Guinness Record
Lawrence Winkler
The first thing to greet us, on the motorway, was a billboard. The caption floated above a phalanx of full Guinness glasses. Welcome to Ireland. I had tried it before, but only as a beverage, and never inhaled. In Ireland Guinness had evolved, from nitrogen and water, to yeast to hops and burnt barley, through fish air bladder isinglass finings, beside mudskippers and toucans, out of aluminum iron lungs, and into the black stuff, a meal in a glass, the Workman’s friend, a pint of plain:
‘When food is scarce and your larder bare
And no rashers grease your pan,
When hunger grows as your meals are rare -
A pint of plain is your only man.’
Ine and I thought we were just hitchhikers, under a beer billboard, on a bend in the road. We were actually unsuspecting students of stout, on a hairpin learning curve.
The first instructor was Sean, a middle-aged banker, driving an old blue Anglia, slowly up our hill. He barely had to brake, for us to get in the back. He wasn’t going to Dublin. He asked where we were from. I told him Canada.
“Canada!” He replied, with obvious relish. “Me brother’s in Canada. We’re going to the pub.”
He accelerated through the rocky green patchwork countryside, across the Waterford Bridge, past Jerpoint Abby, to Kilkenny. Sean dropped us at the Mena B&B, an old white stucco Tudor house, and arranged to meet us at the pub across the street ‘later.’ Up in our cozy room above the rose garden, Ine and I put the time and the bedside mirror to good use. Welcome to Ireland.
An Irishman is the only man in the world, who will step over the bodies of a dozen naked women, to get to a bottle of stout. Sean was already eleven ahead of me. Ine and I marveled, at how easily his Guinness consumption matched the ecstasy he had found in meeting a Canadian. He clearly loved his brother.
Nothing prepared me for the chill of consciousness returning. It was a black day in July. My skull felt like it contained my heart. Ine and I tread slowly downstairs, for our first Irish breakfast. Again, nothing exceeds like excess. After too many pints of the black stuff the night before, I was thinking continental. Mrs. Molloy was having none of it.
“Ireland sober is Ireland stiff.” She said. And out came the liver and bacon rashers and sausages and fried eggs and black pudding and sautéed mushrooms and fried tomato and baked beans and brown soda bread. I felt bile rising and gazed longingly into the pure clear simple cup of Bewley’s breakfast tea. She poured cream into it. The ancient Greeks had them pegged:
‘Its inhabitants are more savage than the Britons, since they are man-eaters as well as heavy eaters, and since, further, they count it an honourable thing, when their fathers die, to devour them, and openly to have intercourse, not only with other women, but also with their mothers and sisters.’Strabo, On the Irish
Ine and I climbed, to the endless portrait gallery, in the Norman Castle. Dame Alice, the founder of Kyteler’s Inn, was born to Norman parents in 1263. Alice had been accused of witchcraft, for poisoning at least the last of her four husbands. We suffered no ill effects from her coffee, moving on to the Celtic collection of Rothe House, four centuries after Oliver Cromwell banished the last Rothe to oblivion. The dark-themed day continued, in the Dominican priory of the Black Abbey, named for the habits they wore, and the habits they bore, responsible for many Inquisition deaths, and the theft of their victims’ possessions. The Black Death brought retribution to the Black Abbey in 1348. The five-panel Rosary window was almost as powerful.
Ine and I hiked out of town, via St. Mary’s Cathedral. She danced a Dutch-Hungarian version of an Irish jig to my harmonica, on the side of the road. The sun blazed brighter for her performance. Our hitchhiking was unfocused, and after the black stuff diversion of the previous day, I was a little more cautious with our rides. It’s a long, long way to Tipperary. I studied the young man behind the windscreen, as Ine’s thumb pulled him over. He leaned across the passenger side to roll down the window.
“Where you goin’?” He asked.
“Cork.” I said.
“Well, I’m headed in that direction. Hop in.”
“Not so fast.” I said. “I’m from Canada. That doesn’t mean anything special to you, does it?”
