Shannon Country E-Book

Paul Clements

• Herausgeber: The Lilliput Press
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 486

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Beschreibung

In August 1939 the Irish travel writer Richard Hayward set out on a road trip to explore the Shannon region just two weeks before the Second World War broke out. His evocative account of that trip, Where the River Shannon Flows, became a bestseller. The book, still sought after by lovers of the river, captures an Ireland of small shops and barefoot street urchins that has long since disappeared. Eighty years on, inspired by his work, Paul Clements retraces Hayward's journey along the river, following - if not strictly in his footsteps - then within the spirit of his trip. From the Shannon Pot in Cavan, 344 kilometres south to the Shannon estuary, his meandering odyssey takes him by car, on foot, and by bike and boat, discovering how the riverscape has changed but is still powerful in symbolism. While he recreates Hayward's trip, Clements also paints a compelling portrait of twenty-first century Ireland, mingling travel and anecdote with an eye for the natural world. He sails to remote islands, spends times in rural backwaters and secluded riverside villages where the pub is the hub, and attempts a quest for the Shannon connection behind the title of Flann O'Brien's novel At Swim-Two-Birds. The book gives a voice to stories from water gypsies, anglers, sailors, lock keepers, bog artists, 'insta' pilgrims and a water diviner celebrating wisdom through her river songs and illuminates cultural history and identity. It focuses on the hardship faced by farmers and householders caused by the flooding of the river, which in recent winters left fields and towns under siege by water. Wildlife, nature, and the built heritage, including historic bridges, all play a part. The Shannon Callows, which used to be 'corncrake central', is explored for birdlife, along with the wildflower secrets of roadside hedges and riverbanks. On a quixotic journey by foot, boat, bike and car, Paul Clements produces an intimate portrait of the hidden countryside, its people, topography and wildlife, creating a collective memory map, looking at what has been lost and what has changed. Through intermittent roaming, he maps the geography of the river in stories, testimonies and recollections, intercutting the past and the present in an eternal rhythm. Beyond the motorways and cities, you can still catch the pulse of an older, quieter Ireland of hay meadows and bogs, uninhabited islands and remote towpaths. This is the country of the River Shannon that runs through literature, art, cultural history and mythology with a riptide pull on our imagination. This is a tribute to Ireland's longest river reflecting the deep vein flowing through the culture of the country.

Leseprobe

To the memory of my parents, who inspired my early wanderlust.

‘Rivers and the inhabitants of the watery elements were made for wise men to contemplate and fools to pass by without consideration.’

– Izaak Walton, The Compleat Angler

First published 2020 byT H E L I L L I P U T P R E S S 62–63 Arbour Hill Dublin 7, Irelandwww.lilliputpress.ie

Copyright © Paul Clements, 2020

Every effort has been made to trace the copyright holders and obtain permission to reproduce this material. Please get in touch with any enquiries or any information relating to images or their rights holders.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means without prior permission of the publisher.

A CIP record for this publication is available from The British Library.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

ISBN 978 1 84351 783 2

The Lilliput Press gratefully acknowledges the financial support of the Arts Council /An Chomhairle Ealaíon.

Set in 11pt on 14pt Monotype Bembo Pro by Niall McCormack. Printed in Spain by GraphyCems.

CONTENTS

Author’s Note

Preface

Introduction: At the Shannon Pot

PART I. UPPER SHANNON

1 The Village that Vanished

2 The Snake in the Lake

3 ‘Little town of my heart’

4 Along the Worm’s Ditch

5 In Casey’s Kingdom

PART II. MIDDLE SHANNON

6 The Road to Rindoon

7 A Two-faced River

8 Longboat to the Celestial City

9 Crossing the Callows

10 Let the Bird Find You

PART III. LOWER SHANNON

11 Holy War on Holy Island

12 Shannonlanders

13 ‘A town of spires, gossip and lots of frustrated people’

14 The ‘clean dirt’ of Mungret

15 ‘Source of its soulfulness’

Bibliography

Acknowledgments

Index

AUTHOR’S NOTE

THE JOURNEY recorded here was undertaken in various stages over a twelve-month period culminating in the summer of 2018. In a number of instances, the identities of several people described in the narrative have been disguised to respect their privacy and, in a world of much uncertainty, for the safety of the author.

PREFACE

JUST AS THE world was sliding into war at the end of the summer of 1939, the Irish travel writer Richard Hayward set off by car and caravan on a journey alongside the River Shannon with a photographer and movie cameraman. The trip produced an engaging book and film chronicling their adventures following the course of the river from the Shannon Pot to Ballybunion.

Where the River Shannon Flows, a handsome hardback with more than fifty illustrations, was the resulting book published in 1940, which expressed Hayward’s love of both the river and of Ireland. It holds up a mirror to the 1930s and to a young country still trying to find its feet in the decade following partition. The accompanying film was shown as a travelogue at cinemas all over Ireland.

It was a journey into what were then little-known and unfrequented parts of the midlands. Writing with candour and in a bracingly honest, lyrical style, Hayward presents a snapshot of the social history of rural Ireland. He portrays families living on remote islands and secluded shores, writes about the country’s neglect of its past, the lack of interest in protecting its built heritage, and considers its long-forgotten authors.

Richard Hayward (1892–1964) was one of Ireland’s leading cultural figures from the middle decades of the twentieth century. Born in Southport, Lancashire, he grew up on the Antrim coast, later living in Belfast. A popular writer, he was also an Irish film star, stage actor, singer and radio broadcaster who spent his days promoting Ireland. He appeared in some of the earliest black-and-white films of the 1930s. Irish Travelogue was made in 1932 while his feature film, The Luck of the Irish, was released in 1935. He also recorded 156 Irish folksongs and ballads with Decca and HMV, singing and playing with Delia Murphy, Anna Meakin, Sean Maguire and other artistes. He travelled around the country performing to packed houses at concerts and festivals, frequently playing and singing along to the harp.

From the 1930s up to the early 1960s, Hayward drove thousands of miles all over Ireland gathering material for eleven travel books. These were published as regional topographical accounts of each province; he also wrote separate books on the Corrib and Kerry. Where the River Shannon Flows was his second travel book and made him a celebrated champion of the area. A new edition of the book was published in 1950, while another, in 1989, commemorates the fiftieth anniversary of his journey.

