Does the Dublin middle class still decamp to cottages in the west in the summer, with the kids, shrimp nets and fishing rods, or do the tiger cubs vote for Marbella and a hotel swimming pool? My heart insists on the former, and on urging The Shores Of Connemara (T∅r Eolas, £9.99) on anyone heading within sound of the sea.
This is one of the most interesting and captivating books about nature ever written in Ireland. Its author, SΘamas Mac an Iomaire, was born in a fishing community on the island of Mweenish, near Carna, in 1891, and his book was first published, in Irish, in 1938. This sparkling translation by Padraic de Bhaldraithe, with marine etchings by Sabine Springer, will excite and delight the whole family.
Mac an Iomaire deals with nature as he meets it on the shore and in the sea: close and colourful observation, essentially practical but full of warm feeling and humour and the quirky possibilities of folklore.
His gallery of shore creatures is thus immensely instructive and mostly to be trusted. But it includes a few things one would just like to be right, among them the scolabord tintr∅, the "flashing skate" that finds its way through the kelp forest "as there is light shining from its eyes that shows it the way ahead". One could also try whistling while digging after razor shells: it makes them stop to listen.
Here is a joyful supplement to the solemnities of regular field guides.
Michael Viney is an Irish Times columnist
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