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The townland of Slievenaglasha or Glasgeivnagh Hill, on the ridge over
Killinaboy, takes its name from the Burren’s most celebrated cow,
the bountiful Glas Gaibhne (1). The cow was owned by a sword-maker
or smith named Lon Mac Liofa. Though reputedly the very first person to
make edged-weapons in Ireland, Lon cuts a remarkably grotesque and misshapen
figure for he is described as having three hands and only one leg. The
third hand grew from the middle of his breast and this he used to turn
the iron on the anvil, thus leaving him with two free hands to hammer
the metal into shape. Tradition locates his workshop or smithy on the
same hill in a large stone fort marked Mothar Na Ceartan on Robinson’s
map of the Burren. Random bare patches or pavement in the same area are
pointed out as Leaba Na Glaise, reputedly where Lon’s cow
habitually lay down. The cow was the most productive in all of Ireland,
her owner claiming that at one milking she could fill any vessel, no matter
how large. According to the story, all went well until one day a crafty
old hag took along a sieve, having first slyly placed a wager that she
would produce a vessel that the cow would not fill. It is said that after
passing through the sieve, the milk divided into seven rivulets, which
later turned into the clear streams of water known today as Seacht
Srutha Na Taosca (the Seven Streams of Teaskagh), still occasionally
resorted to for their supposed healing properties. Seeing her abundance
thus abused, the cow is said to have resisted all subsequent attempts
to milk her, and could never again be induced to give as much as a drop
of her milk. We are not told what finally happened to the smith and his
cow, but it is believed that the cow was stolen by a man from Ulster and
that Lon was afterwards obliged to depend on his trade only for support.
This in essence is the story of the Glas Gaibhne, though some
versions of the tale contain a somewhat long-winded account of a meeting
between the smith and the Fianna (2). Although this adds little to the
story, it nevertheless serves the purpose of locating it at the very dawn
of historic Ireland.
Taken down by John O’ Donovan in 1839 from the lips of Seán
Rua Ó Catháin, a tailor in Corofin, the legend of the Glas
Gaibhne was the very first folk tale recorded in Co. Clare. It belonged
to the storytelling tradition of the Burren from a time out of mind, and
it remained very much alive in the fireside tradition of North Clare down
to our own day when storytelling virtually disappeared. That the story
is undoubtedly of ancient provenance can scarcely be in doubt, since the
focus is unmistakably on the two principal occupations of Early Historic
Ireland namely cattle rearing and metal-working.
Before proceeding further we might do well to remind ourselves that the
Irish folktale was largely an allegorical art form, one that is best characterised
by a copious use of metaphor and symbolism. Characters and events might
be used allusively by the storyteller as a form of verbal morse-code evocative
of the old Irish adage: ‘is leor nod don eolach’
(a nod is sufficient for the perceptive listener). The story of the Glas
Gaibhne manifestly accords with this template, and we soon begin
to suspect that there is something more salient between the lines than
a far-fetched and whimsical tale about a grossly malformed smith and his
unlikely cow. For a start, the fruitful cow can quickly be decoded as
simply a symbolic affirmation of the Burren’s well-known reputation
as a premier cattle-rearing environment (3). It seems equally obvious
that the portrayal of Lon, the smith, as an outlandish, almost bestial
creature can scarcely be interpreted otherwise than as a deliberate and
vehement caricaturing of his profession, the iron-workers of his day.
All of this strongly suggests a tension or clash of interest between the
cattle men and the metal workers of the Burren, the cause of which we
will now attempt to explore.
A Delicate Environment
The antipathy towards iron-working will be more easily understood when
one considers its effects, or more particularly its side-effects, on the
delicate, glacio-karstic landscape of the Burren. The fragile soil-vegetation
systems in the Burren are easily destabilised by inappropriate management
such as, for instance, the cutting down of trees and other woodland growth
that serve to hold the soil in place. Without the protective web provided
by tree roots, not to mention the shelter provided above ground by their
foliage, the thin soil cover can quickly become destabilised and washed
down into the solutionally-enlarged openings or grykes in the limestone
bedrock. This type of erosion can be particularly catastrophic on upland
slopes and hillsides where it is intensified by the gravitational movement
of groundwater. There the process of erosion would be greatly accelerated,
the soil literally disappearing through the open fissures like water through
a sieve. The alarming scale of this type of degradation was dramatically
illustrated some years ago as a result of a test carried out in the Burren
by Dr. David Drew of Trinity College. He found that in the space of just
ten years following the felling of trees on a modest 10-degree slope,
as much as 20 cm of the surrounding soil was washed underground, leaving
a bare rock surface (4). And of course the effects of deforestation are
not confined to soils and vegetation; they have serious implications for
the water supply as well.
A Degraded Landscape
It must be obvious to anyone visiting the Burren today that the present
physical landscape is greatly at odds with the past cultural landscape
as represented by the archaeological record. For instance, the areas of
densest megalithic tomb distribution in the Burren are the very areas
of least human settlement today. From this it is difficult to avoid the
conclusion that many of the ancient monuments and settlements that still
survive in the Burren, were built in response to a more hospitable environment
than the bleak and degraded surroundings that in general they occupy today.
