Kissing the Blarney Stone

                                                                                                                                                                                                  

According to Irish legend, "Whoever kisses the Blarney Stone is gifted with eloquence and persuasiveness." When my wife Angela and I traveled to Ireland many years back as part of a bus tour of the British Isles and Ireland, we made a special stop at Blarney Castle, paid the entrance fee, and made the long climb to the top so that I would have this perhaps once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to kiss the Blarney Stone.

No, I'm not the man pictured here, but the photo shows how I had to do it. I lay on my back, my head hanging down. The idea was to kiss the stone upside down, preferably with someone holding onto me so that I wouldn't slip and tumble down to certain death. 

Angela wouldn't kiss it. After I did, however, I didn't notice any sudden increase in my eloquence and persuasiveness. In fact, not long after after we were all back on the bus and headed for Dublin, I began feeling queasy and the first words out of my mouth were, "I think I'm gonna barf."

Angela's a nurse and suggested that maybe I had picked up some bad germs left on the Barney Stone from all the others who had been kissing it. I then realized why she had decided not to kiss it herself. I was fortunate to see a doctor in Dublin that night yet still felt so bad the next day that I had to miss the tour of the city including the statue of Molly Malone and sites about James Joyce.

Years later when I discussed this story with a colleague who had just recently returned from a long stay in Ireland, he laughed and laughed and then shared this secret: all the local men there love to joke about how the Blarney Stone is just another silly tourist trap, and they show their scorn for it every chance they get by peeing on it. 

Although I did get sick, the good news is that I soon recovered, and in the years since I have had many people tell me in their own way that I'm indeed gifted with eloquence and persuasiveness. I have no idea whether or not the Blarney Stone had germs on it that made sick. However, to this day I do believe in its magic. Since my grandmother's grandmother emigrated from from Ireland, this land has always been a part of me, and I will always cherish my special memories of the Emerald Isle.