Eighty years on from the distant days of the 1930s and with few tangible traces today of Richard Hayward, this meandering twenty-first-century journey, carried out intermittently over the course of a year from late spring 2017 to early summer 2018, looks at those who live and work along the river. Seen through the prism of the past, it reflects the deep vein and riptide pull on our imagination of the culture and landscape that is Shannon Country.

Paul Clements,

Belfast, July 2020

INTRODUCTION

At the Shannon Pot

IT IS THE night of the full willow moon, and mystical figures move in ceremonial dress through the shadows beside a pool of water. They are here with a unified purpose, to harness the energy of lunar power and celebrate the water of the Shannon Pot through healing ritual, singing songs to the land and tapping into the tree energies of the area. The moon brings association of water and healing. The multinational group comprises seven women: two from Australia, one from Canada, an Italian, an Englishwoman, a northern Irelander and southern Irelander, plus Rover the dog with a noble German pedigree.

They are here for the practice of geomancy, the understanding of the invisible layers of the landscape. The group includes water witches, a shaman, sound-healers, and disciples of the natural magic found beside water. Their ritual is performed here because of the significance they attach to the Shannon and its importance as the source of the river, as well as its link to the goddess Sionna and the powerful mythological energy associated with her. In their diaphanous robes, gowns and votive long coats, they position themselves on the perimeter of the Pot, a steep-sided oval hole in pastureland. They are robed in mustard yellow, scarlet and gold. Necklaces cluster the throats of some, while others are garlanded with beads, brooches, pendant earrings; wrists are layered with bracelets. They are armed with bags of tricks and hazel sticks, staffs, willow wands and musical instruments. The willow is said to have been invested with the power of the moon and the traditional witches’ broom is bound with a willow branch. The tree is also ascribed with femininity and dreaming, enchantment and deep emotions, wishing spells and protection.

Log na Sionna (or ‘Lugnashinna’), the Shannon Pot, is ringed on one side by tall willow trees. The Pot is in a lush valley enclosed by densely forested mountains on all sides. From the west, the infant river falls through marshy countryside to Lough Allen from where it continues its journey through the centre of Ireland to the Atlantic. Because of the lack of recent rain, it is barely a metre-wide trickle. It is hard to imagine how this mere streamlet would later become a powerful river.

Alanna Moore, originally from Australia, is the mistress of ceremonies and welcomes everyone to the sacred spot. She hands over to Simone Ní Chinneide, a shaman practitioner who creates a theatre of calm. She talks the women through the four cardinal points, weaving in the guardians of each direction. These coincide with the four festivals in the cycle of the Celtic year: spring and autumn equinoxes and summer and winter solstices. Each of these periods has its own pantheon with specific elements and animals attached to it. I watch from the sidelines in fascinated estrangement. Standing barefoot at the Pot’s edge, the women firstly look east, arms outstretched and palms open, embracing the energy of the moment. They face the hill of Tiltinbane on the western rim of the Cuilcagh mountain range where Cuilcagh Gap leads to the top of the flat mountain at 1949 metres. Its hillsides, scorched from wildfires, straddle the Cavan–Fermanagh boundary. They welcome the ‘spirit of the east’ where the sun rises and where solar gods such as Lugh, lord of light, are represented. The east is connected to the element of air, so, in ‘water-worship speech’, they call in the guardian of that element, perhaps a golden eagle, or an appropriate bird of their choosing.

A vigorous shaking of the rattle is the clarion call for the group to turn to face the south, dominated by the promontory of Playbank mountain, which Cavan shares with Leitrim. With its sphinx-like appearance, it is also known as Big Dog mountain. Many kilometres beyond, as far as the eye can see, lie Bencroy and Slieve Anierin. Here the element is fire and the Great Red Fire Dragon is invoked. Fire, Simone says, is connected to a purifying aspect of healing; there is a synergy in using water and fire together. There is also a topicality to this since wildfires have been spreading out of control around the hills and heating the atmosphere. The participants move carefully around the Pot – a careless step in the wrong direction could result in an unscheduled bath or shamanic cleanse. They look to the west, said to be associated with water, gazing across lakes, streams, bogland, dark forested hillsides and heathland, to the horseshoe-shaped Boleybrack mountain, another part of the Cavan–Leitrim uplands where black patches are visible. Plumes of smoke rise high, blotting out the sinking sun. ‘May you live unperturbed,’ Simone whispers of the salmon of knowledge and its wealth of wisdom. In mythology, Sionna is said to have drowned after feeding on the salmon of knowledge, which resulted in her immortality and her name living on in the river in which she perished.

Their clockwise tour culminates with mechanical precision by turning to the north and the element of earth, representing a powerful animal, which could be a horse, stag or bear. There is an animistic belief that trees, rivers and animals have a soul. Views stretch beyond the Cavan Burren prehistoric park, across fields and the twin Macnean loughs into the heart of the Fermanagh lakelands. Enlivened by the opening of the circle, the women speak aloud their thoughts, well and truly in the zone. They want the earth to know of their appreciation. Alanna produces a small jar of rainwater that she had previously ‘blessed’ at home for the purpose by imparting beneficial thoughts and energies of harmony and well-being into it. She sings her river song, ‘Waterways’, pouring the rainwater into the Pot in divine manifestation so that the river will spread harmony, joy and peace:

Beautifulfalling rain

Soak into soil again

I am your loving friend

Remember to come again.

Beautiful sparkling springs

Your bubbling laughter sings

Flow into rivers meandering

And take you my heart within.

For Eileen O’Toole, the space around the Pot is ‘a bounty of magnificent energy’. She steps forward, rings a bell, and from a crystal bowl the noise is apparently transmitted to the Pot, where bubbles appear. Holding two body-tuning forks, she strikes them on a hockey puck to produce notes of C and G, creating what is known as a perfect fifth. After putting them to her own ears for a few seconds, she hovers the forks over the ears of each of the women. This helps, she says, synchronize their brains, balancing the left and right cerebral hemispheres.

