| In today's
terms, I guess you could say that the "Blarney Stone" would now
be called the "Blah Blah Blah Stone?" Or the "BS
Stone?" (And we know what the initials stand for don't we!)
There really is an actual stone in Cork, Ireland. It's not a
natural stone in the ground per se. It is on a parapet.
Tradition says that whoever kisses it will get the "gift of
gab." Were people that shy years ago that they needed to kiss a
stone?
No one is sure how this
tradition got started (like a lot of others), but the word
"blarney" in the dictionary means to speak with a flattering
tongue, over praise, overstate, hyperbole, schmooze, or in
today's society someone who says what you want to hear, but not exactly
what the truth is. Blarney can also be a lot of "pre-determined
complimentary statements" known in bars as pick-up lines.
In the late 16th
century, someone named Cormac MacDermot MacCarthy had a castle. He
was suppose to turn it over to the crown (reasons unknown). Because
he kept delaying this and telling the Lord President of Munster
various excuses with smooth, eloquent speech, this became known as "talkin'
blarney." It worked for a while, but eventually MacCarthy lost
his castle. Afterwards, Sir John Jefferys got the castle and added
to it by building a Gothic-style house. There was a fire, however,
in 1820 and it all burnt to the ground.
Since I have never been
to Ireland, I have no clue if the official Blarney Stone is from the
original castle or the added-on Gothic home. Does it really matter?
If you have the guts to kiss a stone in public, you're not really very shy
at all in the first place. And, today the stone is located at the
top of the castle. To safeguard it from all the tourists, an iron
grate surrounds it. So it's not easy to get to and I'm told that in
order to actually kiss the blarney stone you must hang upside down while
kissing! |
