Birds and Beasts

Swallows 12 – Table 0

You are all in total agreement that I need to cherish my swallows. More on that topic below, but first, I want to introduce you to The Museum of Birds and Beasts.

Yes, it’s a quirky title for a book, but it is also part of a wider project that involved exhibitions and workshops.

Tess Leak and Sharon Whooley are the two genii behind it all, and last week I participated in an event on Whiddy where the book was launched and some of the writers were there to read their stories. It’s one of several projects of Arts Council-funded Creative Places, West Cork Islands, which aims to build sustained arts investment and create opportunities for local arts programmes across the 7 [inhabited] islands of West Cork.

These are all stories collected from the inhabited Islands of West Cork. As you will remember from my series on the Skeams, life revolved around the sea, working the land, and keeping animals and birds. Danny O’Leary (below) talked about his life on the sea. He gave up a place in UCC to go picking winkles. He could make a good living: They’re totally gone. There used to be crowds of people at them, all over the island.

Rose O’Sullivan told us about raising turkeys.

The 8th of December was when the islanders would sell the live turkeys in Bantry and each family would have about two dozen to sell. There would be a bit of an auction in Bantry for them. Every family had their own boat to take out their turkeys for the fair. I remember our Aunt Ellie talking about the 1930s and how it was the grandest sight to see the turkeys, they’d be gathered and gobbled and headed down the road on the island and that was your money then for Christmas.

And then one or two of them would be plucked and prepped and sent to England in the post. We had two aunts in England and our mothers here would be sending the turkeys over and I once asked our cousin, “How were the turkeys when they arrived?” and he said “They were bloody green! My father would be down in the back garden digging a hole and there must have been about 20 of them buried there over the years.” Nobody had the heart to tell them this at home.

Take a look at this RTE story about the Aer Lingus’s annual Turkey Lift. I remember my own father getting the annual turkey from his cousins in Kerry every Christmas. My mother was a bit grim-faced at the prospect of all that plucking and gutting.

I was very taken with Sheila McCarthy’s story about being the only girl on the mussel raft. She was 15 when she started and she gave us a detailed account of what the work was like. That’s her, reading her story, above.

Even though I was the only girl, I was the tallest on the raft, so I was always given the job of tying on the socks. I would be lying flat on my belly on the wooden raft leaning over into the bay tying the socks on. I’d have two lads sitting on my legs to make sure I wouldn’t fall in. I couldn’t swim either. There was no health and safety then! it was great fun but looking back I wonder how in the name of God we were allowed to do itI

If you want to know what the socks were, you’ll have to buy the book! It’s an absolute delight – the charm of it lies in its authenticity and the true voices of the islanders. It’s the kind of book you will keep by the bedside and dip into, marvelling and chuckling as you do so. You can get it at the wonderful Worm Books in Schull – they will be happy to mail it to you if you aren’t lucky enough to live here.

Now – back to the swallows. You will be relieved to hear, I know, that I have a simple and elegant solution to the droppings. I found a board in the attic and dragged it down. It was heavy, but I had your voices in my head, urging me to do what I could to ensure the swallows could stay. I then hauled it up a stepladder (the effort!) and placed it carefully across the beams under the nest. Voilá! Are you happy now?

The swallows are.  They are busily stitching and attaching and adding twiggy bits. There was high drama today as they saw off a Magpie with much swooping and twittering and dive-bombing. 

Himself appears to spend most of the time in a lordly surveying of the area, while Herself is busy gathering and constructing. However, all my sources say they work together to nest-build so I am probably projecting feminist sensibility onto my observations. 

I sat in there for a while today and was glad to see that my presence did not deter them from their work. This all bodes well for a peaceful cohabitation. I hope to announce the nestling count in due course.

And if you can’t wait for that, why not tune in to the live camera trained on the Chough’s nest, not too far from here. There are four babies, all curled up together – but watch for the electric moment they sense Mum arriving with food. 

