Liam Ó Flaithearta’s short story, Bás na Bó, was published in his one and only Irish-language collection, Dúil (1953). It is a simple but affecting story, which sees a cow calve and that calf subsequently dying. The farmer and his wife’s reaction to the loss are keenly felt, even for those of us raised in a city. Their reaction is immediate and stoic, the cold realisation that the promised bounty that the calf would have brought has not been fulfilled, that life had just gotten a little harder and that they had no choice but to put their faith in God and soldier on in the hope of better days.
Yet there is little sentimentality in their actions; they throw the dead calf over a cliff and into the sea, though the woman does register the cow’s loss in her thoughts with a poignant “she was a mother herself”. They leave then, the cow tied up in another field, little realising that they will suffer another blow in the hours to come.
Of course, Ó Flaithearta (1896-1984) was from the Aran Islands and knew of the hardships about which he spoke. Further, is there not something just a little inspiring that he found his voice with a story about a cow, something so mundane? It certainly shows a different sensibility.
We recognise that feeling of fragility still; it is one that so many of Irish people experience on a daily basis. For all the fine roads and coffee, many Irish people are still, essentially, living of the fruits of their own wee fields and hoping that things might take a turn for the better.
We, of course, in this century are too sophisticated for cows. We pass them by in the fields and think nothing of them – though they have been such an integral part of our culture for so many centuries. Yes, I will rehash the old story that the cow was once the currency of the native Irish and a leader’s worth was based on the herd he kept. (The Comanche had horses, of course, much more romantic and stirring than the plain auld cow.)
That said, those cows – which the European union now deems a threat to the planet – were of value not only to the Irish but also those who raided its shores. The Moilie is one of the oldest native breeds of cow in this country and is famed for being able to produce both beef and milk. It was declared “endangered” in 1979 and the website of the Irish Moiled Cattle Society carries a potted history about the animal and its importance.
Indeed, the site notes that the Vikings raided what is now Antrim a thousand years ago, cleared out the herds of the local Irish clans – O’Neill, McQuillan and O’Cahan – and took their plunder back to Scandinavia where a breed called the East Finn shares many of the Moilie’s traits, being hornless (hence maol) and has similar colour markings. The site notes that Finnish and Swedish lore has it that their cattle “came long, long ago, over the sea from Ireland”.
(No chance of reparations, I suppose.)
Indeed, the boring old cow is of such interest now that there are attempts to bring back other species that have been lost. A BBC report in January highlighted the case of the auroch, a breed of cattle that was once the heaviest of the continent’s land mammals and which has been extinct for over 400 years. It was once seen roaming throughout Europe and there are on-going attempts to bring it back from the dead by cross-breeding it with stock that is similar to it. It is hoped that wild herds will be reintroduced and that their presence will spark biodiversity in their wake.
That is another interesting little snippet which shows just how important cattle were to the Irish and indeed other Europeans. They have been around for a long while as have those who care for them. The word “farmer” slips off our tongue easily but we think nothing of it. There have always been farmers and there will always be farmers, we think.
Well, maybe.
The European Union’s newest legislation, the Nature Restoration Law, is something that is drawing much criticism from farmers, not just here but also on the continent. The legislation decrees that a minimum of 20% of the EU’s land and marine areas must undertake green “recovery” initiatives.
As has been reported on this site, independent TD, Mattie McGrath, has criticised the law, describing it as a “very serious issue that is going to hit us here like a tsunami”. He said that the law will “decimate and drive nails into rural Ireland” and that it was a “sad day” for the countryside: “It means that 20% of all farmland will be taken out of farming use production, restored back to wasteland, or ‘nature’ as they say, by 2030, along with the sea area as well.”
Michael Collins, TD and leader of Independent Ireland, was also vocal in his criticism: “Farmers and the viability of agriculture more widely are fair game when it comes prioritisation of a biodiversity policy and restoration policy that is going to wreak havoc when implemented.”
The Irish Farmers Association, in the wake of protests throughout Europe, have said that farmers are being “driven off the land”.
However Mick Wallace, MEP, said that: “Farmers and landowners should not fear the regulation, but should instead welcome the opportunities it will provide.” While the Green Party also welcomed the new measures, saying that they gave “a fighting chance to reverse hundreds of years of degradation and damage that have been inflicted on our ecosystems”.
Those potted quotes show just how polarising the new law is and, given the wide divergence in views, somebody has to be right in their interpretation and someone has to be wrong.
It feels like ancient history to recall that Fine Gael were once the party of the Bishops and the Big Farmer. Now, it is the party of Brussels and Big Finance. There are undoubtedly people in that party who still have farming roots. Oddly though, Fine Gael’s MEPs did vote for the measure – despite belonging to the European People’s Party grouping in the European Parliament which opposed the law saying that they did not “want new and more forms of bureaucracy” on farmers.
That support raises questions about Fine Gael. Why antagonise more of the electorate, an electorate that is red raw at the moment concerning the cost of living, a housing crisis, bruised still from lockdown and worried about immigration, legal and illegal, and emigration? It seems a bit odd that the party went out of its way to support a measure its own political grouping does not support.
It is worth remembering in that context too that Leo Varadkar has led Fine Gael in two general elections and, on both occasions, has seen his leadership result in a loss of seats and votes. Yes, he and his backers, have been able to cobble together governments and keep their hands on the reins of power and patronage. However, in any other political party, you feel that a leader who has lost seats and votes twice, would have been shown the door.
Varadkar and his backers seem to have crunched the numbers once again and know that the political system still favours them having continued clout after the next election. He said in January of this year: “My expectation is that we will be in government.” That, he said, would be dependent on finding “sufficient coalition partners”.
It is, of course, absolutely understandable that he would talk up his party’s chances; he has no realistic alternative. Yet, again, why antagonise farmers and their families when you are fighting for every vote you can get?
It might be a stretch but it seems all a bit reminiscent of how Fine Gael – and certainly other parties – have dealt with the Irish language. They are supportive of the language in public and there is always a party stalwart around to speak Irish to those Irish speakers who get a bit grumpy. Still, you feel that they are more often there to police the language rather than promote it.
Grants are given out but the trajectory of the language is always downwards, be that in the Gaeltacht or outside. Yes, there is a ‘sector’ receiving many millions of euro and there are people who can make a decent enough living out of it, at the moment. But the language as a national priority is dead. It is being managed out of the public sphere, quietly and gradually, and most especially during Fine Gael’s long years in power.
At the risk of sounding like someone who has found a secret plot – sorry! – against farmers, has someone in Fine Gael done the maths, as they have with Irish speakers, and realised that they can manage without the welly-wearing tractorteers just fine, that they can control the mood music, issue upbeat statements, weather the blather, while ushering small farming into oblivion?
Fine Gael’s officer class has decided that the real power, the real long-term money, is with the city folk here and abroad, with the Merc drivers and those who fund those nice EU motorways, roads that have never been blessed with cowpat. God forbid!
It is a case, perhaps, of cultural cringe writ large, the middle-class posh philistine grandees of Dublin and Brussels, not really seeing culture in cattle and clábar, not fully understanding the ties that farmers have to the land and what it produces. Once it was “Who does that Kavanagh fellow think he is, calling himself a poet?” Now it is: “Who do those farming galoots think they are with their cows? That’s not real culture.”
Farming is an old thing, isn’t it and modern Ireland does not like old things, be it old religious traditions or language or, increasingly, people.
The farmers might be better off with the Vikings. Or perhaps that is too melodramatic – like a cow throwing itself off a cliff after her calf.