“Not at all.” He said. And we hopped in.
“You’re in luck.” He said, as we pulled away from the curb.
“Why’s that?” I asked.
“It’s my first day off in two months. I’m celebratin’. We’re goin’ to the pub!”
Joe was a welder. He had lied. We went to three pubs. I think it was the six pints of pain that Joe and I quaffed, over a game of billiards, in the last pub, that broke me, or maybe it was Ine’s giggling at our failing skill. Joe asked if we were hungry. We told him we would likely never be again. He ordered a snack from the bar. It arrived, looking, for all the world, like someone had cut the feet off a pig, and deep-fried them in breadcrumbs.
“Do you know what they is, boy?” He asked. I told him it looked like pigs feet, deep-fried in breadcrumbs. He slapped my back.
“Good for you. Them’s crubeens. Crunchy trotters, they are.”
I was thinking that the sixteenth century English had them pegged, as well:
‘The Irish... are barbarous and most filthy in their diet. They skum the seething pot with an handful of straw, and straine their milke... through a like handful of straw, none of the cleanest... defile the pot and milke. They devoure... the intralles of beasts unwashed, they will feede on Horses dying of themselves. Neither do they any Beere... nor any Ale: but they drink... Beefe-broath mingled with milke; but when they come to any Market Towne, to sell a Cow or a Horse, they never return home, till they have drunke the price in Spanish Wine, and till they have outslept two or three days drunkenesse. It is strange and ridiculous... when they found Sope and Starch, carried for the use of our Laundresses, they thinking them to be some dainty meates, did eat them greedily, and when the stuck in their teeth, cursed bitterly...’
Fynes Moryson, An Uncomplimentary View of the Irish, c. 1605
For all his lunacy, Joe was motivated by pure generosity. His only valuable possessions were his joy and happiness. And a quiet, clumsy infatuation with Ine.
He drove us all the way to the Rock of Cashel, the traditional seat of the kings of Munster for hundreds of years before the Norman invasion. When St Patrick pulled Satan from his cave in the Devil’s Bit Mountain, the Rock landed here, and converted the first Southern king. Joe bought us a book of Irish Fairy tales, and said goodbye, without so much as an address exchange. Sometimes, you only hear the greatness of men in their echoes.
Ine and I checked into Rockville house for five pounds, a terrific bath, and a late afternoon rest. The gray and green Cashel dusk we reemerged into, was the essence of Ireland- quiet lanes and strollers, and a thousand ravens in the trees above us. I bought an ice cream for Ine, and an orange juice for my head. We retreated to fairy tales and dreams.
The Irish breakfast next morning used the rest of the pig that hadn’t escaped on Joe’s crubeens. Unlike the croissants on offer in Paris, it was an immovable feast. Back out on the road, I was at my most guarded. Ine and I were into our third day in Ireland, and had only broken a hundred kilometers, and a Guinness record in Guinness. At this rate, we would die of cirrhosis, before we ever got to Dublin. I needed to exercise caution.
We waited on the roadside, with hidden thumbs. I let the cars go by, sizing up the vehicles, the hubcaps, the drivers. Waiting for Mr. Right. Finally, I spotted him, traveling the speed limit, ticking all the boxes, in a sedate silver-blue Volvo station wagon, exuding sobriety. The driver was wearing a three-piece suit and tie, short hair, and a solemn expression. Business class. My thumb threw an arc. He pulled over, pressed a button, and the automatic window, on the passenger side, migrated south.
“Would you like a lift?” He asked.
“Where are you going?” I inquired.
“Cork.” He said.
“Are you going directly to Cork?” I asked. He replied in the affirmative.
“I’m from Canada. That doesn’t mean anything special to you, does it?”
“No. Not at all.” He said.
“You’re not celebrating anything, are you?” I asked.
“No. Listen, would you like a lift or not?” He finally said. Ine and I got in. We pulled away from the shoulder. My window migrated north. I exhaled. Slumped.
“So,” I said. “What brings you to Cork?” I asked.
“Me brother owns a pub there.” He said.