Grove Orchard: My Half-Acre

I did a series of posts, Rewilding my One Acre about my last house, Nead an Iolair, in which I charted over several years all the wild flowers that grew on our property. That included my wildflower meadow (more of a patch in reality) as well as all the little plants that just showed up in the grass and the gravel. 

I want to do the same at Grove Orchard – that’s the name of my new house and it’s a name with some pedigree, deserving perhaps of a future post. So I have been out with my camera, lying in the grass, which is not the greatest choice for someone prone to hay fever, but I grudge my readers no sacrifice. Here is the result and I hope you enjoy it. You can click on Watch on YouTube for full screen.

The music is An Droichead /The Bridge by Liam O’Flynn, used with permission.
It was originally commissioned to reflect the theme of President Mary McAleese’s presidency, ‘Building Bridges’ and performed for her inauguration as President of Ireland. This version features Mark Knopfler on guitar.

Because this is an established garden/orchard, I have included what flowers are blooming now, be they wild or cultivated. And sometimes just leaves, because they are so eye-catching (that Japanese Maple! Those apple blossoms!) and also any critters that hove into view. I don’t know who owns the cat, but he (she?) owns my garden. There’s a twice-daily patrol to make sure all is in order.

By no means is every plant native. Or benign. I have discovered some aliens – Chilean Iris and Three Cornered Leek for example are both non-native but at the moment they are alive with bees so I am reconciling to their presence in my garden. And alas, my Bluebells are not native, but the Spanish imports. Darn.

I have a wilderness area (ok, an unkempt part of the garden) and in it I have discovered Mock Strawberry (Potentilla indica) aka Yellow-flowered Strawberry. It’s rare and invasive and I have submitted a report to the Biodiversity Data Centre.

And I seem to have LOTS of Lords-and-Ladies, aka Cuckoo Pint, or Arum maculatum. It’s native but very poisonous to humans and pets. BUT – birds love it, apparently, so I’ll keep it but keep an eye on it. The Irish name for it is Cluas Chaoin (Kloo-us keen) – it means smooth-surfaced ear and isn’t that just the perfect descriptor? The image above shows both Lords-and Ladies and a Mock Strawberry.

On the whole, the garden is alive with native wild plants – it’s most of what you will see in the slideshow. It’s also alive with birds – I have just downloaded the Merlin App so I know I have far more birds than the ones I can actually see. And I need advice, Dear Readers! A swallow pair is busy building a nest in my garden room – right over the table. I hate to knock it down, but I am not fond of bird poop in my tea. What to do?

Mary Oliver’s ‘Good-Bye Fox’

I am the grateful recipient, earlier this week of Mary Oliver’s poetry collection A Thousand Mornings. Thank you to my friend Tim Farrelly – not sure what I did to deserve this, but I can’t believe I was unfamiliar with this poet. As soon as I cracked the book, I was entranced. Oliver died in 2019, aged 83 and I gather I was almost alone in the world in not knowing her work. 

I have read and re-read her poem ‘Good-Bye Fox’ and I just knew that I had to unite it with photographs of our beloved Ferdia, about whom I wrote in this post, and Robert wrote in this one. I have applied for and been given permission to quote this wonderful poem in full.* So first, here it is.

Good-Bye Fox

He was lying under a tree, licking up the shade, 

Hello again, Fox, I said. 

 And hello to you too, said Fox, looking up and not bounding away. 

 You’re not running away? I said. 

Well, I’ve heard of your conversation about us. News travels even among foxes, as you might know or not know. 

 What conversation do you mean? 

 Some lady said to you, “The hunt is good for the fox.” And you said, “Which fox?” 

 Yes, I remember. She was huffed. 

 So you’re okay in my book. 

 Your book! That was in my book, that’s the difference between us. 

 Yes, I agree. You fuss over life with your clever words, mulling and chewing on its meaning, while we just live it. 

 Oh! 

Could anyone figure it out, to a finality? So why spend so much time trying. You fuss, we live. 

And he stood, slowly, for he was old now, and ambled away. 

I found myself mulling and chewing over what Oliver is saying and contrasting it with my experiences with Ferdia.

