One bitterly cold Saturday in November on a wet walk near Lough Murri on the Flaggy Shore I was startled by a series of bugle-like calls accompanied by a mix of snorts and squeaks echoing around the lake’s edge. Gliding from reed beds a flotilla of swans cruised smoothly at a steady pace. Part of a larger water bird gang of paddling ducks and gulls, they exuded an aura of gentleness. The assembly included mute swans and a pair of rare black swans, an unusual sight in the Burren. They circled playfully pulling on water plants and upending several times. Gracefully they emerged from the water, straightening elongated necks, intertwining and turning heads, and presenting a noble and sociable appearance.
But soon it became clear that all was not congenial in this choreography of nature and the swans were far from amicable soulmates. After much preening, scratching and displaying of their wide, white underwings, the black swans’ bitchiness in defining their territory manifested itself with a clamorous ruffling of feathers and nasty snapping. They were keen to show who was boss of this stretch of water even though they were outnumbered 50–1 by Cygnus olor. After ten minutes the black swans poked vigorously with their dazzling red bills, nipping at the bottoms and long pointed tails of their white-plumaged cousins, seeing them angrily off.
They then decided to parade on the grassy bank taking the higher swan-upping ground a couple of metres from me where I noticed their slate-like feathers. The misnamed mute swans emitted a loud hiss and a series of falsetto grunts as they drifted off to the safety of their nest deep in the reeds. Through the sleety November rain, the black bullies tumbled back into the cold water, regaining their regal composure. My attention was distracted skyward by the dramatic entrance at high speed of a line of four whooper swans coming in to land in the centre of the lake. Like a well-drilled unit and with the skill of experienced airline pilots they touched down seamlessly on the water, adding an exotic flourish to the winter lamentation on the Flaggy Shore.
For twenty years I have colour-coded my visits on the Folding Landscapes map. Like a child having fun with a new wallet of felt-tip pens, on each visit I circle the places I have explored, each year discovering previously unknown riches. I can date my Burren visits and identify the years by the colour-key on the map. The area around Ballyvaughan is multi-coloured. Other heavily shaded areas include Mullaghmore, Poulnabrone, Carron, Black Head, Poll Salach, and the Flaggy Shore. Abbey Hill and Corcomroe clash with a variety of reds and blacks representing much-tramped areas of limestone. Lesser-known places are circled half-a-dozen times: Sheshymore, Poulaphuca, Leamaneh, Oughtmama and Kilfenora. A few others feature only one or two colours. The map is torn, stained and Sellotaped, but embodies memories of familiar locations and the thrill of new-found ones; I call it my Burren Rainbow Map – my map of many colours.
The Flaggy Shore © Marty Johnston
5
An Aphrodisiac of the Senses
May the light that turns the limestone white
Remind us that our solitude is bright.
John O’Donohue, ‘A Burren Prayer’
Taking an imagined step back in time, as I occasionally like to do, I have often wondered about the sound of the huge glacier coming slowly from Connemara 15,000 years ago dropping its rocks across this part of Clare. Digital technology did not exist to record the acoustics for the archive but I can imagine that the grinding, growling and groaning, the squeaking of the ice incorporated with rock, the whole shebang, was a powerful noise. It carried debris and soil, rock and other detritus, dropping the boulders in all sorts of odd places. Often when I think of glacial travel I am reminded of Coleridge’s ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’:
The ice was here, the ice was there,
The ice was all around:
It cracked and growled, and roared and howled,
Like noises of a swound!
I think of the natural noises that have existed here for years. It is a place of few rivers or waterfalls, but listen carefully and you can distinguish numerous different notes in the water: the repetitious surge and slurp of the waves at the seafront slapping against the rocks; the roar of the Caher River in full winter spate as it tumbles over stones; the trickling Rathborney stream; gentle lapping of water on the lakes; the torrential drumming of the rain and hailstones flying off the rocks. The ‘plop’ of a duck landing perfectly on water is always a happy sound. As they flap into land with their triangular feet poised, it is amusing to watch their speed-break wings in action avoiding a crash-landing.
