Blarney Castle

Eight kilometres northwest of the city stands the most famous castle in Ireland, and the only one that put a word into the English language. Blarney was a MacCarthy stronghold for centuries, and the keep you climb today went up in 1446. The stone set high in its battlements draws visitors from every continent, all queueing to lean backwards over a drop and kiss a lump of limestone.

The MacCarthys' tower

A timber fort stood on the rock before 1200, replaced by stone around 1210. The tower that survives is the third castle on the site, built in 1446 by Cormac Láidir MacCarthy, Lord of Muskerry, whose family were a branch of the old Kings of Desmond. While Norman and English Cork grew on its marsh downriver, the MacCarthys held the countryside from towers like this one, and Blarney was the finest of them. The walls run to five and a half metres thick at the base. This was a working fortress, not a folly.

How "blarney" got its meaning

The word comes from a duel of letters. Queen Elizabeth I wanted the Irish lords to surrender their lands and take them back under English title. Cormac Teige MacCarthy, the Lord of Blarney in her day, answered every royal demand with warm promises of loyalty and never conceded an inch. The Queen, worn down by another beautifully worded refusal, is said to have snapped that it was all "blarney". The name of his castle became the word for eloquent, flattering talk that never quite says yes.

The stone itself carries older stories. One says the goddess Clíodhna told Cormac Láidir to kiss the first stone he found on his way to court, and he won his case with sudden eloquence. Another claims Robert the Bruce sent a piece of the Stone of Scone in 1314. Whatever its origin, the tradition holds that kissing the stone grants the gift of the gab, and millions have hung backwards over the parapet, gripped by an attendant, to collect it.

The MacCarthys lost Blarney in the Williamite wars, and the estate passed to the Jefferyes family, who laid out the gardens and the strange rock landscape of Rock Close. Today the castle sits in sixty acres of grounds, and the village at its gate grew around one of Ireland's great woollen mills. From the city it is a fifteen-minute drive or a short hop on the 215 bus.

On the walk

The tour tells the other half of this story: the walled English city on the marsh that the MacCarthys watched from their towers. Many guests pair the morning walk with an afternoon at Blarney.