The poem’s central dynamic — a fox who just lives while the poet fusses with words and meaning — relates closely to our relationship with Ferdia. Robert and I were doing exactly what Oliver’s fox gently mocks: writing, naming, observing. 

And yet. . . Ferdia seemed to choose our company. He came back, repeatedly, voluntarily. That kinda complicates Oliver’s characterisation of the fox as loftily above our interest in him.

For me, it’s not just about a fox. It’s also about loss, and what endures in memory. 

But I don’t have to rely just on memory, because we were recording, we were mulling and chewing over his presence in our lives. And we were loving it all – how he wore a rut in the lawn to our terrace, how he barked gently outside the window to alert us to his presence, how he carried scraps home to his family, how he loved to keep us company as we sat outside, and how much he liked it when Robert played his melodeon. 

Ferdia ambled away in the end. I am so grateful we fussed over him while we could.

*With many thanks: Reprinted by the permission of The Charlotte Sheedy Literary Agency as agent for the author. Copyright © 2012 by Mary Oliver with permission of Bill Reichblum

‘The Triumph of our Long Persecuted Faith’

The Catholic Church in Timoleague stands proudly on a hill, instantly visible as the largest and most imposing building in the town. It belongs to the great era of Catholic church-building at the beginning of the 20th century and reflects, in its neo-Hiberno-Romanesque architecture, and its sheer size, many of the Catholic and nationalistic narratives and preoccupations of the time in which it was built. 

I have already written about the Timoleague Friary and the Church of Ireland Church of the Ascension. Together, they tell the story of Ireland from the 16th to the 19th centuries – the dissolution of the monasteries, the suppression of the Catholic Religion and the special position of the Established Church. But from Catholic Emancipation (1829) to Disestablishment (1869) and Cardinal Cullen’s Devotional Revolution (from 1850), the Catholic Church gained the ascendancy. An ambitious program of building was necessary to replace broken down ‘mass houses’ and provide large and suitable places of worship for the vast majority of the population. 

Ground-breaking and foundation stone ceremonies were highly ritualised. Fund-raising efforts were enormous and often involved canvassing emigrants. This took energy and dedication by the Parish Priest, Rev Peter (later Monsignor) Hill.

Once the church was built, or largely finished, it was consecrated, usually by a Bishop and in the case of Timoleague the Church of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, this was conducted in 1912 by the Bishop of Ross but the oration was delivered by Dr Michael Fogarty, Bishop of Killaloe. 

Bishop Fogarty was a passionate nationalist and noted orator who ‘involved himself closely in the social and political challenges facing Ireland’. Fogarty’s speech is remarkable to our modern ears as much for its nuance-free and emotive evocation of the centuries of Irish oppression as for the note of sectarianism that emanated from deep and long-held resentments. However, it seems to have been fairly typical of the speeches given by churchmen on such occasions and I have decided to quote it at length because it provides such a striking example of the kind of nationalistic rhetoric that congregations were listening to on these occasions. Some of us may indeed find it very familiar and remember the impassioned little patriots that we became as we wrote our history essays and sang about Kevin Barry.

The speech is quoted in full by the Skibbereen Eagle, Sept 14, 1912: Solemn Dedication by His Lordship Bishop of Ross/Impressive ceremonies/Eloquent Sermon by His Lordship the Bishop of Killaloe

So here is a deep dive into 1912 nationalistic and Catholic fervour.

Bishop Fogarty began

For many years, the faithful of Timoleague worshipped God in one of the poorest of churches … The Church in Ireland had passed out of its long night of persecution: she had entered on the bright dawn of freedom with renewed vigour, and her faithful sons and daughters strove to reconstruct her temples …. 

He went on to castigate those who criticise the expenditure of money on churches,

as if they begrudged to the service of the Most High a shilling of that wealth they squander so lavishly in the service of man. For it is to be observed that the people who speak this – and I am happy to say that they are not Catholics – but if they worship at all for the most part worship in churches which they never built, but which they plundered by violence from others who built them – have neither scruple nor objection to that limitless expenditure which we every day witness in erecting public buildings, courts of justice, banks, Royal palaces, and private dwellings, some of which … have cost more money than would build all the churches in Connacht. But let the poor Irish man spend a shilling in honour of that God whom he adores … let a new window be painted, and organ erected, and we are told at once that this is money misapplied, that it shocks the economic sense, that it had been better spent in starting industries or given to the poor.

