Where dips the rocky headland
Of Sleuth Wood in the lake,
There lies a leafy island,
Where flapping herons wake
The drowsy water-rats.
W.B. Yeats might as well written of ostriches or alligators as water-rats in his elegy to Glencar, for they are just as absent from there, or anywhere else in Ireland, as the aquatic rodent he invokes in The Stolen Child. Simply, there are no water-rats (or water-voles: their proper name) in this country. Yeats was merely exhibiting an ignorance of the animals of Ireland which is remarkably commonplace, and which in part is compounded by the language we speak.
This was, of course, created by a people with a different culture and entirely different history. English is a language rich in Shakespeare, the Book of Common Prayer, and the Royal Navy: every time we use expressions such as "by and large", "in a trice", "go by the board", "a wide berth", we are commemorating an English rather than an Irish seagoing experience.
Studied disdain
Similarly, English speaks of weasel, kite, nuthatch, vole, mole, adder, nightingale and water-rat, none of which exists here. Even many of the birds and animals which do live here have been given Irish names of very recent and often rather self-conscious devising. This reflects a curious attitude within Irish culture towards the land and its inhabitants, which inclines at times towards an almost studied disdain. So many country people can neither name the native birds or beasts of their landscape, nor eat the edible ones. Why?
Apart from the gentry and the middle classes, few Irish people, especially in the country, will eat the rabbit, pheasant, deer, grouse, snipe, woodcock, hare and duck that infest our land, lakes and estuaries. There are virtually no dishes based on commonplace fish such as freshwater crayfish, pike and eel, which most Irish people would regard with horror. A German angler on the Shannon, however, would rejoice to find a pike, rather than a salmon, on his hook.
And how is it that country skills are so very rare in Ireland? There is next to no tradition of ferreting or poaching game anywhere. Nor is there a widespread engagement with our waters. Communities along the Shannon, Barrow, and Nore - or any other river - tend to have been built with their back to the riverside, and there is little or no custom of exploiting the waters as a food source. Why? Gillying, a profession of utmost refinement and guile among the Gaels of Scotland, is almost unknown among their Irish cousins. Why?
Food cultures
The ravages of landlordism? Possibly; but the Scots had landlords too, and few people in Europe endured the weight of landed nobilities as unremittingly heavy as those of Spain or France, yet these countries have rich and powerful peasant food cultures based on the native produce of the land. There is no equivalent in Ireland. Farmhouse cooking culture here, such as it is, aside from handsome traditions of bakery, is based on limited kinds of tended livestock - sheep, beef, pork, but not goat. Why? Even culinarily-challenged England has regional specialities - Cornish pasties, Bakewell tarts, Melton Mowbray pork pies, Cumberland sausages - and numerous local cheeses. There are virtually local foods in Ireland - a Tipperary sausage or a Kilkenny mutton pie, say - apart from that regrettable phenomenon, drisheen. And for all the reverence traditionally accorded the cow, there is no tradition whatever of making farmhouse cheeses here comparable to Stilton, Wensleydale or Cheshire, to say nothing of the caseous cornucopia of France. Why?
There is an appetite for land, to be sure, to be measured in acres on which to graze cattle or sheep, and to be owned at almost any cost, but land itself is neither cherished for what it contains nor what it naturally yields. Nor is it even just a matter of the wild animals and birds that live on it. How many country people pick blackberries, sloes, mushrooms, crab apples, elderflower and elderberries when their season arrives? Very few. In Spain, France and Italy, local markets are full of local produce, but not in Ireland. It's almost as if those who live on the land here are culturally and emotionally disengaged from its essence as a living thing. Why?
This might explain the enthusiasm with which the urban bungalow, containing features wholly inappropriate for both the Irish countryside and weather, has been embraced. It is an architectural denial of the reality which surrounds it, a statement of ambition over a mute acceptance of actuality. If you see a restored stone cottage anywhere in Ireland, it is invariably a sign of a complete outsider. Why?
Tree husbandry
This denial of rural reality might also explain our appalling treelessness, for trees must be planted and minded; and if the absence of a tradition of tree husbandry - of copp icing, pollarding, pruning and ivy-removal - co-exists with a tradition of tree-felling, the Micawberesque logic of life will ensure the outcome which we enjoy today: the most treeless landscape in Europe. Even the trees that remain are densely infested with ivy - and this vice is not confined to farmers. The surest sign that a woodland is managed by Coillte is the dense green foliage rioting through its broadleaf trees in midwinter. Why?
There is history which explains all of this, but what is it? Was it the Famine? Or the Penal Laws which psychologically distanced the greater part of the people from the land they worked? Or something else? Just one more question. Why?