The susurrus of Burren winds whistle through the walls and round the headlands. Sustained bursts of winter winds last up to thirty seconds. I once counted a continuous blast of forty-four seconds. The soft strata of sound, such as gentle hissing and sighing of the wind moving through the trees, provides a contrast. Some nights it is without sound. Hailstone showers erupt with automatic ferocity for a short, sharp period too. Life pauses for a few minutes. Cattle stop drinking and eating, goats are mesmerised, people stand in doorways, cars pull over as their fast-speed wipers are unable to cope with the force of it. Then life returns, tractors trundle along the roads and the place regains its cloak of serenity as the birds reappear.
Uninterrupted by traffic or people, early morning is a delectable time to savour the Burren songbirds. One spring Sunday in May, on a circular walk around the hidden waters of Lough Rask and with an enchanting mist rising slowly from the calm water like a geyser giving off steam, I listened carefully to a fusillade of birdsong. Concentrating on pitch, timbre and rhythm, I filled five pages of a notebook with squiggles, and recorded what the lyrical writer on nature and the typology of landscape Jim Perrin calls ‘the immediacies of bliss’.
Through the dawn light I was chorused firstly by the wren striking up a tune with its machine-gun salvo of loud trills and shrills. Soon the short but explosive warbling of the blackcap is followed by the sharp, repeated, metallic tea-cher, tea-cher, teacher of the great tit. A hoarse woodpigeon, with its muffled but rhythmic coo-cooo-oo-ing and emphasis on the second syllable, vies with the strident and liquid territorial song of the robin, a random mixture of tsiip and tseee, piercing the air, reverberating through the trees and around the lakeside.
Farther along, an unseen and barely audible goldcrest sounding like a wheelbarrow in need of oil emits its soft ziidaziida tinkle lasting just a few seconds. I pause to study through binoculars a willow warbler delivering, from high in an ash tree, its soft hoo-eet which increases in volume before its sweet string of descending notes fades and it departs to another tree. Languid and unmistakable, the call of the cuckoo carries far over the flat ground from neighbouring fields. The water birds of Lough Rask are also full of early energy. The contented chuckle of a mallard on the lake and its accompanying gentle splish-splash is disturbed by the flight of a pair of herons circling high with their krarnk call.
On my walk along roads filled with hedgerows and scrub, moments of minor drama animate the sky as birds go about their business. An agile swallow, on a fly-past, smartly sees off a harassing sparrowhawk and then continues its glorious jumbled twittering. A redpoll, with its distinctive trilling, undulates swiftly in the distance. Back in the slowly awakening village, the three notes of the song thrush get up, get up, get up … go-to-bed, go-to-bed, go-to-bed stir and confuse sleepy Ballyvaughanites. Elsewhere the shriek of a magpie, the repeated chirp chirp wakeup call of two gregarious house sparrows, and the insistent grukkgrukk of a pother of ravens gatecrashes the Sunday morning silence.
Frequently I am surprised at the profusion and diversity of birdlife that can be heard, if not seen, in one small area. A few hours spent alone in the Burren serenaded by up to twenty birds is a lesson in the art of tuning in to a whole world of acoustic animal language and of appreciating the extraordinary symphony of sounds that only early morning can bring. Every year, as more and more common birds join the list of endangered species, it is something to celebrate, pure and unadulterated.
Useful mnemonics have often helped me in the fraught bus
iness of understanding the calls, communications and love notes of birds – happy, plaintive, harsh or lilting. But always, in trying to separate the chiff from the chaff, I take away the simple if sometimes frustrating pleasure of listening to competing tuneful songsters while at the same time trying to catch a glimpse of Lough Rask’s avian rascals at their rhapsodic peak.
If you wish to turn off the ornithological soundscape, silence is easy to find. Sounds are concentrated in this place steeped in tranquillity. Pockets of stillness are everywhere and you can soak up the silences in numerous character-filled settings. Some places that spring to mind offer reflective space, inner peace and quietude: the top of Mullaghmore Mountain, a shaded glade at out-of-the-way Keelhilla far from traffic, Sheshymore’s hidden pavement where the air is abnormally silent, Berneens townland where there is no human contact, the cliffs at Carron where the silence is all but absolute, and the soul-stilling Corcomroe Abbey where the silence listens to the silence but where, if you listen carefully, you may hear the monks chanting their vespers. For many visitors ‘The Abbey of Our Lady of the Fertile Rocks’, where Yeats set his play The Dreaming of the Bones, is one of the most placid of all Burren places.
