Blarney stoned: Gardaí take cannabis from castle garden

LEGEND has long had it that kissing the Blarney Stone on the Blarney Castle ramparts bestows the gift of the gab – but now it appears that the magic might have come from somewhere closer to the ground.

Staff at the Cork tourist attraction – which attracted 338,000 visitors last year – were shocked when gardaí arrived at the estate last Friday and confiscated another crowd puller – the cannabis sativa and opium plants which were planted in the castle’s prized Poison Garden earlier this year.

Gardaí ordered the gardening staff to dig up both species and removed the plants to a local Garda station, warning the castle’s owner, Sir Charles Colthurst, that he could have been potentially charged under the Misuse of Drugs Act.