Another Life Michael Viney
You wouldn't know Moycullen if you haven't been there in a while. Once a village, now a dormitory for Galway city, it has a whole new street of shops, and tower cranes peer down at something huge and cavernous they are building at the crossroads. The hill road to the south, across the bog to Spiddal, once adventurously bumpy, now has a velvety black finish that stops somewhere after the last new bungalow, the final tasteful, garden-centre shrub.
We used to drive that way some years ago when still making an occasional film for television. Spiddal has TeleGael, a technical services centre, and our delight was to travel to work through the south Mayo mountains and along into Connemara, finally descending from the bog to edit our videotapes at computers manned by happy young Irish-speaking technocrats.
Around that time, where the high road approaches some fine views of Galway Bay, a hill farm of 200 acres was bought by a most unlikely couple, old friends of ours. Dearbhaill Standún comes from the Spiddal family of merchants and musicians; she brought her violin and passion for "crossover" music to the trio of friends who are Dordán, a group on famously good terms with jigs and reels, Carolan and Bach.
Her husband, Charlie Troy, originally from Dublin, is a secondary-school teacher and tireless disciple of natural Connemara - animal, vegetable or mineral.
Soon after they went to live on their land, we made our first visit. We had "bought" an acre of bog to help the Irish Peatland Conservation Council purchase 1,012 acres of the "wild beauty" of Cloghernagun Bog - wherever that was. Dearbhaill and Charlie pointed helpfully to the west, but I was already lost within their own enchanting horizons. The "farm", with a nondescript modern bungalow, amounted only to a cluster of little green fields - the rest of its land is virtually untouched bog, its long moor grass sweeping up to the clouds on one side and down to a forest and lake on the other. This is unspoiled, Special Area of Conservation territory, where hen harrier (pictured), goshawk, merlin and peregrine share enormous and luminous spaces.
The move over the hill from the busy, sophisticated littoral of Spiddal invited the standard disbelief: what were they thinking of? Charlie took me to a ruined bothy, its granite boulders virtually submerged in the hillside.
It could be dated, apparently, to 1691. The feel of the past was certainly everywhere, in old barns and tumbled gables, pre-Famine stone enclosures fitted to the lie of the land. The whole ambience spoke to Dearbhaill's heritage of language and music-making, to Charlie's love of learning and teaching and making things grow. In such a setting, a time-shift away from a booming Ireland, could they create what tourist boards call "a product"? It was a long way from there to Cnoc Suain (peaceful hill), Ionad Cultúrtha, Dúlra agus Dúchas. The idea of a hideaway residential holiday centre for creative arts and natural history did not immediately resonate with the Gaeltacht grant-givers: it would never draw the big buses. Without a heavy family investment and Charlie's five-year break from teaching, the clachan of Cnoc Suain would never have arisen.
The old bothy is now just one of half-a-dozen thatched or slated dwellings, rebuilt in their original niches and made snug as a ship's cabin with salvaged timbers and stone.They were built with the help of amiable Romanian craftsmen who (Irish builders having fled to their more familiar block-laying) found nothing untoward in helping Charlie heave massive granite boulders into gables. Slowly the "village" has grown, with its stone floors for sean-nós dancing, its communal spaces and windows for dreaming poets. Charlie spent last summer hefting hundreds more rocks into a linking web of drystone walls.
Cnoc Suain is scarcely alone in offering an Irish "heritage experience" in refurbished historic surroundings (with iron-frame beds, patchwork quilts, open fires and all). There must be other evocative settings in which to spend a week learning the tin whistle or how to paint birds, or walking a landscape with an expert on rocks, plants and birds or Neolithic walls.
The quest of the eco-tourist for secluded, active learning holidays can knit together, as at Cnoc Suain, an extraordinary weave of local expertise in which folklorists, poets, musicians, biologists, archaeologists can all find great pleasure and reward. But it helps to have at its heart the kind of cultural conviction that has driven Charlie and Dearbhail for the past 10 years. Now that Cnoc Suain exists, development officials and even politicians are beginning to take the high road from Moycullen to Spiddal, prepared to think that small might be beautiful.
EyeOnNature
During a three-week period in January and February all three mature frogs in a small, long-established pond died. They had reproduced there for several years and had happily co-existed with the still thriving goldfish.
... Richard Callanan, Ranelagh, Dublin 6
If there were only three female frogs in the pond they may have drawn male frogs that hugged them to death while mating.
While walking on Rush beach, Co Dublin, recently, I saw about 50 starfish washed up on the sand. The next day they were no longer there. Can starfish live out of water? ...
... Edel O'Caoindealbhain
They can live for a short time out of water depending on the drying conditions at the time. They could last up to two hours, or more in moist, cool conditions.
I found a large pile of what seemed like half-digested haws in the hollow of a hawthorn bush. I'm not sure if they are scat or stomach content. What animal is responsible?
... Hilde Heijs, Cootehall, Co Roscommon
Probably a cache of haws stored last autumn - perhaps by a red squirrel - and now deteriorated.