The evidence therefore suggests that large expanses of the Burren have
indeed suffered dramatic environmental change largely in response to human
activity. The process would almost certainly have begun in Iron-Age times
when wood was increasingly required to fire the furnaces of the metal-workers.
Green People
Just as in our own time we have people willing to take up the cudgel on
behalf of the environment, it seems only reasonable to accept that in
Lon’s day, too, there were at least some people similarly motivated,
willing to speak out if they perceived the natural world to be under threat.
Though the term was not then known, these were the conservationists of
their time, persons apprehensive about the sustainability of their way
of life, believing that Ireland’s burgeoning Iron-Age was exacting
a heavy price. Thoroughly familiar through centuries of farming experience
with the ecological and agricultural nuances of the Burren, they would
quickly become aware that a virtual golden goose, a most favourable cattle-rearing
environment - one that uniquely facilitated a year-round growth of grass
- was increasingly being put at risk by deforestation. This inevitably
leads us to the question whether the story of the Glas Gaibhne
- albeit told after the allusive fashion of the folktale – is in
reality a cleverly-crafted Environmental Impact Statement on the effects
of industrialisation on the sensitive ecosystem of the Burren, and, by
the same token, a stinging satire on the excesses of the new industrial
society with its disregard for the environment. Indeed, at this point
in our discussion, there is another question, too, that will most likely
suggest itself to the reader familiar with the area. It is this: is it
simply a coincidence that the great stone fort of Cathair Chomáin,
sometimes described as Co. Clare’s first industrial estate, is but
a mere stone’s throw from Slievenaglasha?
In attempting to resolve these questions let us return briefly to the
story once more. As we have already seen, the owner of the cow was a smith,
a metal-worker. His three hands are powerfully evocative of the acquisitiveness
of the new industrial age, when - to paraphrase Yeats - men were now busily
‘fumbling in the greasy till’ (5). This was the era of Ireland’s
very first ‘Celtic Tiger’ when every smith needed virtually
three hands in order to keep pace with the demands of the new industrial
society. In the first flush of the Iron-Age orders were no doubt pouring
in, not only for domestic tools and gadgets, but also for swords and weapons
for the Fianna, Ireland’s first rapid-reaction force or ‘flying
column’ drawn from the new, upwardly-mobile warrior aristocracy.
According to one version of the tale, Lon had gone to meet the Fianna
at Binn Eadair (Howth) (6). One might wonder if this was a ‘trade
mission’ for the purpose of explaining his newest product, since
no doubt each new-fangled sword that came on the market was as much a
‘must have’ to the Fianna as the newest mobile ‘phone
is to the ‘cannot wait’ customer today!
In spectacular contrast to his three hands, however, the smith had only
one leg. This, we suggest, is a further lampooning of the new work force
by means of a manifestly sarcastic insinuation that two legs were no longer
necessary since the nomadic pastoral way of life of the drover was now
yielding to the new industrialization of the Iron Age. No longer obliged
to trudge over long distances chasing after their herds or driving them
to winter and summer pastures, men were now stuck in one place, standing,
gander-like, at the anvil - ‘working from home’ to use a modern
term - or apprenticed to the local smith. Another matter which should
not escape notice is the cow’s name: Glas, which literally
means ‘green’ or ‘fertile’. It also has a secondary
meaning of a water source or spring (7). The abuse of a valuable natural
resource, symbolised by the milking of the cow into a sieve, proclaims
the unsustainability of cattle rearing in an environment degraded by soil-erosion
caused by cutting down trees to burn them for charcoal. The water sources,
as we have seen, were also becoming affected, the rivers diverting and
splitting into a multiplicity of mere trickles depending on the season.
Everywhere she sought to graze, the former bountiful cow (emblematic of
the renowned Burren livestock in general) was increasingly finding a degraded,
porous soil - a sieve - beneath her. Even her leaba (bed), was now little
more than cold limestone pavement. She no longer gave of her munificence
and Lon, her owner, his ancillary source of income now having collapsed,
was thenceforth obliged we are told, ‘to depend on his trade only
for support’. Without unduly labouring the pun, it might be said
that he no longer had a second leg to stand on!
References
1. O’ Donovan & O’ Curry, The Antiquities
of Co. Clare, (Clasp Press, 1997), 23.
2. Westropp, Folklore of Clare, (Clasp Press, 2000), 82-83.
3. For a description of the unique practice of
‘outwintering’ and other farming practices in the Burren,
see Dunford & Feehan, ‘Agricultural practices and natural heritage:
a case study of the Burren Uplands, Co. Clare’ in Tearmann: the
Irish Journal of Agri-Environmental Research, vol.1, no.1, (Dublin, 2001),19-34.
4. Drew, ‘Environmental Archaeology and Karstic
Terrains: the example of the Burren, Co. Clare’ in Martin Bell &
Susan Limbrey (eds.) Archaeological Aspects of Woodland Ecology, BAR International
Series 146 (1982),117.
5. Yeats, Summer 1913
6. Westropp, Folklore, 83.
7. e.g. Tír Dhá Ghlas (Terryglass,
Co. Tipperary), land of the two springs.
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Burren Uplands (courtesy
of Tim Robinson and Folding Landscapes)