He continued, 

Poor plundered Ireland. What a history has been hers. Nowhere else in the world has the faith of the people passed through so many ordeals of persecution without being conquered. Of temptation without being shaken, of scandal without being corrupted. And, therefore, much as I admire this splendid building and rejoice with you in its consecration, it is not, I confess, the beauty of its architecture, nor the solidity of its structure, nor the amplitude of its dimensions that move me now, but the thought of what it represents and stands for, the triumph of our long persecuted faith. Your Catholic ancestors lie buried for many generations around the walls of the old monastery yonder, now roofless and in ruins. They passed out of life, those brave soldiers of the faith, apparently defeated in their long and direful struggle for God and country; and when they died everything seemed lost to Ireland – land, freedom and religion. 

But the flag for which they fought was not buried; nor was the spirit which spread it fearlessly to the breeze, despite all opposition, extinguished in the land. The blood which they shared as martyrs carried in it the seeds of ultimate triumph, and your noble new church, now built and consecrated in an atmosphere of freedom, is the fruit, as it is also a monument of the illustrious and lasting victory won for Catholic Ireland by these, our faithful forefathers. Their race and blood have passed through many vicissitudes of fortune since the dark and disastrous night of Kinsale; they have suffered many a wrong and many humiliations in the intervening centuries, and have undergone many great and sorrowful changes …

Referring to the fundraising needed to build a church like this, by voluntary contribution and without any form of state aid, he stated,

… though this system may sometimes press hard upon us, and though our richly endowed Protestant neighbours may sneer at our sometimes humble efforts, I regard it not only as a tribute to the intensity of our faith, but as a merciful dispensation of Providence for the preservation of the holy faith in the hearts of our people … the result of this system is that our priests and churches belong to the people themselves – that is the Irish priest as a rule is sprung from the people amongst whom he ministers. He is one of themselves, bone of their bone and flesh of their flesh. His heart and theirs keep perfect time and empathy. He is no foreigner, no outsider, no distant Aristocrat who disdains their humble lives, or chills them with his lofty airs.

Bishop Fogarty lived until 1955 and died, still a committed republican, at the ripe old age of 96. He played a significant role in the struggle for Irish independence although he surprised many by being pro-treaty, possibly related to his personal friendship with Michael Collins.

Can you imagine him thundering from the pulpit in Timoleague in 1912, delivering his fiery oration to the willing ears of the congregation? How would you have felt, if you had been sitting there?

Gabrielle’s Lake

I am always delighted when readers contact me with stories about some of the West Cork places I have written about, so I was very pleased indeed to get a message from Jack Cooper, relaying a story from his friend Gabrielle McCracken, nee Chavasse. Gabrielle, an Oxford graduate, lives in Scotland now and has very happy memories of her childhood in the shadow of Mount Gabriel and subsequent visits back to the area. 

Gabrielle’s reminiscence takes shape around the small lake on the top of Mount Gabriel that I wrote about in my post Legends of Mount Gabriel: the Bottomless Lake. Here is her story, punctuated by comments and photographs from me. The Rectory (below) that Gabrielle refers to came up for sale a few years ago and this photograph is from the sales video.

In the early 1930s, my father, Claude Chavasse, became the Rector of the ‘altar’ parish in West Cork. It was his first parish : he already had a Mediaeval History degree and the history and legends of wherever he lived were of great importance to him. I was born in 1935 and spent the first five years of my life in that lovely parish: we could see Mount Gabriel from the rectory, hence my name. 

Peter Clarke’s lovely watercolour of the Altar Church is above. Claude was a member of the large Chavasse family associated with Castletownsend and New Court. Rachel Finnegan has written beautifully about the Chavasses in her book The Memoirs and Diaries of Judith Isobel Chavasse. Judith Isobel was Claude’s mother, Gabrielle’s grandmother.

