When Jim Eastwood got to the finals of the BBC’s The Apprentice this year, he was accused by ‘Lord Sugar’s’ aide, Nick Hewer, of having “swallowed the Blarney Stone whole”. Eastwood, a salesman from Northern Ireland, was lauded and simultaneously reviled for his gift of the gab. His ability to sweet talk customers and suppliers into advantageous deals was looked on with envy by his fellow contestants, while his talent at talking himself out of the boardroom and elimination from the competition, earned him the moniker ‘Jedi Jim’ and he was later described in the British press as a ‘Blarney merchant’.
Here is an excellent example of the combined seduction and menace of the Irishman who talks too much and too well. Having a talent for “blarney” means more than having a facility with language: it means being too articulate, too fluent, too persuasive, too eloquent. It is a talent that has a sinister side, full of empty charm and menacing knowingness.
It makes sense then that kissing the Blarney Stone is such hard work. To do so, you must make a journey out of Cork to the medieval Blarney Castle and clamber up some precarious and slippery stone stairs – health and safety being no object to the pursuit of eloquence. Once at the top of the castle, you must give yourself up to the arms of a stranger – a very nice Cork man called Liam - who tenderly holds you safe while you lean over backwards into vertiginous empty space to plant a smacker on the magical stone. All the while, Liam speaks endearments soothingly and beautifully, attesting to his own access to the stone’s powers. Afterwards, down you clamber, shakily, to collect your (deeply unflattering) photograph, bearing witness to the exact moment that you earned the gift of the gab through a kiss.
Kissing the Blarney Stone has featured in tourist trails since at least the early 19th century. Its claims have a powerful draw, without ever necessarily being taken terribly seriously. Jeremiah Curtin, an American traveler and collector of folklore, recounted in his memoirs a trip to Blarney in 1887:
At Blarney castle attempts to kiss the Blarney stone
caused much mirth. It was agreed that we would hold
a certain young lady of the party by the feet while she
reached down and kissed the stone, then each man would
kiss her. She reached the stone, or professed to, then
we drew her back, but, with female craft she kissed
Father Cronin, then declared that after kissing a priest
it would be sacrilege to kiss an ordinary man.
Saved by a kiss from a priest! Kissing and speaking go hand in hand in the tourist’s experience of Ireland, and both cause mirth and perhaps a little unease. Seduction and menace are the twin aspects of being a Blarney merchant.
