Who needs a fridge?
… “A few words” from Ireland
If you want to evoke the Irish countryside in an aroma, then the turf-scented candle is the only choice. For anyone of a certain age (ahem), the smell of turf fires as you travelled into the west of the country is as evocative as Proust’s madeleine.
The peat bog, while not unique to Ireland, is nonetheless a dominant feature of its environment. So much so that C S Andrews, when MD of Bord na Móna (Turf Board) in the 1950s, was impelled to comment, “Ordinarily we find that we rarely meet a fellow citizen who hasn’t an attitude to turf. …Irish people don’t ever seem to be indifferent to turf … indeed we have heard the suggestion that the use of turf might lead to laxity in sex morals.”1 Unfortunately, he does not expand on the latter point.
Sex notwithstanding, for centuries the peat bog has provided the country with fuel, although that use is now being phased out for climate crisis concerns. However, when it comes to history, botany and indeed mythology, the bog will always be a remarkable and rich resource. Bog bodies are just one of its offerings, one of the most recent being Cashel Man, considered (at time of writing) as the oldest fleshed bog body in the world, dating back around 4000 years. And of course many priceless treasures have been thrown up by the bog, such as the Fadden More Psalter, the first ancient manuscript to be found in such an environment, and dating to around 800 CE.
A more mundane item is ‘bog butter’, a waxy deposit found in bogs in Ireland and Scotland. The Irish samples were discovered to date to the Early Bronze Age (1750 BCE), and examination showed that they were indeed ‘ruminant dairy fat’ (and still edible), allowing the hypothesis that the bog environment was ideal for preserving otherwise perishable foodstuffs.
Now the preservation is focused on the bog itself. As the National Parks and Wildlife Services points out, “Our bogs are not just of Irish interest. Our mild Atlantic climate has resulted in the widespread development of bogs of different types ranging from the blanket bogs of the west and the mountains to the raised bogs of the midlands. The species vary considerably between the different bog types and occur in combinations not found elsewhere in Europe or the world. The loss of Ireland’s bogs would result in an irreplaceable loss to global biodiversity.” One way is to repurpose. Lough Boora bog, formerly a Bord na Móna working bog, now contains a sculpture park where many of the works relate to its previous function.
1“Bogs of irrationality”(1953) in: Ireland The Autobiography, John Bowman (ed) 2016, Penguin Ireland: 217
Ireland Through the Lens
As recently as October 2023, another bog body has been found, this time in Co Derry* which is an important blanket bog region, a fact reflected in the name of the Bogside in Derry city, an area that was once completely under water. Its more modern associations however are with the period known as the Troubles.
Many films have dealt with the complexities of that part of Irish history: In the Name of the Father, Hunger, Belfast, The Crying Game, ’71; Shadow Dancer. I was an extra in a riot scene in the latter, and even though I knew it was just ‘acting’, I found it quite frightening.
However, a far less scary, but nonetheless powerful evocation of life during the Troubles has to be the much-acclaimed TV series, Derry Girls. Watching it with subtitles might be an idea, if the accents are unfamiliar, but it’s a must-see for anyone who wants to understand how the people of this island, North and South, can find humour in just about anything.
*As someone from the Republic of Ireland, I tend to use the term Derry, but both the county and the city, as part of the UK, are officially known as Londonderry. This dichotomy, Londonderry/Derry, is neatly summarized in another alternative – ‘Stroke City’.
Please note, the Irish have a much more ‘accepting’ relationship with strong language than many other nationalities.
A Living Tradition
Some musicians eschew politics, others embrace them. None more so than Belfast rap group, Kneecap, whose semi-fictionalized account of its formation won an Audience Award at the Sundance Film Festival this year. Clues to their political stance can be found in the trio’s name, which refers to a form of punishment used during the Troubles, and the fact that the film and lyrics are in Irish.
At the other end of the politic spectrum, there is what is thought to be the “largest and loudest folk instrument in the world”, the Lambeg Drum. Although now associated with the (Protestant) Orange Order and in particular its 12 July parades, folk history suggests that it was once also played by Catholics. Whatever its origins, the use of the drum in the Lambeg boogie helps to create a truly unique musical “mash-up” of cultural tropes from both sides of the political divide – go on, get your dancin’ shoes on!
Quark
Talking about the two parts of the island of Ireland can be confusing, even for those of us who live on it. The Republic of Ireland’s synonyms are relatively straightforward: ’26 counties’ refers to, well, the 26 counties which constitute the Republic, and ‘Eire’ is the Irish for Ireland (though mostly used by non-Irish people). When it comes to the rest of the island…is it Northern Ireland, the 6 counties, or Ulster, the North - all terms you might well hear?
Northern Ireland is the official name of this constituent country of the United Kingdom, while ‘6 counties’ is a more explicit reference to the administrative divisions of the island which are part of the UK. Ulster, on the other hand, refers to one of the four provinces of the island, the others being Connaught, Leinster and Munster (all in the Republic), and technically consists of nine counties, three of which are also part of the Republic: Cavan, Donegal and Monaghan. ‘The North’ is probably mostly used by people in the South, which is sometimes referred to as the Free State by Unionists. All clear now?
The complexity this is just a small part of has been explored in many forms, not least in powerful plays such as Brian Friel’s Translations (available in Bulgarian; Portuguese; Slovenian), Frank McGuinness’s Behold the Sons of Ulster Marching towards the Somme (available in Japanese and Polish), and Owen McCafferty’s Agreement, which between them span centuries. This last work is based on the discussions leading up to the Good Friday Agreement, signed on 10 April 1998.
In fiction, Anna Burn’s Booker Prize winner Milkman (available in Danish and Dutch), Bernard MacLaverty’s Cal, Louise Kennedy’s Trespasses, are just a few examples of writers throwing light on the darkly incomprehensible, while Seamus O’Reilly’s Did Ye Hear Mammy Died (available in Estonian), is a true, and very funny, account of growing up in Derry post-Troubles.
Finally, no discussion of Norn Iron (as it also sometimes known) would be complete without mentioning its Nobel Laureate, Seamus Heaney, whose poetry transcends politics and problematic terminology, and has been variously translated into Albanian, Czech, Dutch, Hebrew, Hungarian, Italian, Lithuanian, Polish, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, and Ukrainian.