The Gathering:Cork Welcomes Hobbits

23rd Apr 2013

A new initiative by The Gathering and Rebel Cork Week has been uncovered by PROC this week revealing that the city is set to focus on attracting tourists from Middle Earth.

In a new tourism drive aimed at smaller faraway nations Failte Ireland has said that their tourism strategy for the southern region of the country is being adjusted to home in on the largely untapped market of hobbits and other non-humans.

As part of the drive City Council have been forced to implement a number of new schemes to make the city more friendly to other beings including the provision of lower signage for hobbits as seen here at Penrose Quay.

The mysteriously small sign on Penrose Quay is aimed at hobbits

Local voluntary organisations such as the Ballintemple Hobbit Association and the East Carrigaline Hob-Goblin League have been working with Cork City Council to help make town more friendly to halflings.

“Most of us wouldn’t have great eye sight at the best of times”, said Finbarr Baggins, chairhobbit of the five-strong Tivoli club whose family moved to Cork from Middle Earth as refugees during the Mordor-Mirkwood Wars, “so having some parking signs and pay machines in multi-storey car parks lower to the ground is very helpful. Most Corkonians wouldn’t even know we exist.”.

Road signage has also been ‘updated’ along major roads around the city and county. Instead of names of places and towns on signage hobbits tend to prefer numbers so many large road signs near major junctions have had town names replaced with simple road numbers and vague directions like “East” and “Northbound”.

An excited hobbit gets his Cork passport!

This has, of course, caused mayhem for the local human population who prefer signage to be as informative and wordy as possible without the need for a compass and sextant to decide whether or not to take the next slip road and accidentally end up somewhere awful like Waterford or our own version of Mordor: Dublin.

The GAA in Cork has long been a friend of the local hobbit population however and their political influence in the early seventies at county board level was obvious with the installation of seating suitable only for people under three foot tall during the 1976 revamp of Pairc Ui Chaoimh.

The hobbit section of the stand at Pairc Uí Chaoimh

For decades Cork fans have complained of the ludicrously tight seating arrangements down at the Pairc but few know that it served a very specific purpose in the past.

Initially hobbits came from all over Ireland and beyond to try out the seating specifically designed for them in the stadium’s stands but in recent years the halflings’ interest in GAA has waned, particularly with the emphasis on giant full forwards and midfielders.

Smaller men aren't treated as well by other counties

“Us hobbits were big fans of the likes of skilful nippy forwards like the great Joe Deane and Seanie McGrath”, says Frodo McCarthy secretary of Hobbits For Hurling, a GAA-funded organisation that tries to promote the game in Middle Earth, “but the introduction of your Setanta’s, Aisake’s, Cussen’s and other giants has isolated us. We’ve lost interest.”.

It is believed the Cork County Board may be considering abolishing hobbit-only seating in the redeveloped Pairc Uí Chaoimh, however the new drive by Fáilte Ireland to make the Rebel County attractive to non-human tourists may change that.

With our shrinking economy this drive is no small matter: when it comes to tourism in Cork we certainly don’t want to come up short and people who suggest accommodating the likes of these tourists is a waste of money are living in a fantasy land.