By Bill King
Would you climb up 127 stairsteps in the partial ruins of a castle that is almost 600-years old? Would you do so on a spiraled stone staircase with steps so narrow at one end that your foot won’t fit there and barely wide enough on the other end to step on? The stones are uneven and damp, and slick in spots. There is no handrail. There is a rope fastened to the wall on one side that you can hold onto if you can, well, hold onto it. Would you endure this test of stamina and endurance just to lie flat on your back once you’ve reached the top and hang out over the edge of the castle wall some 90-feet above the ground? A man you’ve never seen wraps his arms around you, so you don’t plummet to your death? Would you do all that just to kiss a rock? A rock! Yes, I said a rock!
My first thought was, “Well, I don’t know. How much are they going to pay me to do this?” What? I have to pay them? This rock is not a diamond, a ruby, or, as you might expect in Ireland, even an emerald. It is a limestone rock that looks pretty much the same as all the other limestone rocks in the battlements of Blarney Castle near Cork, Ireland.
Oh, they say it’s a unique rock with special powers, but it looks like an ordinary rock, or so they tell me. Well, no, as a matter of fact, I didn’t actually see it because I didn’t climb up there. So, no, while I didn’t actually kiss the Blarney Stone, I did kiss the girl who kissed the stone. I even have a picture to prove it. Doesn’t that count? Isn’t that kind of like kissing the stone by proxy?
Maybe I should have climbed on up there. I am, after all, much older than my sweet wife…14-months older, to be exact. Never mind that she has two artificial knees. Well, her knees are practically new and my knees, not to mention my hips and ankles, are old-original equipment. Okay, the real reason is because I don’t believe the myth. According to legend, kissing the stone gives one an endowment of eloquence. To put that in the King’s English…Bill King’s English, that is, it is supposed to give one the gift of gab. I have been told numerous times that I already have that, so why go to all that trouble to get something I already have? I believe it is a fun little myth that attracts people to the ruins of a centuries-old castle and gives them a reason to pay good money to climb all those steps and kiss that rock.
Am I glad I went? Absolutely! The grounds are beautiful, the castle has an intriguing history, and I got to kiss a pretty woman who happens to be my wife. The lady whose credit card we found on the ground is glad we went too. She may have used it to pay to get in, where she evidently kissed the stone. When Jean asked in the coffee shop if anyone had come in looking for a lost credit card, the lady in front of her turned around and eloquently screeched, “It is my sister’s!” She even gave Jean the correct name on the card. I guess I was wrong. Maybe I should have kissed the stone. Had that lady not kissed the stone, she might not have been able to speak a single word when Jean asked!