Serendipity in Dripsey

West Cork was beautiful--wild, remote, punctuated with high hedges and crumbling buildings. Castles destroyed by Oliver Cromwell? Or just Big Houses that had fallen into ruin? We had no idea. We had no context for what we saw; we just drove and stared.

I wanted to go to Mallow, because of the old song--"The Rakes of Mallow." But first we got lost, due almost entirely to my pathological need to go on smaller and smaller roads. We ended up driving along a narrow country lane, with no idea if we were going north or south, the road twisted so much between the fields. A woman walked briskly up the road, out for her afternoon constitutional, and I pulled over.

Is this the road to Mallow? I asked.

She squinted at me in the sunlight and said, Well, maybe it 'tis and maybe it 'tisn't. But it's a glorious day to be lost. And she gave us a broad smile and walked on.

It was indeed the road to Mallow, but once there we got caught in Friday evening congestion and idled in traffic for a long time. We both agreed to keep going, and headed south. We ended up, quite by chance, in Dripsey, a village about halfway between Macroom and Cork.



We found a B&B, dropped off our bags, and went back out to the pub, The Weigh Inn. There were two young girls there, an Irish girl with rosy cheeks and a red ribbon around her neck, and her English cousin, who was visiting. They were the same age, but the English girl looked more worldly. She wore earrings, and her smile, when I took her picture, was polite and restrained, while the Irish girl's smile was broad and happy.

They seemed almost like icons of their respective countries.

The Irish girl's brother was there, too, playing pool.

The next evening we had dinner with our landlady and her daughters. I asked them what they did for fun, and they told me that they danced. The girls had won trophies galore for their Irish dancing, as well as hundreds of small medallions for lesser contests. They brought us into the living room to show us the trophy cabinet devoted to their winnings.

One of them bent down and hauled out two big plastic grocery sacks from inside the cabinet; both bags were filled almost to bursting with more medallions. Clearly, these girls could dance.

And then, with that flash of serendipity that happens only when you travel and are very lucky, they told us that they would be dancing that very night at the community center outside of town. Lila and I looked at each other. This was too good to be true.

Sure, they said, you can come.

The landlady gave us directions, and they told us to show up late--after 9. The girls dressed early and left, and around 9 Lila and I drove off into the hills. I had imagined some wee stone cottage, perhaps, but the community center was a low-slung metal building with a corrugated roof. It was fairly new, and big.

Dozens of cars were parked in front, and when the door opened a blast of music shrieked out. American country-western music. The band, fronted by a white-haired drummer who looked unusually like Archie Bunker, was singing, "North to Alaska."

Hmmm. This was not at all what I had expected.

They played until 10, and then the dancing began. The band, to our great happiness, switched to traditional Irish music, and the big knots of women--who had been gossiping like mad, and drinking--got up. And they danced.

And they danced, and danced, and danced.

We stayed to the very end and then swept out with the laughing, chattering locals into the starry April night. The windshield was frosty, the car seat was cold, and once we got going on those steep dark curvy roads the headlights blinked out. We were able to gerryrig something--I had to hold the lightswitch on with one hand, and drive with the other, which meant it was impossible to also shift gears. But we were in no hurry to get back. No hurry at all. I got the car in second gear and we coasted slowly down the steep dark roads, our headlights blinking on and blinking off.

We were filled with music and drink and dance and the happy luck that had us at a country dance in the hills of west Cork instead of shopping for sweaters in Killarney.

We had one more day in Ireland before we flew home. I slowed the car a little more. We were in no hurry, no hurry at all.