I was brought up in the knowledge of the legend that the foot-shaped lake on the mountain was where the Archangel Gabriel had put his foot down on Earth on the way to Nazareth and the Annunciation. My parents often climbed the mountain and they told me that they had often swum in the lake undeterred by its reputation for being bottomless and that, if they went too deep, they might find themselves on the Fastnet Rock! In about 1948, my father took locum summer duty back in his beloved ‘altar’ parish, and so he and my mother were able to climb Mount Gabriel again but now with my sister and me. We all swam in the dark peaty water of the lake, and I remember it well. 

I love that they swam in the lake – it is dark and peaty as she remembers it but so alluring in its remoteness and in how it is contained within a pocket in the landscape with those cliffs in the background.

The lake may have been about 6 yards long and not very wide. It is hard to remember dimensions, but on one side, there was the curve as of an instep and on the other was a small steep rocky cliff, perhaps about 8 feet high with delightful little ferns growing in its crevices. There would have been very few tourists in those days, and there might have been a minimal footpath to the lake, but no road, no posts, no wire , all of which appear in more recent photographs. 

While Gabrielle remembers the lake as smaller than it actually is (typical of us all) her description of the character of the lake is completely accurate – the ‘instep curve’ and the cliff with its ferns are all clearly visible. The fence with its wooden posts and wire are all much more recent.

On that occasion, I took a black and white photograph of the lake (with my Brownie Box camera) and entered it in a school photographic competition, but, alas, I destroyed the negative and gave the only print to a friend a few years ago.

I have turned one of my photographs into a black and white image. I understand that Gabrielle’s vision is not good, so Jack will have to describe this to her.

In the early 1980s, when I and my two children were visiting relations (Dr. and Mrs Pearson, staying at Coosheen, Schull), I took my children up Mount Gabriel to visit the lake that was so important to me. We looked in vain. We clambered through thick heather, we climbed over rocks, we sought everywhere near the top of the mountain — I was devastated that we could find no sign of the lake. 

I know that feeling! Robert and I came close to missing the lake too and at one point felt like we might have to be rescued from the mountain while traversing the rough terrain (above). But I can assure Gabrielle that the lake is still there – we did find it eventually. 

Straightaway, we climbed back down to Schull and went to the tourist office and asked the official (she was probably in her forties) what had happened to the lake? She asked if we meant the reservoir at the foot of the mountain and said that there was no lake, and she had no idea why the mountain was called Mount Gabriel!

There is a reservoir at the foot of the mountain (below) but of course that is not Gabrielle’s lake. 

It occurred to me that the Americans, who were responsible for building a radar tracking station on the mountain summit, and knew nothing of the importance of lakes or legends, had infilled the lake with soil and rocks. It was a spring fed lake and any debris could have blocked the spring, leaving initially no trace of the lake. 

This is an important part of Gabrielle’s story for a particularly interesting reason – it is illustrative of the fact that folklore about the mountain did not stop in the 1930s. This belief, that Americans built the dome, grew in the early 1980s as a result of an unfounded newspaper article claiming the installation was part of NATO defences, leading to a group called the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA) bombing one of the domes. In fact, the installations monitor civilian aircraft in Ireland’s upper airspace and have no military function. 

But now, in modern photographs, there appears to be a marshy area with a large puddle in its midst but hardly worthy of the foot of an archangel. Perhaps the puddle will grow larger and will, in time, become a lake again.

I think this impression is my fault – the photograph below does seem to emphasise a ‘marshy area’ with a puddle. In reality the lake seems to be more or less the same size in the earlier OS maps (dating to the 1840s) as it is now, and that photograph was taken in such a way as to hide most of the lake. I think I was just trying to show the location in relation to the sea and the islands in the distance.

Perhaps the photographs below help to correct that impression.