Walk southeast of the abbey for an hour and further peaceful, ecclesiastical exploration is to be found at the ruins of the three Early Christian churches of Oughtmama (Ucht Máma ‘the breast of the mountain pass’). Hidden in a hollow surrounded by a wall with trees and vegetation all set in a wider valley of limestone hills, this ancient monastic site associated with St Colman is difficult to locate. One September morning I set out to find it, negotiating an obstacle course of stone walls, electrified fences, farm gates and cow pats. My route crosses square fields with sturdy cows, shoulder high nettles and thick clumps of thistles and dandelions. A red tractor with a link box stands in the centre of one field. In the corner of another, a steel container, its lid held in place by blue twine says: Cashel’s Creep Feeder. On the ivy-covered wall of a neat whitewashed cottage sits a black metal US Mail Box.
I tightrope-walk across the narrow edge of a rectangular water trough bridging two fields for my first glimpse of the roofless buildings – an astonishing site in a remarkable state of preservation set against the backdrop of the terracing. My unexpected arrival startles a woodpigeon which clatters through foliage. The churches are arranged in an east–west layout and their thick walls, more than 6m high, are decorated with yellow and white lichen. Chunky cyclopean blocks, some up to 1m in length, have been used in the south wall of the western church. In the nave of the largest church I crunch across pebblestones through an elegant but simple arch. According to a Dúchas noticeboard (the only sign of outside worldly infiltration) little is known of the history of the churches but it is thought they may have become less important after Corcomroe was founded. No reason is given as to why they were built here. The two smaller churches – one about 37m to the northeast – may have been places for meditation or prayers. A large plan of how the area looked in the twelfth century when a community of monks was based here shows a medieval mill-race to the east with evidence of house sites. In a corner of the wall a small font intertwined with odd animals looking like lambs has been carved and a twenty-first century fern grows from it.
In her gazetteer Forgotten Stones Averil Swinfen writes that the stony outlines of the churches blend into the surrounding countryside and ‘look as though they have grown up from the landscape’. No signposts direct you to Oughtmama; there are no easy paths leading to it and it merits only a brief mention on most maps. It is seldom visited but the time spent reaching it and in admiring its pulchritude is a reward for those who make the effort to find this place where the quiet is turned on full blast. If the Abbey of Our Lady at Corcomroe is the mother of serenity, then Oughtmama, hard-to-find and impossible-to-forget, is mother queen of serene.
The whine of police sirens or ambulances is rarely heard in the Burren but occasionally the volume control knob is turned up. Noisy music-filled pubs, and car hill climbs are two examples, but those who want to enjoy these sounds are there through choice. Sound levels generally below 20 decibels are becoming a rarity. Absolute silence is unlikely anywhere but many parts of the 388 square kilometres that make up the Burren have low decibel levels and in its own way the power of silence acts as a stimulus.
Animal sounds frequently surprise me on my rambles, punctuating the still air. While walking one afternoon on the limestone at Murrough, the air resounded with the discordant foghorn-like braying of a donkey that seemed to be in trouble but may just have been looking for attention. From nearby fields cows responded with loud bellowing. The noisy competition lasted for a full five minutes.
Touch is the most intimate sense. Over the years I have noted the feel and consistency of many flowers. Touch sensations are difficult to describe but my jottings remind me of the textures I have come across: hairy and sticky leaves on plants and trees, some fleshy or resinous, prickly thistles, a rubbery, fuzzy or glabrous feel of certain flowers.
Nelipotting, or walking barefoot, is one of the supreme Burren pleasures, preferably on a sunny day soaking up the feel of the limestone, which retains its warmth like a convector heater. Find a long patch, cast off your shoes and socks, revel in its smoothness, move quietly over the grey clints and it will live long in your well of memory. And as you touch, feel, smell and taste your way around the lanes and over the pavement – shod or unshod – you slowly realise the Burren is a terrain of the mind and spirit, a provocative multi-sensory aphrodisiac.