A couple of tunes follow: ‘An Indian in a White Man’s Camp’ and a Dakotan Indian song. The thuds of drums reverberate around the countryside, attracting curious sheep from a neighbouring field. Drawn by the noise, an older couple arrive to look around the Pot, stumbling unexpectedly on the ceremony. But the visceral excitement of the event does not interest them. ‘It’s a lot of gibberish’ is the man’s verdict, and they disappear as quickly as they had come.

Gibberish or not, there is a surreal side to these ancient rituals. For the next part of the performance, everyone in the septet makes a personal contribution. A stillness prevails as the willow energy around the Pot releases tensions and emotions. One woman speaks in unsteady tones of her grief, which is linked through the association of the willow’s weeping stance: others tell of pain, while some break into song, recite poetry or recount a short story. As they speak, each lights a candle, placing it in a colourful ceramic bowl of water drawn from the Pot. They then light candles for groups of people in need of support: the firefighters; the homeless; the poor; the vulnerable. Gradually, the bowl fills with floating candles.

During a break, several women wash their feet in the Pot. I scoop the cold water ceremonially in my hands, then remove boots and socks, dipping my feet into the narrow newborn river, now just a trickle of water because of a shortage of rain in recent weeks. Aquatic insects perform whirls. Hundreds of tiny, colourful pebbles are embedded in the pure, clear water and I wriggle my toes through them. Several languid frogs doze on a sandy ledge. Flowerheads thrum with bumblebees, making the most of the blossoms. Showing off their brighter blue, water forget-me-nots and germander speedwell thrive by the banks.

Signboards state that the Pot is originally believed to be the ultimate source of the Shannon, but it is now thought that the water in it comes from several different places, flowing underground before emerging here from an unseen hole. Water-tracing experiments have shown that several of the streams that sink on Cuilcagh mountain flow underground to join the Pot. The farthest of these is the stream that sinks into the Pigeon Pots, over ten kilometres away in Fermanagh. Alanna, the author of books on geomancy, teaches dowsing and divination. I ask her about the recent ‘battle of the sources’ thinking, which states that the river’s fons et origo is next door in Fermanagh.

‘For us, this spot is the traditional starting point of the source of the Shannon. It is historically significant and a powerful place because the water is often upwelling very strongly although it may look calm today. Spending time here stimulates our energies as there is a high magnetic field, which stirs up the magnetic field in our head, helping to facilitate the visionary experience.’

Alanna has a long interest in geomancy, which started when she lived in London. She became fascinated with the medieval practice of dowsing, using rods to detect water, and for her, it is the greatest healing element. Over the years, she has found the Shannon flat, calming and peaceful and describes it as being wonderful for contemplation. ‘There are no rapids on it and it is not flashy. It is a place to recreate yourself as the water gives a reflective quality and we can all tune into the magic,’ she says.

Alanna is familiar with Richard Hayward and loves his writing. ‘My husband Peter bought me a second-hand copy of his Shannon book and it intrigued him to go to places Hayward had been. I’m particularly interested in Crom Dubh, who is associated with Lughnasa Sunday. He writes about that because Leitrim was one of the last Gaelic strongholds of all those ancient gods and goddesses and those traditions were kept up.’

Eighty years ago, when Hayward came here with his caravanserai, few people visited the Shannon Pot or west Cavan. He described the countryside as ‘fertile and green and comfortable’, but noted that many writers habitually referred to the district as ‘rather grim and forbidding’. These days the Pot is labelled a ‘heritage property’, coming under the umbrella of the grandiosely entitled UNESCO Global Marble Arch Caves Geopark. This designation has led to a proper tarred path from a car park and play area where interpretative panels explain the geology and history, packaged and sanitized for tourists. The first section of Hayward’s Shannon book is filled with many stories of the mythical fairy folk, the Tuatha Dé Danann and other legends. He veers off frequently to explain the connections of pagan gods to mountains and festival days, and their place in mythology. He also questions where the starting point of the river is to be found:

This limestone cauldron which we call Lug-na-Sionna is not in fact the source of the Shannon at all, but merely a basin beside a fault in the limestone through which the waters of many rivulets, gathering higher up on the side of Cuilcagh, issue in a copious stream. And this stream, child of many little mountain burns and brooks, cannot properly be looked upon as the actual head-water of the Shannon, but rather as a feeder of that head-water, which, strictly speaking is the Owenmore ... But a story is a story, and Lug-na-Sionna must remain Lug-na-Sionna.

Hayward walked a mile south-east towards Cuilcagh where he threw some grass into a lake, retraced his steps and back at the Pot found the grass rising to the surface of the water. He went on to point out that in his view all the lakes and streams in this area full of caverns, holes and subterranean rivers were connected with another.

As the evening shadows lengthen, the creatures of the night begin to stir. Alanna calls on everyone to regroup, forming a heptagon. The women, cradling two bodhráns, launch into a mix of chanting and song. The noise increases in volume and speed, ending in an adrenaline rush at a breakneck pace with an ear-splitting din echoing around the hillsides, emulating a Hare Krishna cult in full flow. The night air rings with song. Their exuberance is infectious. Animals are roused from their slumber. The group is joined by a small animal orchestra, a veritable Cavan bestiary creating a biophony rippling around the fields, bouncing off the hills, supercharging the air.

The prize for reaching the highest octave goes to Rover, whose great-great-great-grandfather was an Alsatian. Now a hybrid of sheepdog and spaniel, he is a hound of some nobility and sonar strength. His high-frequency howls drown out all other sounds. Elsewhere, a fish jumps in the water, distracting the chanters, while a frog scarpers to a peaceful corner. Cattle pause and look up from their nibbling. Two lambs wander into the zone, entering the highly-charged sanctity, bleating in unison until a farmer coaxes them back, scratching his head as he mounts his tractor beside a glitzy steel bridge that looks incongruous in the landscape. Troops of midges dance in the sunlight. A cuckoo sounds an alarming two-second salvo while lark song dries up. A snipe performing its percussive tick-tock drumming ritual somewhere indefinable rises in sudden flight and with a sharp call skitters away in panicky zigzags. Cabbage white and orange tip butterflies, which had been flitting through the performance, are spiral high, all aflutter. Dragonflies lose the run of themselves, whirring and twisting over the water.

