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The Riabhach days: folklore, footwear and engaging with landscape

Late March-early April are the days of the brindled cow, often the coldest of the year

Winterage in the Burren. Photograph: Ireland’s National Inventory of Intangible Cultural Heritage

Máirtín Mac Con Iomaire
Tue Mar 29 2022 - 06:43

The last days of March and the first days of April are known in Irish folklore as Laethanta na Bó Riabhaí – the days of the brindled cow. They are often the coldest days of the year. March, according to folklore, is always busy trying to kill off old people and old cattle.

The poet Francis Ledwidge's Lament for Thomas McDonagh noted March's shrill fanfare of slanting snows. Extremely cold weather often occurs at this time of the year in Ireland. My late uncle Michael first told me this story of the brindled cow, which was added to by Prof Seamus Caulfield in 2020 when speaking to a group of students on the Masters in Gastronomy and Food Studies, TU Dublin, on a field trip to Belderrig and the Céíde Fields in Co Mayo.

According to the legend, March originally only had 30 days. However, the emaciated brindled cow boasted to March that it would survive into April and be seen jumping and running along. The cow survived the 30th day; March then borrowed a day from April, and it was this particularly cold day that killed off the cow.

The last days of March can become extremely harsh even though they often follow good weather around St Patrick’s Day, as we have been experiencing this year. The first of April is also the day that, according to Caulfield, young rural children looked forward to nearly as much as to Christmas, as they could shed their shoes and not have to wear them again until the first of October – except when entering a church. This tradition was dictated by the story of the brindled cow, but where did this story come from?

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Several versions of the bó riabhach story appear in the Schools' Folklore Collection (1937-'38), an oral history project which collected handwritten essays (6,000 copybooks filled with folklore collected by over 50,000 children) from sixth class pupils in national schools around Ireland (outside the larger cities). The digitization project (duchas.ie) provides access to this rich archive for both researchers and the general public. This digital resource proved invaluable for folklore researchers during the Covid-19 pandemic when the main archive in UCD was closed. Recent research published using the duchas.ie archive includes papers on food in the quarter days, and food traditions during the twelve days of Christmas.

Understanding the story of the brindled cow, one needs to tune into our ancestors’ past where modern traditions of silage, haylage and indeed combine harvesters were unknown. It also highlights how storytelling is a wonderful way of passing on inherited knowledge and wisdom.

Cattle were the cornerstone of Irish society and both older and some male animals were culled around Martinmas (November 11th) to spare the fodder for the remaining cattle over winter. March was traditionally the harshest month for livestock, as they awaited fresh growth of grass and watched the last reserves of fodder deplete. Our ancestors practiced  transhumance or booleying from the first of May, where cattle would be put up on the hills. In Co Clare, there are traditions of reverse transhumance or winterage which have recently been recognised as a form of intangible cultural heritage , which have recently been recognised as a form of intangible cultural heritage. For thousands of years, Burren farmers have marked the end of summer by herding their cattle onto winterage pastures in the limestone uplands where they spend the winter grazing, a tradition key to the survival of the region's famous flora and fauna.

A Killarney peasant girl, Ireland, 1912. From The Living Races of Mankind, Vol. II. [Hutchinson & Co, London, 1912]. Photograph: Print Collector/Getty Images

Caulfield notes that the notion of barefoot children being linked with extreme poverty, at least in rural areas, was not necessarily true. Come the first of April, he explains that they looked forward to removing the two anchors from their feet to feel freedom. He recalls a fall of snow on April 10th during his childhood where he walked to school barefoot through six inches of snow, by choice – noting also that he did not have long to walk as his father, who originally discovered the Céide fields, was the schoolmaster.

Caulfield, in his talk to the students, shared his thoughts on two big divorces that have taken place between humans and the landscape: the first being about four or five million years ago when our ancestors began to walk upright on their hind legs; their noses moved away from the ground and their sense of smell diminished.

The other divorce occurred much more recently when we began to wear shoes. When you walk barefoot across a landscape, you are sampling it as either hot or cold, wet or dry, coarse or fine. He noted that in Montessori education the early years are involved in experiencing textures, and pointed out that one of the things you notice when walking barefoot outside is how tactile shadows can be. Exploring landscapes barefoot, you will notice that a stream coming directly from a spring will be colder than streams that are just running off a mountain.

Despite all our modernity, storytelling is still a vital part of cultural transmission. It is important to keep the stories, traditions, folklore and wisdom of our ancestors alive for the next generation. On these Laethanta na Bó Riabhaí, I urge you to spare a moment for our intangible cultural heritage of storytelling and folklore, kick off your shoes, engage afresh with the landscape of Ireland, and share a tale or two with your family and friends.
Dr Máirtín Mac Con Iomaire is a senior lecturer in the School of Culinary Arts and Food Technology at Technological University Dublin.