Moorlands and Meadows

by Ian Sherry of Rostrevor, Northern Ireland
photos by Stasia Sherry

The genius of Johnny Cash is that he not only wrote great American songs, he wrote a great Irish song, ‘Forty Shades of Green.’ Ireland is indeed ‘moorlands and meadows.’ A sixth of its area is bog. Peat lands or turf, as I call it. Turf has been used as fuel in Ireland for thousands of years. It’s ingrained in our culture. We sing about ‘The oul turf fire’; romanticise donkeys with creels. However in reducing Ireland’s carbon emissions, turf cutting has come to an end. All of the turf powered power stations have been closed and commercial cutting drawn to a halt.

There was a lot of talk last week about the Global Warming Conference in Dubai and furthermore Ireland is going to pass legislation to protect the environment. Prompting me to drive up to Clermont high in the Cooley Mountains to have a look at the turf plots. I couldn’t believe it. It was as if we had never been there. The mountain had regenerated into three foot heather interspersed with conifers and native species trees. Down in the lower bog ten foot deep workings were completely camouflaged with vibrant new growth. All in twenty five years.

It all started by chance. A chance turn up a newly tarred mountain road on our way to Dundalk, we were amazed to find families cutting turf. A friend give us a slane (turf spade) made from the oar of a boat. The paddle covered with tin, the handle a cow’s horn. We rented a plot. It was never our intention to cut ‘a world of turf’; even then we were conscious of its environmental importance. Our neighbours on the bog were two genteel older men and a detached young fella who done – not a hands turn – but amble over and ask, “How many bags?” Never another word but a forlorn ‘how many bags.’ Later we were to learn he was Ireland’s most brilliant nuclear physicist; chilling out.

By the late 90s everyone had moved on and the bog up with me was quiet. That was until one day I was to arrive and find a tented structure straddling the road, cheek by jowl with my plot. Volkswagen were testing their new rally car. It was a huge operation and I was almost part of it. They would race the car from the county road down at the border up through the steep winding climb of Clontygora and into the tent. And what a diagnostic box of tricks that was. A theatre of screens, probes and ramps.

Now, other than watching the energy of each run as the car shimmied up the hairpins, I had little interest in their operation. They, on the other hand, were fascinated with mine. Engineers; designers; mechanics; drivers; delighted in digging turf. To get using the slane. To get taking a few dried black mementos home to Wolfsburg, Monaco, St. Moritz. Then on the day they were leaving, by way of thanking me the team leader asked, would I like to spend a little time in the car. “No, I’m fine,” I said. “My son has just bought a Volkswagen like that.” With a shake of his head and a wry smile he said, “it’s not a Volkswagen like that.”

Over the years I had struck up a friendship with Jem. He dug in a really good lower bog. We’d meet in my brother-in-law’s pub in Dundalk. If ‘The Divil’ was shaving him and Jimmy Cagney, he couldn’t tell the difference in them. Jem had drove a lorry in Australia and up in New Guinea and for fear that wasn’t enough, took snuff.

One day for a bit of company I went down to see Jem and his two mates. One a polite and reserved ‘book keeper’ in wellingtons and second best suit, the other a shy Easter Island statue figure in a long belted blue coat. Theirs was an expanse of deep black turf. An area of drains ten foot deep traversed with wooden bridges leading to an igloo of sods and recycled building materials. A big igloo where Jem worked a bowl of rendered dripping and fried bread and sausages on a pot bellied stove. The shy man sat at the top of the table, I sat at the door and opposite on a wicker chair the polite man read The Irish Press.

The talk turned to turf being stolen. The shy man and the polite man agreed that a few sods taken by a passing motorist wasn’t so bad. But Jem was animated. Clenching his fists he prayed terrible curses on those who stole turf, lowest form of life; said that when he was a boy there could be as many as twenty families, each with a rick of turf dried and ready to take home lined along the road. How he had been sent with the horse and cart to take their rick home. It was Gone! Stolen! “And what did you do?” I blurted. “What the hell do you think I done?” Jem roared. “I took the next bloody rick!”

Forty Shades of Green

by Johnny Cash

Green, green, forty shades of green
I close my eyes and picture
The emerald of the sea
From the fishing boats at Dingle
To the shores of Donaghadee
I miss the river Shannon
And the folks at Skibbereen
The moorlands and the meadows
With their forty shades of green
But most of all I miss a girl
In Tipperary town
And most of all I miss her lips
As soft as eiderdown
Again I want to see and do
The things we’ve done and seen
Where the breeze is sweet as Shalimar
And there’s forty shades of green
Green, green, forty shades of green
I wish that I could spend an hour
At Dublin’s churning surf
I’d love to watch the farmers
Drain the bogs and spade the turf
To see again the thatching
Of the straw the women glean
I’d walk from Cork to Larne to see
The forty shades of green
But most of all I miss a girl
In Tipperary town
And most of all I miss her lips
As soft as eiderdown
Again I want to see and do
The things we’ve done and seen
Where the breeze is sweet as Shalimar
And there’s forty shades of green