MOST of us hate bogs. Bogs seem to be the most god-awful places where you soon lose your shoes and, if you're not careful, your life. Few prospects are as desolating as being marooned on the Bog of Allen at nightfall. For then you know you are there until dawn; and those who attempt to walk across a bog in the dark are doomed to be of interest to archaeologists in ten thousand years' time, the look of sublime misery on your face as you slowly drown in the acid waters of some boghole being pickled for eternity. So instead: you squat and listen and wait and feel cold creep up through your feet and so that shortly around midnight, by which time you are two thirds bog and one third human, you are beginning to regret bitterly that you were not born Hawaiian.
It is a common Irish thing, this hatred of bogs. Bog is one of the few unquestionably Irish words in the English language. The Anglo-Saxon experience had never encompassed anything so bewilderingly vile as the Irish bog. The fens and marshes and mires - a fine word, mires - of the English race memory had nothing of the intractable brutishness of the Irish bog. And nor had the Anglo-Saxons ever required anything as contradictory as the Irish brogue, the shoe which declared the futility of its existence from the outset by possessing holes to let the water out - for there was never the least prospect of making sure it never got in.
The most universally-pitied human in Irish life is the misfortunate hoor who has to make a living cutting turf. Traditionally, he will probably have to wade several miles through bog-soup to find suitable peat which might, just might, after years of careful drying out and the most solicitous attention, become combustible, possibly even yielding a few more calories in the fireplace than it has already extracted from its cutter. But the chances are that the latter, a wet and doleful wretch, will spend a few hours shuddering before a few grim and lightless turves as they pioneer a form of zero-energy oxidation hitherto unknown to science, which produces no heat but more smoke than the Ruhr Valley on overtime. The Wretch can console himself that tomorrow, He Will Be Cutting More Turf.
A loathing of turf is part of being Irish. A hatred of the bog is the true mark of the Irishman. Show an average Irishman a bog, and he will dream of an airport or a housing estate or a nice-big nuclear power station or a vast oilfield; anything is better than a bog. Until, that is, you hear John Feehan talk about a bog; and then it becomes a wonder, a zoological treasury, a botanical paradise, a heaven rich in biological diversity, and often in historical artefacts as well. And sometimes a few stiffs too.
Homage to bog
John and his fellow scientist Grace O'Donovan - known as GOD to her friends - have just produced their homage to the bog. It is published by University College Dublin. Let me say simply: it is the most beautiful, the most fascinating, the most erudite book to be published in Ireland this year. It is the kind of book which used to contain the depressing information that though it was published in Ireland, it was printed in Hong Kong or Austria. The Bogs of Ireland is in fact printed by Walsh Printers of Roscrea.
I have just re-read the preceding paragraph; I find its lack of enthusiasm, the pallor of its language, the failure to express myself clearly, dispiriting. The problem is that, much as the English language was unable to create a word for bog until its speakers had come to Ireland, or a word for brogue until they had discovered what a mockery the bog makes of footwear, the English language simply does not possess the vocabulary required to praise this book as it deserves. The language of Macbeth and Kublai Khan, of Middlemarch and Ulysses, of Elegy in a Country Churchyard and An Irish Airman Foresees His Death is quite incapable of conveying the wonders of this work. Open it at any page - there you will find wisdom and botanical knowledge and a profound understanding of the parishes and baronies and counties of Ireland, and superb line drawings, and exquisite photographs. More than anything else, you will encounter the workings and the contents of two quite fascinating minds, one male and John's, the other female and godly.
Natural teacher
Alas, I do not know the godly mind; I have had the rare pleasure of listening to John talking about the bog. It was a joy, because John is one of the great communicators. He is a natural teacher; and like all natural teachers becomes transfixed and transformed by his subject, and his enthusiasm snares his audience like a fine seine net. There is no escape, no attempting to escape, this mind, this knowledge, this pleasure of scholarship. Even in rain, the bog besieging your ankles and sending emissaries to acquaint your toes with the sensation of cold water, he is a captivating talker.
And he is of course right. The bog is a wondrous thing, and its citizens fill him with joy. No wonder he - or his godly chum - are moved to describe such as the emperor moth as glorious. It is indeed glorious, for it is the only Irish silkmoth, and both as a caterpillar and as an adult is quite wonderfully beautiful. And it has a wonderful sense of smell, with males being able to detect females from miles away, without any reflection, one should add, on the ladies themselves.
Life in the bog is as bad as life in the jungle, and quite as deadly. The puss moth caterpillar is equipped with prongs and jets of formic acid to ward off attackers. But the ichneumon wasp-mother Paniscus cephalotes seizes the caterpillar by the head with sharp claws so that it cannot be shaken off or molested by claw or acid while she lays her eggs. The caterpillar is unable to remove the eggs, which hatch into maggots which munch into the caterpillar, sucking away with the poor caterpillar quite unable to get rid of them, like an itch in, the middle of the back. They leave enough life in their host to enable it to spin a futile cocoon, in which they will in time make their nests. And you thought a bog was an unpleasant place? No matter. Please, please, buy this book. Expensive but wonderful; a masterpiece.