Ireland: Color It Green . . . and Blue

In Ireland, we had a road map in which the “scenic roads” were lined in green. It was an absolute waste of green ink. Every place we looked, it was beautiful, except in the cities. Anyone who gets trapped in a city when the Irish countryside is just over that hill might just as well have stayed home.

We drove down into County Cork to a country house named Ballymalloe, set in 400 acres of farm, with a golf course right at the front door. Each room in the main house had a name. We were in the Quilt Room. The beds were three-quarter covered with hand-made quilts made in County Down. There were two recessed windows in our room, each one having a window seat. Every place we stayed had delicious wallpaper, covered with tiny flowers, designed long before Laura Ashley was born. The Ballymalloe bedroom paper was lavender and green. Each bed had a light fixture made from what had been a wrought-iron gas fixture. They were electrified and wearing silk shades edged with silk moss fringe. All over Ireland we found the silk shades, some with fringe and some with braid.

Ballymalloe is built around an ancient castle. When the house was built, some person of imagination and judgment elected to wrap the house around the castle keep in 1710, when the main part of the house was built. The Quilt Room shares a common wall with the gray stones of the keep.

In the bathroom, a window with a four-inch-wide opening looks out on the countryside. The stone wall of the window, 20 inches long, flares out toward the inside of the room. The narrow exterior slit was for the long-ago archers who stood where the bathtub is now to fend off the invaders.

Outside our window, which was three stories high, a river hurried through a green field and down the hill through the trees. Across the river and through the trees, a hill sloped up from the fields. On top of the hill was a white house with squared corners, so neat and precise it looked as if it had been made of sharply folded paper by a child. And even from that distance, the blue of the front door almost rang with color. That’s a blue that is used a great deal in Ireland. It is exactly the same blue as that used in Mexico.

I do not intend to open a sociological discussion about the profound pull of bright colors on different peoples. I can only tell you the Irish blue and the Mexican blue are the same and so are the rafters on my house. Patsy says they paint the doors blue in the south to keep the evil spirits away. Anyway, the toy house on the hill has a blue door.

The second night at Ballymalloe, we stayed on the first floor because the first room was up two flights of stairs and my knee rebelled. The first-floor room was off a courtyard and had a bay window and a window seat. Again the wallpaper was pure delight, with parrot tulips and anemones and moss green fern in an all-over pattern. The bedspreads were matching.

The local gentry obviously patronize the fine dining room, as they did in Longueville House. At Longueville, a couple were celebrating their 10th wedding anniversary and Jane O’Callaghan came in bearing a bottle of champagne and the husband had ordered two dozen red roses which were placed in a crystal vase. Everyone in the dining room felt a part of the anniversary celebration.

The last day, we drove along the southern coast of County Cork to our favorite smallish city of Youghall. That is where Sir Francis Drake set sail and where Queen Elizabeth gave him a large piece of land.

Youghall sits on a wide white strand of sand. We walked along a beach bordered by a wall, just the right height for leaning. In 1977, when we were first there, Audrey Ann Marie left a new and expensive pair of dark glasses on top of the wall. We looked for them in 1982 and they weren’t there. And, would you believe, two weeks ago, they weren’t there again.

On the way back to Ballymalloe House, we stopped for tea at Shanagarry Farm, where Myrtle Allen, who runs Ballymalloe with her husband, has her herb garden. We had an apple square, crumbly and light, and the coffee was served with clotted cream, the only civilized way to serve the brew.

We met a delightful Irish family, a mother and father and three daughters. The father was very proud of his oldest daughter who was working for Shanagarry Farm and the Ballymalloe House, obviously a lofty job for a country lass. They offered to take our pictures and we agreed. They had a little kind dog named Nipper who obviously holds all of their hearts. They apologized for having left him in the car, as though he had been there a week instead of half an hour.

Not far from Ballymalloe is the town where William Penn came from. I have always thought he was the man on the Quaker Oats box. Wouldn’t you think that flat hat would have been murder in an Atlantic gale?

The next day, we headed for County Kerry to visit our friends Sherry and Tom Nicholson, who have a house standing in a flower garden in Kenmare. They live there six months a year and the rest of the time in McLean, Va.

Oh, the Langmades from San Marino were at Ballymalloe. Do you think they’re following us?