------------------------------ Date: Thu, 31 May 2007 12:08:55 -0700 From: "Jean R." <jeanrice@cet.com> Subject: [IRELAND] The Irish Boglands - Habitat Rich in Plant Life, Birds, Insects, Creatures, Peat, Preserved History To: <IRELAND-L@rootsweb.com> SNIPPET: There is something timeless about the Irish boglands with their wide landscapes of soft brown, stretching into the foothills of the distant blue mountains, broken only by occasional small figures stooping to a cutting or piling sods into a neat rick. Visitors encountering them for the first time gaze at the heather and bog cotton blowing in the breeze, watch a hare leaping lightly, hear the cry of a curlew and breath in the scent of the sharp peaty soil. Small wonder that artists and writers have immortalised the boglands of Ireland, from the paintings of Jack YEATS and Paul HENRY, to the poetry of Seamus HEANEY and the nostalgic images of a writer for children, Patricia LYNCH. Many birds make the bog their home, and the plaintive cry of the curlew, lapwing or redshank overhead is characteristic of spring or autumn, while the joyous song of the skylark and echoing call of the cuckoo is found in summer. The old country name for the grey heron is Molly-the-bogs. The brown or Irish hare is part of this kingdom, as is the cautious red fox, shy rabbit and tiny bank vole. Butterflies, damselflies and dragonflies are plentiful in summer, when the bog spider spins his web to catch the unwary. The Irish boglands are rich in plant life and at most times of the year you can see a range of flowers, heathers, grasses and shrubs which are only happy in this special habitat. One of the most unusual is the butterwort with a tall, brilliant blue flower. Its hairy basal leaves are slightly sticky and trap insects so that the edges of the leaf can then roll over the digest their prize. The golden-red sundew captures prey in the same manner. Orchids, too, enjoy the acid soil, while yellow iris paints bright patches of colour. Cross-leaved and St. Dabeoc's Heath grow in sturdy clumps. You will have to stoop very close to the ground to see the tiny blue flowers of milkwort, marsh violet or speedwell. The fragile ecosystem includes bogbean, bog asphodel, bog rosemary and bog myrtle. The latter is an insignificant little waterside shrub, but once you crush a leaf and get the spicy scent, you realise why it gained its alternative name of sweet gale. Folks of old used bunches of bog myrtle to discourage moths and other pests from their linen cupboards, just as they gathered bilberries and cranberries from the low-growing bushes for their food and lichens from the rocks to dye their cloth. Turf-cutting is big in Kerry. The drying black stooks of turf stand in the summer bogs among the yellow flat irises, the white bog cotton and the deep and bronze pools. However, to strip the bogs seems a pity. It takes a million years to make a bog and its unique flora, once gone, is irreplaceable. Bogs are estimated to have covered up to 3 million acres, or approximately one-seventh of Ireland's land area in the past. They have acted, variously, as a major constraint on the human exploitation of the Irish environment during later prehistoric and early historic times and in more recent centuries, as a reservoir of colonizable land and as a source of fuel. Only with the rise in population since the early modern period, and improvements in drainage, have bogs come to be regarded as land to be reclaimed rather than wasteland to be avoided. Many unusual and interesting objects from the bronze age, etc., have been found preserved in the bogs, as well as human remains. In one of HEANEY's poems about the bog, "Strange Fruit," are found these lines: "Here is the girl's head like an exhumed gourd/Oval-faced, prune-skinned, prune-stones for teeth/They unswaddled the wet fern of her hair/And made an exhibition of its coil/Let the air at her leathery beauty/Pash of tallow, perishable treasure/Her broken nose is dark as a turf clod/Her eyeholes blank as pools... Murdered, forgotten, nameless ...." The Jan-Feb 2002 issue of "Ireland of the Welcomes" magazine, published in Dublin, featured a several-page story on the boglands with colorful photographs to include: A donkey-cart in Co. Mayo; a hen harrier in flight; delicate wisps of bog cotton; exposed stone walls of Ceide Fields, near Ballycastle, Co. Mayo, which have disclosed ancient farming methods; blanket bog near Ballyhoura, Co. Limerick; Nad Bog in Cork with recent snow-fall; commercial turf-cutting machines in the boglands of Co. Offaly; a delicate glimmer of turquoise, a damselfly on a blade of grass; a perfectly camouflaged snipe with long beak treading carefully through the undergrowth; a red grouse against a background of heather and scrubland; a smiling woman with her traditional bastable pot making delicious soda bread, hot turf ash piled on top of bastable which hangs over a turf fire; a kestrel seeking prey swooping across the land; gnarled stumps of bog oak exposed over the years near Ireland's highest mountain, Carrauntoohill, Co. Kerry; gorgeous red and black peacock butterfly on the stalk of a purple-blue scabious; a curlew making a comeback after being threatened with extinction because of changing farm practices; a little creature called a bank vole; the Clonmacnoise and West Offaly Railway, with local guides showing visitors how to try their hand at turf-cutting in the traditional way; bushy bog myrtle; the vast brown expanse of commercial bogland in the midlands punctuated by yellow gorse bushes; a common lizard soaks up sunshine while stretched out on a warm rock amongst purple flowers; a close-up of a bog spider spinning an intricate and strong web. Speaking of gorse bushes - I recall reading that the colorful little stone-chat bird can be found throughout Ireland, especially on golden gorse bushes (perhaps also in the bogland?), its name derived from its distinctive call which is reminiscent of two stones being rubbed together.