Ireland: Notes from a Green Isle

The first thing you notice about the island of Ireland is that it’s so gloriously, vibrantly, voluptuously green. The green assaults you in a rather pleasant way as you drive across the isle past its meadows and quaintly named counties of Antrim, Londonderry, Limerick and Tipperary. Country music legend Johnny Cash was so enamoured with Irish green that he referred to it in a song, ‘Forty Shades of Green’. I tried to identify the shades. Only the lack of my colour vocabulary prevented me from reaching forty. Our guide Andrew Beggs reveals that Ireland has the same latitude as Norway. But, he explains, it’s not as cold because the waters of the Gulf Stream warm its western coast.

Giant’s causeway
Visiting Northern Ireland without stopping at the Giant’s Causeway is like travelling to Mathura and not going the extra few miles to the Taj Mahal. The causeway, believed to have once run from Northern Ireland to Scotland, is a geological marvel comprising tight columns of hexagonal basalt rock that formed after lava from a volcanic eruption about 60 million years ago cooled in a peculiar fashion.

That’s the scientific explanation. I prefer the legend. Our guide narrates that the causeway is the work of a giant called Finn MacCool, the leader of the Fianna, the guardians of the King of Ireland. To cut a long legend short, a Scottish giant Benandonner shouted from across the Channel that he would beat the *#@! out of Finn only if he could cross over (he couldn’t swim). Not one to miss a challenge, Finn obliged by tearing up rocks from nearby cliffs and throwing them into the sea to build a causeway till Scotland. He was so tired after the job that he went to sleep in his baby’s cot as the giant crossed over. Finn’s wife asked the giant to sit, saying Finn was out and would return soon. As he waited, Benandonner caught a glimpse of Finn in the cot and was alarmed. He thought if the baby was that huge, how big would his father be? It didn’t help that when Benandonner poked the sleeping ‘baby’, it bit his finger off. The giant scurried back to Scotland, hoping never to meet its father.

We visited the causeway during perhaps one of the windiest days in the area. Despite being weighed down by a heavy lunch and woolies, all of us, at some point were lifted in the air by the sheer force of the gales battering that tip of Northern Ireland. The site was spectacular, with the grey sea lashing against the sentinel-like rocks as a fine spray coated us.

Linen country
At the beginning of the 19th century, Ireland was the linen capital of the world. Even today, you get some of the best linen in Ireland — deliciously crisp, yet creamy and cool. However, now, Ireland’s linen industry is almost a cottage industry as compared to China’s. We visited Flax Mill textiles in County Derry where a German couple Marion and Herman Baur weave linen the traditional Irish way. At the mill, Marion gave us a crash course on linen making and weaving. Linen is woven from the strong fibres of the flax plant that grows well in Ireland. “The hallmark of good linen is that it keeps you cool in the summer and warm in the winter,” says Marion. She refers to the Chinese takeover of the linen industry, saying that its excessively fertilised, hybrid flax plants grow to double the length of the metre-high Irish ones.

However, this abnormal spurt in growth is corrected when Chinese linen is washed and the fibres shrink considerably. Irish linen is superior because it won’t shrink that way, she says.

Dublin and its doors
Enough was said about literary Dublin in these pages a few months ago but let me mention something that struck me as soon as I entered the 1,000-year old city. Almost all its Georgian homes sport doors that are painted every shade possible — red, blue, green, yellow, light blue, pink. Beggs, otherwise a walking encyclopedia, was silent on this. As I discovered later, it probably had to do with his political leanings. Basically, Ireland was ruled by the British for years and only won independence in the early 20th century. Even then, there was great bitterness because the British retained Northern Ireland. This ‘partition’ split the Irish people into Protestant Unionists or those who favoured a ‘union’ with the UK and Catholic Nationalists, who believed the isle of Ireland should be one, united and independent nation. Our guide was neutral but I caught a hint of his Unionist leanings. I got the story behind Dublin’s doors from a Tourism Ireland representative who had previously been shown around the city by a ‘nationalist’ Irishwoman. Basically, when Queen Victoria’s beloved husband Prince Albert died, she issued an edict that all doors across Ireland must be painted black. Smarting under British rule, the rebellious Irish didn’t pass up a chance to antagonise their rulers.

Instead of painting their doors black, a sign of mourning, they chose vibrant, bright colours, a tradition that remains to this day.

Colleen Braganza