So intensely focused am I on the proceedings, trying to record a video on my smartphone, that I forget to look behind me. In a misplaced footing, I snag on a tussock. My fall from grace into the Pot is sudden but no less impressive as I slide unstoppably down a bank. Fortunately, a sandy spit preserves me from the ignominy of a cold bath. But falling into the Pot itself brings an ingredient of laughter and fun. The two bodhránistas drop their instruments, collapsing into helpless merriment. Alanna breaks off from her bell-ringing, running across to help pull me up the grassy bank back on to terra firma. Luckily, I am wearing a thick skin, and although momentarily embarrassed, I shake myself down with nothing bruised except my ego.

Events reach a climax with the closing of the circle. One woman delivers a valediction that stands as advice for my trip: ‘May your waters remain unpolluted all the time through the counties the whole way down your journey between here and the sea, and may you keep out of the water ...’ Rover also bids me a watery farewell, leaping up, licking sand from my boots. Before leaving, Alanna told me that Sionna had appeared to her at the Pot in a mermaid form, stationed in a regal pose. ‘She was a gracious presence,’ she says, ‘nourishing all around her and was delighted to reconnect with humankind and receive heartfelt wishes. You might take that as a blessing on your own River Shannon journey.’

In the world of writing about travel, there is often a journey that begins before the journey itself. I have broken myself into the Shannon’s embrace, balanced my chakras and survived a fall. The thought-provoking ceremony sets me up for my trip. For these women, the river is the embodiment of grace and beauty. There is a certain sadness at the parting of our ways. I lag behind for a few moments of serenity as a shadowy melancholy prevails, and listen to the underlying sound of the landscape, but it is so quiet you could almost hear a tear drop from a weeping willow.

PART I

Upper Shannon

‘He’s gone: but you can see

his tracks still, in the snow of the world.’

Norman MacCaig, ‘Praise of a man’, Collected Poems

1

The Village that Vanished

MY VISIT TO the Shannon Pot marks the start of a journey in Richard Hayward’s footsteps, following the course of a river that I have known about since schooldays but never properly explored. At primary school, the master, J.J. Hamill, hung up a coloured, torn oilcloth map showing two countries: the large John Bull island of Blighty, and the smaller island of Ireland adjacent to the west, shaped like a saucer. He pointed out some topographical features such as mountains, lakes and rivers. The largest lake was Lough Neagh, while the longest river in the British Isles – as the archipelago was then known – was the River Shannon. He delighted in telling us these simple facts, which have always stayed with me. In the tangled geographical history of the twenty-first century, the British Isles terminology has become contentious and is not much used.

But what I most remember from those long-ago schooldays is that all rivers are stories, connecting places and people, carrying history and lore. The Blackwater in County Tyrone was our local river that ran across an overgrown garden at the bottom of our house and alongside playing fields beside the school. Inevitably, many footballs ended up in the river from which as children we used to fish for pike which, like the balls, often got away. It was a watery backdrop to a childhood imagination. For a young boy, a river is a storybook and I was familiar with fictional ones, especially the Mississippi celebrated in Mark Twain’s TheAdventures of Huckleberry Finn, and the River Sark in Frank Richards’ Billy Bunter books about life at Greyfriars school. Another childhood memory is listening to the hymnal cadences of the shipping forecast on radio and hearing North Utsire, South Utsire, moving on to Shannon, Rockall and Malin. It was an incantatory broadcast, although the Shannon reference relates to the estuary and the seafaring area of the south-west of Ireland, rather than the topography of the eponymous river.

When Hayward set out in mid-August 1939 with his fellow adventurers, their objective was to gather material as they followed the banks of the river from its source to the Atlantic seaboard. The journey of 214 miles, encompassing eleven counties, would take three weeks. Accompanying Hayward were Germain Burger (known as ‘Jimmy’), who filmed a travelogue, while a photographer, Louis Morrison, provided atmospheric black-and-white photographs. They were joined at times and along the way by three other people. Their journey began on 16 August 1939 in an Austin car towing a Chesterfield caravan with what Hayward summed up as having a threefold purpose: ‘To make a travel picture of the River Shannon from its source to its mouth; to write a book of similar scope; and to enjoy ourselves.’ Three men in a car towing a caravan with their cameras, gear and supplies were a novelty at the time and sometimes locals trailed along behind them for a stretch. It was just twenty-one years since the end of the First World War, and on the eve again of momentous world events, Hayward presents a startling pastoral contrast in the preface about their departure: ‘A warm sun in the sky, a genuine thrill of expectancy and joy in our hearts, and many and many a song in our mouths as we sped past the sweet fields of Ireland.’

Frequently in my own wanderings around the ‘sweet fields’ I crissed and crossed the river on many east–west journeys, never staying long enough to find out much about it. It was a place that seemed to keep itself to itself. I had often noticed, when crossing to the west side, the widescreen skies billowing with beefy cloud formations. Not only does the river divide Ireland and represent many boundaries and a frontier, it also brushes against ten counties. After it leaves the Shannon Pot, it follows a haphazard course, slipping in and out of view until it reaches the first settlement, Dowra. An unprepossessing place and an inter-county village, Dowra is divided by the Shannon, with one half in the extreme north-west of Co. Cavan and the other in Co. Leitrim, or more correctly two-thirds in Cavan and the other third in Leitrim.

Signpost at Dowra Bridge, marking the border between Cavan and Leitrim and the first town on the River Shannon.