Of all the senses, smell is the most primitive. Kipling once noted, ‘Smells are surer than sights and sounds to make the heart strings crack’. The smells of the Burren are linked to memory and emotion, serving as moments of reminiscence bringing out the qualities of a particular place. A visit to Keelhilla triggers a potpourri of woody aromas. There is a fetid scent of damp leaves and on warmer days, as insects hover, a rich leafy smell permeates the air. The early purple orchid, according to botanical experts, smells of cat’s urine. On the limestone you will come across wild garlic, coconut-scented gorse, the tang of the salty sea air and seaweed. In places the pungent three-cornered leek may assail your nostrils; a farmer once told me the milk from his cows that feasted on the leek was undrinkable.
Set in a calm and isolated valley surrounded by ruined churches, holy wells and ring forts, along a single-track road north of Carron, is one of the most congenially fragrant experiences. Cross the door into the Burren Perfumery and the air is suddenly weighted with new scents. On the shop counter you may be amused and confused to find a small cup of loose Suma coffee, an organic medium roast blend with a strong smell. This, the assistant says, clears the nose and neutralises the switch as you shuffle-sniff amongst the plant-based fragrances on sale. Educate your nose with lavender and jasmine, cedar and lemongrass or fennel and mint. Choose between a warm and sophisticated fragrance or opt for a light summery one, perhaps absorbing the fresh orange flower scent found in the neroli and orange body and hand cream, or the cocktail of the Monoi Tiare flower coupled with jasmine.
Perfume-sniffing, like the connoisseurs and their wine, is an experienced business and here they blend their scents to produce a harmonious combination that is both relaxing and energising. It is also one that suits different times and moods of the day. Even through their attractive green linen wrapping and gold thread, some sweet-smelling soaps will transport you to a field of new mown hay or perhaps induce in you a fresh, fruity and zingy suggestion of citrus. As you browse the shelves of soya candles, creams and floral waters, you may detect a whiff of vanilla. The exotic mix of delicate and heady aromas, coupled with the alchemy of the experience, lingers in the nostrils.
Once you have had your fix of the flower power of perfumed petals and of one of the Burren’s most sensuous of all treats, a tour of the smells would be incomplete without sampling the essence of the national bouquet. One of the most unmistakable smells is found in the rare whiskies displayed on the shelves of Ó
Loclainn’s bar in Ballyvaughan.
The Burren Perfumery’s formula includes an alcohol base mixed with distilled oils and water, but for a contrasting distilling experience from the floral one and a world away from lavender sacks, the scent sleuth should round off the day by sampling some of these blends. Premium Irish whiskies, with all their complex flavours and smells, are listed in the bar’s sixteen-page leather-bound whiskey menu.
Ó Loclainn’s is a whitewashed mid-nineteenth-century bar with wooden tables, photographs, curios, and a mahogany clock that does not tell the correct time – a trait of clocks in the Burren’s watering holes. It opens only after 9.00 p.m. (and on Sundays after mass from 12.30 to 3.00 p.m.) because Peter, who owns the bar, farms during the day. The head honchess Margaret, who runs the pub with him, is a woman of immediate friendliness and has agreed to help me identify specific smell and taste sensations. Originally from near Fermoy in north Cork, she came to work in Gregan’s Castle Hotel in 1990. Six years later she married Peter and became absorbed by the bar’s history.
‘It goes back to 1848 when it was originally a hotel and a stopping place for horse coaches,’ she explains as her eyes search the shelves for the best-smelling whiskies. ‘Very little has changed in one-hundred-and-sixty years apart from some modifications in 1997 when we added on bathrooms and extended a little. It had a dual function as it was a bar and shop, and the wooden drawers would have contained sugar, tea and spices. It’s small and intimate and that’s the beauty about the bar, you get to know all the customers.’
It is a bright and balmy early summer evening in August but little light seeps into the bar. The dark-panelled walls, glass cabinets and shelves tightly packed with hundreds of golden bottles create an ambience that attracts large numbers of visitors. Margaret is happy to let me smell and taste some whiskies but warns that she may have to attend to customers every so often since it is likely to be busy. On the wooden counter beside the old-fashioned cash register and box for the Missions in Africa she sets up eight of the best.
Burren Country Page 7