In my original Legends post, I wondered about the schoolgirl, Julia Creedon, who wrote about the lake in the 1930s and said Although she may have faithfully reproduced the essence of the story she heard from Dan O’Sullivan, her own abilities are very evident in this story, as is her immersion in reading other stories in this genre. Did she become a seanachaí (a story teller), or a teacher or a writer?. . . If she were still alive, she would be in her late 90s now. 

How wonderful is it, that just five years later, I have a reader in her 90s with her own living memories of the place. And here is Gabrielle, on the left, with her sister, Judith.

The First Fine Day

It’s not my imagination – we did indeed have more than average rainfall this winter, according to Met Éireann. It felt relentless and it just stopped the other day. 

I am, apparently, wrong that the winter was also colder – above average temperatures resulted in the 20th mildest winter since 1990. It didn’t feel like that, though: looking at this chart from Sherkin Island shows lots of below-average spells, while Dublin airport had its ‘dullest’ winter since 1994.

So on Friday when my forecast app showed sunshine all day I headed out into this unexpected and most welcome balmy weather, pointing my car towards the end of the Mizen. As I drove I couldn’t help thinking of the story by Ray Bradbury, All Summer in a Day. It’s set on a colonised Venus where it rains constantly, and the sun emerges for only one hour every seven years. You can read it here, if you don’t know it, or watch it here, but be warned it’s very sad. 

My immediate goal was to do my rare plant count. As I have related before, I monitor several rare plants for the Biodiversity Data Centre, and the one that comes up earliest is the least visually exciting. In fact, it would be hard to imagine a more homely little plant than Early Sand-grass (Mibora minima for the true botanists among you), although this illustration makes it look quite attractive*.

Spelled several different ways (one word, two words, hyphenated) this is one of the smallest, if not the smallest, grasses in the world, it is only found in Ireland in the dunes at Barley Cove and on Bull Island off the coast of Dublin. I volunteered to count it in 2022. So this is my 5th year observing it and I can say that it is holding its own and perhaps even expanding its range slightly each year.

Seeking the plant involves walking slowly through the dunes with eyes always down and when I finally came up for air it was to realise that I had one of those days that often happen after extended periods of bad weather when the colours seem to spark off each other and the land and the sea provided a glorious panorama of hues and contrasts.

I also noticed what I think was quite an increase in rabbit activity on the area of the dunes I was traversing. Rabbits are both a blessing and a curse for dunes – see my post The Bunnies of Barley Cove for what I mean by that. The warrens can destabilise the dunes but on the positive side for my plant specifically, rabbit grazing keeps competitive grasses and coarser vegetation down, which can favour low-growing specialists that would otherwise be shaded out. Their burrowing also kicks up new patches of sand to host the Sand-grass.

The path from the car park (I was the only car there today for a time) ends in an innovative pontoon footpath that allows access across the backchannel to the front dunes.

The pontoon is pulled up all winter and it hasn’t been re-set yet. There’s another way down, though, from the hotel at the far end, and it was good to see a couple enjoying the sensation that only walking on a beach barefoot provides. 

Having finished my count, I drove around then to Crookhaven and since it was lunchtime of course I had to stop at the iconic O’Sullivans pub, currently undergoing renovations and operating out of Nottage’s. (Fish pie to die for and a large americano, if you must know.) 

Surely this is one of the most scenic villages in Ireland. Hard to believe that it was once so busy that it was said you could walk across the harbour from ship to ship.

The two tall skinny towers on Rock Island are testament to that – this was where pilots could get a good view out to sea so they could send their boats out to guide ships safely into harbour. They may also have been used, according to one authority, for reporting ship movements to Lloyd’s of London for insurance purposes.

Rock Island is as full of history as Crookhaven – way back in 2018 we spent a day with Aidan Power getting the expert account of this tiny island where once over a hundred people lived and worked. It deserves another post one of these days.

I admit this post is a bit ‘light’ today – nothing much happened, I wandered around, took photographs, and enjoyed this wonderful part of the world. It’s what Robert always called a “then we went home for tea” type of post. But my last few posts have been pretty dense, so I hope you all forgive this dalliance with triviality.

* By Jan Kops – www.BioLib.de, Public Domain