The Shannon joins forces three miles downstream from the Pot with the Owenmore, which Hayward mentions, and by the time it reaches Dowra with the Owennayla River, it is a fully formed adult artery spanned by an attractive three-arch bridge built with stones from Carrick-on-Shannon jail and from the village itself. The first houses date from 1860 when the police barracks was erected. The town is hemmed in by mountains, bleak moorland, windswept valleys and Lough Allen – the river’s first major lake – while four roads converge on it. Dowra is in the ancient kingdom of Glan, whose rulers were the McGoverns, a common family name which still rules the roost in the area. Like other parts of south Ulster, certain names predominate. Neighbouring Fermanagh has the Maguires while next door in Monaghan the McKennas reign supreme, although O’Reilly is the renowned clan name of Cavan and the wider Breifne area. Hayward wrote that to ask for a Mr McGovern or a Mr Maguire would be ‘nothing but a waste of time’, something that was anathema to such a busy man. Apart from fishing and walking or paddling along the newly founded Shannon Blueway, there is little to detain visitors to Dowra: its attractions are low key, if not invisible. But as an example of a typical country village, it can claim a place for its throughotherness. Those reliant on public transport who wish to reach the area by bus can do so only on a Saturday when Bus Éireann operates a service to Drumkeeran, Dromahair and Sligo.

The moribund main street is a deserted straggle where cars are parked at odd angles. Half the buildings are abandoned or locked up, the shoddy legacy of the Celtic Tiger creating an ugly appearance on approach roads. One slated building beside the bridge was to have become a restaurant and has stood in a weather-beaten, unplastered state of half-completion since the get-rich-quick years. Buggie’s Bar, which advertises Ceol agus Craic on boarded-up windows, has achieved local eyesore status and has not served any music or craic for many a year. The local mindset seems to be to abandon things as they fall. Clearly the place has had its ups and downs, although more downs than ups by the look of it. Very little, in fact, has changed since Hayward’s time. He found it a decayed place and wrote that only with a stretch of the imagination might it be called a town. However, he described the people as gracious and friendly and took local advice from Mr Loughlin, the publican, about a camp site.

Because it is a crossroads town, a crop of cast-iron fingerposts and signboards lead to many different directions, including the newly formed Ancient East route that stretches from Cork up to Louth, and to the Cavan Way. I prowl around the streets. Scarcely a soul is about. The one redeeming feature of the built heritage is the renovated courthouse, which opens only on Wednesday and seems to be of more use to the swift population who are enjoying its eaves and chimney stacks. Originally built in 1932, it has been restored through an EU funding project, Harnessing Nature Resources, and is now used for what is termed a ‘community creative arts space’. Tourism and enterprise initiatives across this border area are a huge bonus to many places yet little of that money has found its way to improving the appearance of Dowra, where a feeling of dereliction pervades. Dour Dowra has no church, Chinese restaurant or takeaway and is largely a caffeine wilderness. There is a sad emptiness about it.

For the past few days there has been a crisis in the uplands caused by out-of-control wildfires on mountains and uplands. April to early May is deemed here as ‘fire season’. It has been a devastating week with conflagrations on a huge scale and firefighters at full stretch. Damage estimated to run into tens of thousands of euro has been caused to private and state-owned forests, which have wiped out animal habitats around Dowra, Killeshandra, Ballyconnell and Belturbet through fires deliberately started. Mature trees, gorse land and some newer plantations of Sitka spruce have been destroyed while the sunny weather and high winds exacerbated the problem, scorching forestry land for many kilometres. The popular boardwalk trail known as the ‘Stairway to Heaven’, leading to the summit of Cuilcagh mountain, is closed because of the fires. Along a country road, several fire-tenders whizz past me with sirens blaring. In the distance plumes of black smoke coil into the sky, spreading across plantations, reminiscent of a swirling mist. Dowra fire service has been working overtime to control the outbreaks and has been stretched to exhaustion. Machinery owners have been called in to help drive the fires back by dampening them with shovels.

The Cavan Way, which runs through Dowra and which I plan to walk a stretch of the next day, appears to have escaped serious damage. But a 500 m section of the nearby Sligo Way – a 34 km walk from Dromahair in Leitrim to Coolaney in Sligo – destroyed 4000 acres around Killery mountain. Dramatic front-page photographs and a flurry of newspaper headlines bear out the seriousness of the damage: ‘Burn Out: Swathes of local habitat destroyed’; ‘Out of control fires rage for days as dry weather continues’; ‘Danger warnings from forest fires’. In Cavan’s weekly newspaper, The Anglo-Celt (serving the community since 1846 and known to some as the Cavan man’s bible), one resident is quoted as having seen hundreds of acres of shrubland go up in flames on Ben mountain bordering Leitrim. Hayward mentions the newspaper in one of his travel books:

As a kind of commentary on the racial dichotomy of the County Cavan, it is significant that the only newspaper printed in the county is the weekly Anglo-Celt. The only bad thing I know about that paper is the execrable local pronunciation of the word Celt with a soft C. It does violence to my ear every time a Cavan man uses such an un-Irish sound.

Outside Loughlin’s general merchants beside Dowra bridge, a man nods a good morning in the superheated air. ‘We’re not used to this hot weather,’ he says. Oliver McGrail is sitting on a bench out of the sun’s rays. He looks out to the hills, which are smouldering in places with a scorched-earth appearance.

‘I was reading in the paper about what the law is regarding the fires,’ he says. ‘The general belief is that some of them are started on purpose by vandals, but others are an accident where people try to burn something and the whole thing gets out of control. The police have laid out the law about the burning of highly flammable dead vegetation such as gorse, rushes, sedges, heathers and hill grasses. They’re ferocious blazes and when the moorland is bone dry like that they escalate very quickly.’

Oliver, a retired businessman who ran a hardware store, recalls that when he was growing up in Dowra in the 1950s, there were ten pubs: now there are two, but mostly just one.

‘Dowra has lost an enormous amount by way of businesses and much more. When people go, everything goes and that’s the problem. It is disheartening but the local people can’t do any more. Anything to bring in visitors will cost a big amount of money. I sometimes go out to where I was born and reared with a family of eight and the house is closed. When I go out to the home place and come back, I don’t feel well and am worse than when I went out, so I don’t go very often because it brings back all the good memories that have gone for ever. The world moves on and all the changes are connected to the decline of the population.’

Oliver cups his right hand to his ear as two tractors and a transporter trundle over the narrow bridge. I ask him about Jim Loughlin, whom Hayward met.

