An Irishman's Diary

THE BURREN is like nowhere else in Ireland, with a unique geology and an ecosystem all its own. But the area’s singularity doesn’t end with the flora and fauna. As a festival this weekend will demonstrate, its farmers are unusual too.

Elsewhere on the island, and indeed throughout Europe, for millennia, now was the time of year when, if they hadn’t done so already, herdsmen and their livestock returned from summer pastures, usually on higher ground, to the winter shelter of the valleys.

In the Burren, by contrast, they have always done it the other way round. For them, “winterage” is a process whereby cattle, having spent the summers nearer sea-level, are in late autumn brought up onto the limestone plateau, there to pass the coldest months of the year.

The original reasoning may have been the plateau’s lack of water in summertime. But Burren farmers long ago discovered what meteorologists have since noted: that the area has unusually mild winters, even by Irish standards, and that limestone is naturally warm.

In effect, the rock offers livestock a low-cost central heating system, with, for the same reasons, ample winter grazing in the cracks between.

The paradox was noted all of 360 years ago by one of Ireland’s more notorious tourists, Edmund Ludlow. Ludlow’s CV by then included his having signed the execution order for King Charles I.

And as the man who continued Cromwell’s Irish campaign, he was professionally well qualified to comment of the Burren: “It is a country where there is not enough water to drown a man, wood enough to hang one, nor earth enough to bury him.” In the same breath, however, he noted the area’s advantages for living organisms: “And yet their cattle are very fat; for the grass growing in turfs of earth, of two or three foot square, that lie between the rocks [...] is very sweet and nourishing.” It probably wasn’t a priority for those 17th-century farmers, but a bonus of the Burren winterage system is that livestock are on the plateau at a time when its flora are dormant, thereby minimising damage and allowing the flowers and insects to flourish come summertime.

And that’s not all. As a big bonus, winter grazing also slows down the advance of scrub that threatens the many ancient monuments left by farmers past.

It’s a classic win-win arrangement. So no wonder an organisation called Burrenbeo, which is promoting the area as eco-tourism haven, should celebrate the practice and, in places where it has faded, encourage revival.

Burrenbeo describes itself as "Ireland's very first landscape charity". As which, it was one projects chosen for a series of workshops at last weekend's F.ounders conference, wherein Irish social entrepreneurs got a chance to seek the advice of world-leading brainiacs on how to harness new technology for good causes.

While looking forward, meanwhile, Burrenbeo is also looking back. Hence this weekend’s first Burren Winterage Festival, which along with the usual eating, drinking, and merriment of Irish festivals, is centred on the ancient annual livestock migration.

Events will therefore include a talk by travel writer and documentary presenter Dermot Somers. A slightly ironic surname in the circumstances, perhaps: except that Dermot will be discussing “transhumance”, the practice of nomadic travel by people and their livestock, in general. And in most parts of the world, as we’ve noted, summers are when that happens.

The weekend will also involve two walks, a 5km and a 10km, both on Sunday, and both culminating with the re-enactment of a Winterage Cattle Drove from the village of Carron. There are 30 different events in all, starting today.

You can find out more about them, and about the area in general, at www.burrenwinterage.com

THIS BEINGClare, of course, music will be a big part of the weekend. And although it may be a question for another time, I would be very interested to know if landscape was also an influence on the different regional playing styles for which traditional music in the county is famous.

If so, there’s a paradox here too. No doubt I’m oversimplifying when I suggest that Clare’s most fertile soil is concentrated in the east, giving rising to such typical products of good Irish land as deciduous trees and hurling.

As you proceed west from Ennis, however, the trees and hurlers gradually disappear, to be replaced by rocks and football players. And yet the music of east Clare is typically slower and more melancholic, while that of the poorer west, including the Burren, is contrastingly lilting and jolly.

West Clare appears to have a unique ecosystem, even in music. It’s the only part of Ireland, for example, where the lesser-spotted concertina player is known to thrive.

Some of these shy creatures are even seen outdoors during the summer months, especially July, at the Willie Clancy school. But there may be transhumance at work here too. From this part of the year on, like most traditional musicians, they tend to be confined to their winter grazing grounds, in their case the pubs of Doolin, Miltown Malbay and Kilrush.