The Second Cat . . .

St. Canice's Cathedral, Kilkenny

of Kilkenny. Our second day in Kilkenny. The Two Cats of Kilkenny. Get it? Sharon said it was dumb. 

Anyways, if Wednesday saw us looking at the castle, Thursday began with a more modest air. This ancient town, once tremendously important before the Christian era, before the Normans,  is home to the Rothes House, or houses, really, since it is a series of conjoined houses belonging to a prominent family of Tudor merchants. And it gives us a rare glimpse into how the merely wealthy, as opposed to nobility or the common person, lived. You get a sense from Anne Hathaway’s cottage in Avon, but they were comfortable English farmers as opposed to wealthy Irish merchants.

 

The house from the street

Daughter Anna says this is a good look for me

A well in the courtyard between the first and second houses

The back of the second house

From there we were off to the Cathedral of Saint Canice and then to the Dominican Black Abbey. 

The figural tombs were spectacular

I cannot remember her name, but this (expelled)(abbess was the bad girl of the 14th century. Had to get a pic. The young woman at the desk says she is a perennial favorite

 We completed our tourist day at the city’s newest museum, the Museum of the Medieval Mile.

Black Abbey Bridge

 

The Black Abbey

The museum is brand new, opened in 2015, I believe, in what used to be St. Mary's church, another 13th century structure.. I tend not to take pictures in museums, but this column bears a trace of the original polychrome column paint

Many of these early tombstones were excavated from the nearby River More where they were dumped during remodeling or when Cromwell's armies pillaged this part of Ireland in the 1650s.

Our final stop was Kyteler’s Inn, commemorating the town’s most famous witch from the early 13^thcentury. The food was good, the music, from The Wild Rovers, was even better.

Friday morning we are off to Kinsale, the second stop on our three week tour of the south.