started with a 45 minute horse pulled carriage ride through a bit of the National Park which is attached to the city of Killarney. There are many lakes in the park and the fishermen get brown trout and Atlantic salmon. At the end of the day we came back through the park by bus and it is huge. It goes way up into the mountains. Many people come here to hike.
We "did" the Ring of Kerry along with many, many other tour busses. Our guide leaves later in the morning so we are behind most of them. Works as we didn't have great line-ups at lunch, tourist stops, etc. Our first stop was The Kerry Bog Village. It is a reinactment of how the Irish lived 150 or so years ago. The houses are thatched and each has a peat fireplace -- right on the floor at one end. The chimney goes up from there. The peat does a nice job of warming the place up. They hang the cooking pots over the fire. I was really interested as that is how the Wylie family lived those many years ago.
Speaking of the Wylies: I got a geneology write-up on them. We are not Irish. We are from the Scottish-English Borderlands. The name is believed to be descended from an ancient Gaelic/Celt race. In the early 1600's these border clans were banished to England, Scotland, Ireland or the Colonies. I suspect our ancestors settled in Northern Ireland "provided they undertook to remain Protestant". They were called "undertakers" and became proudly Irish. This happened in the mid to late 1600's. Our great,great grandfather I think it is (John) came to Canada before the potato famine. We don't know why but three brothers came at the same time. John was married in Canada in 1841 and the potato famine started in 1845. The really sad thing about the potato famine is that there was food to eat but the English shipped it out of the country.
Back to today: We drove the approximately 100 km Ring of Kerry which has lots of sea views. We were also in mountainous country which was also very rocky --- big stuff this time. Few rock walls so used fences. Plus the usual sheep. Very windy again but only a little rain.