‘The only thing I remember about Mr Loughlin is that he was in bed for nine or ten years that I was alive, and he died when I was eleven. His pub was next to where Loughlin’s shop now is. He was a great organizer and loved getting things done and if there was a fair day he would be so nervous that he wouldn’t be able to serve drink himself. He was clever and would have helped Hayward and told him where to go, a very intelligent man who knew people and knew the history of the area.

‘The Shannon means nothing to people today because there isn’t any tourism here although there is further downriver. People are friendly and helpful, very neighbourly and for the like of me that never left, the measurement would be better concluded by somebody who left and returned. My son is working in London and he is home five or six times a year and just loves coming here. In my childhood it was common to have fights, the same as playing cards, but there was no real seriousness to it, it was a bit of craic. Today they use knives or guns, but it would have been fists in those days.’

By next morning the fires have mostly been quelled. With binoculars I scan the black and charcoal high ground in the far distance. To get close to the Shannon’s heartbeat, the section of the Cavan Way that I plan to tackle is part of a looped walk north of Dowra to Cashelbane where it meets the river. Near this point, according to my map, it appears with an eccentric kink before dropping into Dowra. The thin corridor of land in this part of west Cavan is made up of a bewildering network of un-signposted lanes, byways and boreens, although they cherish their townland nomenclature with signage every few miles: Gubaveeny, Corraquigley, Stranamart, while the map contains intriguing place names such as Dawn of Hope and Barr of Farrow. A road sign signifies Cathal Buí Country, a singer, balladeer and poet from the seventeenth century, described as an early version of Christy Moore. The early morning world glistens in spring sunshine. Pied wagtails curtsy on the rocks while magpies fidget in intensely green fields. I have arranged to walk with Bee Smith, an American who has lived in the area for fifteen years and is a freelance Geopark tour guide. We make our way along sunlit roadside hedges high with holly and berry and filled with a forest of ferns to the Old Coach Road, also known as the Smuggler’s Road. The May blossom of the hawthorn tree creates a localized botanical snowfall in masses along the hedges. Radiant with wildflowers, it is a topographically pleasing area, but as Bee explains, Dowra has a dark side to its history.

‘Initially the place was called Tober, which means ‘well’ in Irish, and up until 1862 it was the locus of population for this area when there was what is called “the great flood”,’ she says. ‘Prior to that it had always been a thriving village with several shops and many taverns, a smithy, and fifty or more households who all attended mass at Doobally, half a mile from here. The landslides washed the whole place away and it is now known as the village that vanished. They held dances here and Cathal Buí visited the area. The local priest said he would excommunicate any household or tavern that entertained Cathal Buí as he was regarded as naughty because he was a rake-poet and a singer around rambling houses, which meant he was popular with people but not with the clergy.

‘But one night at the presbytery an old woman, a real bent-over hag, knocked on his door and asked for bread and tea, and shelter for the night. The priest offered accommodation but said she would have to sleep with the maid. She said, “Thank-you, thank-you Father, you’re very good and kind.” Next morning at the breakfast table there was no maid to serve the breakfast and a note thanking him for his hospitality was signed Cathal Buí.’

We pause, admiring violet-tinged ditches and verges with the erect stems of bugle, bush vetch, milkwort, common dog violet and periwinkles. On the hedge banks a spring smorgasbord of flora and plants includes white globes of dandelion seed heads, while celandine and marsh marigold bloom in profusion alongside primroses and the cuckoo flower. The tapestry of colours includes carpets of sphagnum moss, early purple orchids and stitchwort, while stems of rosebay willowherb are not yet in flower. Luxuriant ferns add to the verdure. In the corners of fields, dense cylindrical silage sits wrapped in black plastic. The area is riddled with sweat houses, known as an early type of sauna, along with cairns and a megalithic tomb. Later we come to a large circular holy well, locally called Mary’s well.

Bee explains: ‘Hundreds of years ago there used to be faction battles at Lughnasa to mark the beginning of the harvest in August. At one point a fight broke out and blood was spilled in the holy well, which was regarded as a huge pollution. It was said at the time that the local priest cursed the well, which was a big deal because local tradition was that Our Lady had appeared there. This was told to me by my neighbour, who died at nearly 100. She said it was well before both her mother’s and grandmother’s time so we’re going back long before Cathal Buí’s time, perhaps even into the late medieval era when it was said that Our Lady had appeared here. Although there is no particular cure about the well, I suspect that it still has ancient fertility connotations because women who want children visit here. Still people came, but it fell into disrepair.

‘Then the local landowner rebuilt it using a mason from Glangevlin. In 2012 he asked the priest to re-consecrate it and lift the curse. He was a Cavan man and went with it and I was present at the mass and a lot of the legend was told at the mass, which was held near Lughnasa. The curse would have happened and then came the flood, which was in the summer of 1862 – there were a lot of wet summers in the post-Famine period when they had what was called the “little Famine”, which caused much hunger but not mass death. There would have been landslides and you can see how it slewed down and swept [the soil] away. The water is not in spate but is very powerful when it comes down and if you have a flash flood it thunders down here. At that stage all the businesses and households were wiped out – perhaps up to a population of nearly 500 living here – there was just a ford with stones where Dowra now is, which is why it’s known as a Johnny-come-lately.’

Our walk leads through verdant countryside along traffic-free lanes. At the remains of a wooden bridge at Cashelbane the river has practically dried up because of the uncharacteristically warm weather. We lean over a white lattice-worked bridge where rocks and stones are visible on the riverbed, which looks as though it has been wrung dry. Large, multi-limbed oak trees come with ivy-wrapped tree trunks. Farther along the road uncurling, shiny patches of the prolific hart’s tongue grow beside tall stands of the fancifully named fiddlehead fern with its distinctive looping, furled fronds. They are almost overwhelmed by horsetail, known as scouring rush, and grasses displaying a smaragdine haze of new growth. Bee points out mare’s tail which, in folkloric tradition, was used for internal bleeding and stomach ulcers and for skin inflammation.

‘A hybrid called Wilmott mare’s tail is full of silica and can be brewed with garlic to make an organic spray that protects potato blight, so it had medicinal natural uses. Wilmott mare’s tail was created here; it doesn’t grow anywhere else and is hybridized in this unique environment, although I have never spotted it. It is undisturbed and is near a tributary and there is lots of it as it needs a damp environment, which is where Wilmott found it along a back river but did not say which townland – he might not have known the area’s name.’

