The Kew Tour
The Kew Tour
The British Horseracing Board has a rule that no racehorse can be given a name that is in any way vulgar or suggestive. Currently in training in Ireland is a horse, named by its owners ‘The Kew Tour', ostensibly called after the famous gardens in London . But if you say the name quickly you instantly get a different and peculiarly Irish meaning. Last year I had the inexpressible joy of hearing the commentator on a race at Goodwood say,
‘And making progress on the rails is The Kew Tour…………..'.
Sadly he didn't win because I was looking forward to hearing the announcement, along the lines of ‘…..and now Lady Bracknell presents the trophy to The Kew Tour the winner of the Bunbury Stakes.'
Such thoughts were far from my mind when recently I was acting as guide on a bus tour of County Fermanagh by an eclectic mix of forty five Europeans. My mentor was the great John Cunningham who took me for a preliminary run over the proposed route, Share Centre to Enniskillen to Belcoo, Garrison, Belleek and back home. We discussed what I should talk about, the landscape left by the Ice Age, the drumlins, eskers and moraines, the Cuilcagh mountain range, the caves, the old Holywell church with its lepers'window, the organic garden of Mark and Jill Scott, Lough Melvin and the gillarue and the sonaghan, Belleek Pottery.
Then there were the quirky facts. Like the story of Reverend James Benson Tuttle. He was rector of Oughterdrum parish church which you can see on the horizon across the lough, about four miles on the Enniskillen side of Belleek. He was fond of the drink and frequently failed to turn up at services so that his congregation gradually diminished and hardly anyone attended Sunday worship. This was reported to the bishop and he announced that he would come down in person to the service to see for himself and if these reports were true, the hapless cleric would be sacked. The rector was friendly with the local Catholic parish priest and told him of his plight, and on the Sunday, the priest sent his entire congregation over to the church service with instructions not to genuflect, not to bless themselves, to stand up when the regulars did, and to behave in a devotional manner. Sunday came and with it, the bishop. The church was full. The bishop was most impressed, remarking that he had rarely seen a congregation that behaved in such a devout manner, and the rector kept his job.
Between Garrison and Belleek I saw a field full of donkeys, piebald, grey, black, brown. This, I thought, would be of interest and I noted it down. Approaching Enniskillen on the way back, I heard about the Enniskillen Giantess, Mary May. She married three husbands and murdered them all. The first, she set drunk and ran over him with a heavy horse-drawn wagon, the second, she also made incapable with drink and threw him in with a pregnant sow which lay on him and crushed him to death, the third was weak and sickly and she walled him up in a brick wall. She was arrested, found guilty, and hanged on the Gaol Square .
Next day, I collected forty five Europeans at the Share Centre, Germans, Dutch, Scandinavians, Scottish, Spanish. ‘Tell them who you are, keep it light' I had been told ‘and check that the microphone is working'
It wasn't.
‘Hello' I yelled, and told them my name. ‘I used to be a teacher in a former life', I said, ‘so there will be questions afterwards'.
‘Ja', said the two Germans and solemnly took out notebooks and pencils. Undaunted, I ploughed on.
‘The average depth of Upper Lough Erne is twelve feet. Two feet of water and ten feet of fish', I joked.
‘How many cubic metres is that?' asked the Germans.
At this stage I found that I had set a world record for tour guides. Two of the women had already fallen sound asleep. In Enniskillen, I told them about the two regiments, the Inniskilling Dragoons and the Inniskilling Fusiliers, about Captain Oates and his famous words, ‘I am going outside and I may be some time', when, suffering from frostbite, he walked out of the tent to his death in a howling blizzard because he felt he had become an encumbrance on Scott's ill-fated expedition to the South Pole.
‘He' I said proudly, ‘ he was an Inniskilling Dragoon'
‘Yes' said a Norwegian, ‘but Amundsen got to the Pole before Scott'.
The audience gave approving murmurs. Things could not get worse. They did.
On the way out to Belcoo, I found myself saying, ‘And now we are on the Sligo Road ……….. so-called because it goes to Sligo .'
They looked at me.
‘I cannot believe I just said that', I stammered, and lo and behold, everyone laughed.
Our next port of call was the wonderful organic garden owned by Mark and Jill Scott.
‘Mark used to be a colonel in the Inniskillings' I said, ‘So with his military background, when he tells you to do something you had better do it'
And they did, hanging on his every word.
Though he did catch me on the hop when he said,
‘This is the townland of Mullnashellistragh the meaning of which your tour guide, who is an expert in these things will now explain'.
I said solemnly, ‘It means The hill of the whitethorn overlooking the misty lough'
The Germans dutifully wrote it down.
Back on the bus, I told them to watch out for a field full of donkeys.
‘They have become very valuable', I said, ‘fetching anything from six hundred to a thousand pounds.
We approached the field, everyone looking out the windows. The field was empty, not a donkey in sight.
A Scottish tourist saved the day.
‘Hey Bryan ' he said ‘Were ye drankin' when ye saw the donkeys'
Suitably impressed by Belleek Pottery, we stopped for lunch.
A Finnish lady told me that she was eighty five years old.
When I remarked that she was very sprightly, she told me that she took a sauna every day. I said that I had never been to Scandinavia . She said icily, ‘Scandinavia is not a country, Finland is a country'. Anxious to make amends, I said that I had seen the great Laase Viren running in the Olympics, and that I knew that Suomi was the word for Finland because I had seen it written on his running vest. Then she gave me the priceless piece of information that Suomi comes from the word Suo which means Bog.
She was a formidable old lady and I didn't tell her that Bogman in this country is an insult and I refrained from making any jokes like, You can take the Finn out of the Suo but you can't take the Suo out of the Finn.
After Belleek the rain and mist came down and I was reduced to describing what we would have seen if we had been able to.
The Reverend Tuttle was a big hit
I told them about the seaplane base on Lower Lough Erne and how it was a plane from there that first spotted the Bismarck and pinpointed it for destruction during the Second World War.
Too late, I remembered Basil Fawlty, ‘Don't mention the war'
But the Germans merely said, ‘What type of plane was it, Sunderland or Catalina'.
A break for shopping in Enniskillen and we headed back to the Share Centre.
They were warm in their thanks and each made a point of shaking hands with me and thanking me for all the information. When I asked them which bit they remembered best, every last one said, ‘The Woman who murdered her husbands'.
One of them said, ‘You are a very funny man'
I decided to take it as a compliment!
Brian Gallagher