Flying me home from Latvia recently, my plane took one of those long, lovely detours over north Dublin, heading deep into the Irish midlands before turning around and approaching the airport again from the west.
It was a sunny day, with maximum visibility. And as always, I was fascinated by the patchwork of fields and roads below, while trying (mostly in vain) to identify landmarks.
But this time, amid the usual 40 forty shades of green, I was struck by a new colour: black. There were huge chunks of it, square or rectangular, arranged in rows separated by narrow paths, spread out below.
And for a moment I wondered what this strange crop could be. Then I realised I was looking at solar farms, with their great swathes of monocrystalline panels laid out in rows, like drying hay.
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A dramatic change in the landscape around Dublin, it had somehow passed me by until now.
But sure enough, I have since learned that some of the country’s largest solar farms are in Meath, including a pair at “Gallanstown” and “Gillinstown”, respectively, which are number one and three in the top 10. Kildare has a big one too, while the sunny southeast supplies most of the other early leaders in the field.
In my ignorance, I might once have thought that solar panels were a waste of the good farmland with which Meath is synonymous.
But apparently not. Along with sunny, dry conditions, flat or gently sloping ground is among the prerequisites for a solar farm, as are connectivity with the grid, proximity to big population centres, and good road access.
Either way, it seems ironic that this new crop – harvesting sunlight – is so dark, at least as seen from the air. Historically, when Irish land was described as “black” (or dubh in the original placenames), this tended to mean it was north-facing.
[ Rules for plug-in solar panels being finalised – but not before end of summerOpens in new window ]
Hence Patrick Kavanagh’s vitamin D-starved Shancoduff: “My black hills have never seen the sun rising/Eternally they look north towards Armagh/Lot’s wife would not be salt if she had been incurious as my black hills that are happy/When dawn whitens Glasdrummond chapel.”
Kavanagh’s incurious hills are unlikely to be inquiring about solar grants any time soon (although a large farm is now in development very close to his native Inniskeen, on the Louth side of the county border).
Elsewhere, meanwhile, the map of planned or existing farms suggests they are also incompatible with what is popularly considered scenery. Donegal, Sligo and most of Mayo appear still to be virgin soil for the new crop. Likewise Connemara, Kerry and west Cork.
Perhaps some of the more stable, cutaway bogs could also yet be reclaimed for solar farming, which might not mean any dramatic change of landscape colour. Mind you, it’s mostly poets who call bogs “black”. Whereas the chameleon-like qualities of Irish peatlands are also well known.
I’m reminded that their appearance from the air has misled even some of the great aviators. Alcock and Brown famously chose as their transatlantic landing place what looked like a lovely, flat, green field near Clifden, until their plane ended up nose down in a boghole.
Still on the subject of landings, regular correspondent Frank MacGabhann reminds me that this month marks the 150th anniversary of the arrival in New York of the Catalpa, carrying Fenian prisoners rescued dramatically from Australia in April 1876.
The escapees were treated to a warm welcome in Irish-United States, including a new set of suits bought for them at $44 each.
But in a US high on centenary jingoism, and still smarting from the fate of General Custer at Little Bighorn, not everyone was in such generous a mood. The WASP-ish (in every sense) lawyer and diarist, George Templeton Strong, complained of one Irish reception:
“All travel on Broadway was suspended for nearly two hours this afternoon, and half the people of New York were subject to annoyance and inconvenience by an exasperating procession of pediculous Celtic bogtrotters, aldermen, miscellaneous blackguards, justices of the Supreme Court, roughs, deputy sheriffs, hedge priests, corner-grocery politicians and the like scum, gathered together in honour of certain Fenians who escaped their desert of hanging at home and have come here to rule Americans ...”
I had to look “pediculous” up in a dictionary, assuming it to be related to ‘pedicure’ or ‘pedestrian’ and therefore something to do with walking (from the Irish fondness for political parades, perhaps). But no. It’s from pediculosis, the condition of being “infested with lice”.
The indefatigable MacGabhann has been campaigning for the Catalpa Rescue to be as well commemorated here as in Australia and the US. On which note, he has a small victory to report. After much lobbying, the National Library has agreed to display Catalpa-related documents, including the receipt for the new suits, in its lobby exhibition, before the end of the sesquicentenary.