Since moving to live in the area, Bee has fallen in love with west Cavan and has developed a special fondness for the legends, folklore and mythology that surround it.

‘This is a timeless place, a liminal place and a thin place. To me it is nature’s entry to the Valley of the Kings, except that it is in Ireland and if you think about it, the Tuatha Dé Danann landed on Slieve Anierin, and Glangevlin is where the magical blacksmith of the Tuatha forged their laser swords. We don’t get a cell signal – I had my first conversation inside our house a few days ago and the only reason is because it was windless and sunny since the Wi-Fi is affected by the weather.’

Bee says that Dowra was never properly developed for historical reasons, but she believes changes could be on the way to improve its image.

‘People want tourism and it is bringing people in but it’s very hard to sell Dowra. It was never energetically supposed to be a residential place. Other than the mart, it is quiet because historically Tober was where it all happened. It will be interesting to see what will happen now that the curse has been lifted and if things begin to thrive. Local people have tried to do their best to improve the place. The resource centre, the EU funding, the courthouse – but then something seems to happen to make things not happen. But without the funding things don’t happen. People follow the money because they have to. There always seem to be problems or local difficulties when they try to plan something. My husband has been involved with the resource centre and there are schisms and disagreements and that is because there is something argumentative in the atmosphere. Don’t forget, “the fighting men of Dowra” is an old phrase and will stand as long as the mart is there. People take a drink and there is bound to be a fight eventually. Some of the buildings are privately owned and have fallen into disrepair. There has been a fairly new development of houses at Shannon Ville but the petrol station in Blacklion got Nama’d and that is affecting things here.’

Aside from America, Bee has lived in several parts of the world including Britain and speaks about what it is like living as a blow-in to west Cavan.

‘We came from Leeds in September 2001 and are very fond of this area. We had to rent a place and had two dogs and a cat living in the house with us. The Shannon was our back yard when we lived in Dowra and it was just heaven coming from a big English city. We loved the silence, so the river is important to us. I grew up in north-eastern Pennsylvania in an area known as the Marcellus and lived beside one of the longest rivers in the American north-west – the Susquehanna River, which is just a bit longer than the Shannon and which empties out in Maryland. I’ve always had a feeling for rivers and they seem to be part of my life – I want to live next to the sea but keep on getting stuck with rivers. I went to university in Washington DC where we have a couple of big rivers, the Potomac and the Anacostia, and then I lived in London where I met my husband. I loved the Thames of course, but more importantly the River Lea is where we lived near Walthamstow in east London – we did a lot of courting beside the river so it’s a special place. You could say my whole life has revolved around rivers.’

THE CHARACTER OF Dowra changes on a Saturday with the influx of more than 150 farmers for the livestock mart, a long-established weekly highlight that brings much-needed business to the town. Cattle and sheep farming is the main occupation in this area and continues to provide employment, albeit in declining numbers. Through the decades, there have been many agricultural changes but one of the most profound is in the way in which the land itself is worked. Scythes, reapers and binders have been replaced by tractors and combine harvesters, and the hay is no longer forked into ricks. Hayward describes farmers in Cavan working in the fields, swinging long-handled scythes, and when he sees working donkeys, with creels, he remarks on how traditions such as thatching are still carried on:

Over the rise of the hillside came several little mountainy donkeys, so deeply laden with rushes for thatching that it was almost impossible to see any donkey at all. I got out of the car and climbed over the ditch and found that the rushes were carried in rude creels slung on the sides of each little beast; and I was interested to observe that the creels, and what there was of harness, were made entirely of sugan, the Irish word for a rope which is made by twisting hay or straw. The art of the rush-thatcher is still happily plied in this pleasant countryside, and I was glad to see that these gallant little donkeys, most faithful friends of the mountainy farmer, were in grand condition and obviously well cared for.

On this particular Saturday, cars and vans, trailers and cattle lorries, tractors and quads are parked on the approach roads to the mart. A yellow-coated steward directs traffic. The air resounds with the bellowing, snorting and grunting of animals mixed with the reverberations of an auctioneer’s voice coming through speakers in the corrugated iron sheds. Parked alongside the Jeeps, Shoguns, Land Cruisers and pick-up trucks are a raft of gleaming tinted-screen vehicles with names such as Duster, Warrior, Discovery, Pajero, Defender and Invincible. In Hayward’s time cars were prefixed with model names such as Austin, Morris or Vauxhall. On the lanes and roads during his driving days, they were given evocative names such as Hillman Minx, Singer Vogue, Riley Pathfinder, with Ford names of Zephyr, Zodiac, Prefect and Cortina.

The morning sales involve sheep while the afternoon is given over to cattle with dry cows, calf cows, sucklers, heifers and weanling bulls. To get a feel for how the agricultural landscape has changed since Hayward’s time I contacted Terry McGovern, who runs the mart. In his office I study posters urging farmers to sign a petition: ‘Save Our Sucklers’; ‘Cattle not Conifers, Save Leitrim’. This energetic campaigning group wants to save the county’s farmland, which they contend is being taken over by Sitka plantations, which in Leitrim alone amount to nearly 35 million trees. The farmers want to see more planting of their native hardwoods such as oak, beech, ash, hazel and larch. Terry points out the mart pens and the buyer’s rings. It is hard to hold a conversation because of the volume of noise, so he shouts for me to have a look around, saying that if I call into the Melrose Inn after lunch he will arrange for some farmers with long memories to speak to me.

In one large pen, farmers lean over railings, looking closely as one by one the animals are prodded in with sticks. A woolly-hatted man beside me bids with his outstretched index finger for a well-fleshed Friesian but is outgunned. He talks about the importance of the animals getting home as soon as they have been bought as marts are stressful places for them and a potential source of disease transmission. Several metres back from the ring more than fifty farmers sit on wooden tiered bench seats, soaking up the atmosphere. A few speak on phones in this twenty-first century stock market. An electronic screen flashes up each beast’s history as it passes into the buyer’s ring, including place and date of birth, average weight, breed, previous owners, days in herd, test certificate, export details and a star rating ranging from one to five. On the weighbridge several cows slip and slide on the sawdust-covered floor. A few others play piggyback, receiving a smack like a naughty child.

