A blustery breeze buffets the terrace of what is undoubtedly the westernmost cafe in Ireland, in all of Europe, really, presuming you don't count Iceland. Which I don't.

Atlantic Ocean waves are crashing into the majestically craggy coast. There is not the slightest break in the pillowy gray clouds that are so low you can almost touch them, and so enveloping they almost embrace you. The salt air is mild, and the Irish mist sweet. The expanse of grass being scarfed down by the sheep grazing across the way is archetypal Kelly green.

A palpable sense of history emanates from the landscape. And from the people, too. Their thick brogue hints at an ancient language that is making something of a comeback these days.

I'm on the patio of the Tig Slea Head cafe, playing fetch with a dog named Banshee. Banshee belongs to Marlene Tomasy, a 50-year-old woman from Germany who immigrated to Ireland earlier this decade. Tomasy, who bakes the cafe's delicious cookies, pies and pastries on the premises, tells me she rescued the brown Lab-collie mix a little more than two years ago.

"He loves the tourists, and they love him," Tomasy says. "I happen to think he is the most-photographed dog in Ireland at the moment — and he knows it."

A CAPTIVATING DRIVE

Somehow, playing fetch with a reclaimed dog owned by a German woman amid the humble antiquity of the Dingle Peninsula in County Kerry, about 140 miles southwest of Galway, feels right.

My wife and I ended up at the cafe because Barbara Carroll, co-owner of the Milestone House B&B in Dingle town, told us that the Slea Head Drive west of town is one of the most beautiful circuits in all of Ireland. "It's only 22 miles, or 35 if you take the longer loop," she said, "but give yourself three hours."

The short loop took us six hours. Not by design, but simply because everywhere we stopped we found ourselves lingering. We lingered at the ruins of Dunbeg Fort, which sit on a sheer seafront promontory and date from 800 B.C. We crawled into a small opening in the rampart that led to a primeval room — a man-made cave, really — roughly seven feet high and six feet across. It was big enough to stand in. But what was it for? What was life here like then?

We lingered more than once at the side of the road just gazing, as if in a dream, at the verdant pastures delineated by ancient stone fences and realizing that the stone fence is to this part of the world what the white picket fence is to New England.

We lingered at the cliffs of Dunmore Head, overlooking Coumeenoole Strand, where the 1970 epic "Ryan's Daughter" — a poignant World War I love story starring Sarah Miles and Trevor Howard and acclaimed for its cinematography — was filmed.

We lingered at Clogher Strand, where we saw a seal bobbing in the cove and an island known as "the Sleeping Giant" reclining in the distance.

We lingered at the Gallarus Oratory, a small stone church erected sometime between the sixth and 12th centuries, where we marveled at its construction and its shape. And you don't have to be religious to sense that you're standing on sacred ground.

THE ROOTS OF IRELAND

Sacred, too, particularly in Irish literary circles, are the Blasket Islands.

A collection of stony dots perched just off the western edge of the peninsula and accessible by ferry only in summer, the Blaskets are tiny. The largest (by far) of the five named islands is just 3 1/2 miles long and two-thirds of a mile wide. Their population during World War I was roughly 200. But steadily, residents left the islands, many for America, and by 1953 the population was zero.

The historical, linguistic, architectural and natural elements of the Slea Head Drive, and how intrinsic they all are to this mountainous finger of land, became clear to me at the Blasket Center. Walking out of the museum devoted to the legacy of the abandoned islands, I realized this: While many Americans with surnames similar to mine (O'Brian) visit Ireland to get a firsthand sense of their roots, I was getting a firsthand sense of the roots of Ireland itself.

LINGUISTIC REVIVAL

In fact, the western half of the Dingle Peninsula is a "gaeltacht," a region of Ireland where the majority of residents speak Gaelic (aka Irish) as their first language. In Dingle and the handful of other federally recognized gaeltachts, there seems to be a resurgent linguistic pride similar to that of the French-speaking Quebecois in Canada.

As a practical matter, though, while you stay on the left side of the narrow road as you negotiate the tight twists and turns of the Slea Head Drive in your rental car, the only Irish phrases you'll need to know are "go mall" and "tog go bog." The former, which is painted on the pavement, means "go slow." The latter, which appears on road signs, means "slow down" or, more literally, "take it softly."