Beef production is the most common type of farming in Ireland and the business at Dowra is concentrated on bulls and cows, with Charolais, highly muscled Limousin and stout Dexters to the fore. The ruddy-faced cattle auctioneer at the microphone is an expert at his job, although some of his phraseology is lost on me. He launches into a sing-song monotone incremental biding scale: ‘Charley-bull again – nine hund-erd and sixty, forty, twenty … biddy, biddy, biddy … on the market … bull calf eight hund-erd and fifty, sixty, seventy, eighty … fibiddy, biddy, biddy …’ He keeps a sharp eye on potential buyers through the syntax of his sign language: a flick of the wrist, head nod or hand gesture, his mallet falling to sign off a deal followed by a brief conversation with a woman at a computer.

As I walk down to the Melrose Inn, I glance over the bridge where the river races across rocks confettied with moss. Two grey wagtails, oblivious of the nearby echo chamber, bob up and down. At the road junction, a tailback of lorries, tractors, trucks and vans has formed. The owner of the bar introduces me to four farmers sitting around a table polishing off plates of roast beef and mixed grills. They tell me that they come from GLRC: Greater Leitrim, Roscommon and Cavan.

One farmer, a sturdily built man from west Cavan, talks about Dowra. ‘It’s only busy of a Saturday,’ he says in a drawl. ‘Dead the rest of the time but the town has a tragic past. This is the only place left to eat.’

I ask if any of them can remember their fathers or grandfathers speaking about life on the land two generations ago. Another Cavan farmer picks up the conversation.

‘The biggest difference is that in the 1930s there was no mechanization … it was all done by hand, whereas it’s now industrialized. Farmers have an awful lot of money tied up in heavy machinery but they don’t have many blisters on their hands. Years ago, even in the 1960s when I started, they didn’t have half the machinery they have now, and nobody cared about health and safety. I bought my first Massey in 1965 for £500 and got many years’ work out of it.’

A Leitrim farmer with a close-cut beard nods and adjusts his cap.

‘In the 1930s hay meadows were cut in August but that work is done now in July. Most pastureland is rye grass compared with meadow grass and cutting silage instead of hay has had a big effect on insects, birds and animals. Even up to the 1930s, potatoes were all dug out of the ridges by a loy [an early Irish spade], which my father used. Nowadays they don’t work in the fields at all and a contractor is hired to do the hay. The young ones don’t want to do it and that’s the height of it. If I had my time again, I don’t think I would keep going at it.’

A farmer from Roscommon, finishing off his apple pie, says most of them are feeling the pinch and are just about breaking even.

‘When I was growing up in the late 1950s and ’60s there was no talk of education, it wasn’t such a big thing as it is today. My parents didn’t worry about me or my brothers studying to pass exams or doing well at school. You just went on to the farm and took it over from your parents. We grew our own vegetables, there was no such thing as going to the supermarket. The woman of the house baked the bread and the man provided for everyone. Now I have a son of nineteen and I would not encourage him to be a farmer – maybe a bit of part-time farming if he wants but he should learn a plumbing or electrical trade or go into public works and make a guaranteed living from that. He comes home at five o’clock and doesn’t want to be working right into the evening.’

Nowadays large areas of the Leitrim countryside are under forestry, much of it non-native Sitka spruce plantations unwelcome to many farmers.

‘The land itself is the same, there’s still hedges and meadows with plenty of flowers, but the Sitka spruce are big, ugly, dark green blankets on the landscape,’ says one man. ‘They’re also polluting the water quality because they use toxic chemicals, and aerial fertilization is being sprayed in the form of nitrogen and phosphate, which is draining into the rivers. On top of that, the rainfall has definitely got worse. It’s increasingly uncertain and you can’t rely on the forecast. The strategy is not right to cope with so many more cattle, the agricultural system is broken. We need some radical thinking and diversified farming with perhaps a return to tillage.’

This triggers another farmer who has listened attentively but said nothing. He places his red muscular hands on the table.

‘Thing you gotta understan’ is that there’s an awful lot more red tape these days in being a full-time farmer, which is why there are so many part-time ones doing other work. The Common Agricultural Policy reforms and farming restrictions from Brussels, never mind all the EU directives on environmental matters, take up a lotta our time.’ He blows out his cheeks and continues. ‘I’ve also got strong views on the banks too but to be honest I’d be as well to keep them to myself.’

‘In many ways the challenges are as great now as they were in earlier times,’ says the Leitrim farmer. ‘What has not changed are the problems over volatility of the prices and the weather, and of making ends meet. We’ve had disastrous years recently when the ground has been saturated for months on end with flooding along the Shannon and that has happened for a century or more, but it has been especially bad in recent years, causing several fodder crises. Traditionally farming was an industry that people went into because they wanted to work on the land with animals, but it is becoming increasingly hard now with cash flow a big problem, which is why so many small farmers have gone to the wall. The position here is that young farmers wishing to buy land cannot compete with forestry companies who are not making any contribution to the well-being of small rural communities. You’re dealing with a government that wants to depopulate this area and the powers that be need to map out some sort of blueprint for the future.’

Coffee cups and saucers are produced and there is general talk about beef and lamb prices, farm inspections, planning applications lodged with the Department of Agriculture for afforestation, and the ageing workforce. The men are not so much fatalistic as practical and forthright about the next few years. One stocky farmer with a friendly face receives a call on his mobile phone that his two heifers are getting restless and he is needed at the mart. Before leaving, he sums up fluently the attitude of many in the industry.

‘Farming is at a crossroads because the younger generation has a different mindset. There is no question that it’s very hard to make a living from the land although we try to keep positive. ’Tis often claimed that farmers are always complaining but when all’s said and done, we are still custodians of the land. It just seems to be changing now at such a fast speed that we have never seen before. But I’ll tell you one thing, it’s good to get a bit of whingeing off your chest – you feel the better of it.’

2

The Snake in the Lake

THE ROAD SOUTH along