Our fondest beliefs are shattered, one after another. For example, the fact that Lough Neagh held a unique fish which existed in perhaps only one other stretch of water in England. It was popularly referred to as a freshwater herring: the pollan. So prized was it in certain circles that an ex-garda living in Dublin used to have any friend of his visiting Belfast bring him back a parcel of them. But a journey to Switzerland and France ended all that for this traveller. He came across a fish named the fera described in a French encyclopaedia as inhabiting lakes and growing to 50 centimetres. He saw it on a menu and found it white in flesh and of a good consistency. He came back to Dublin and got in touch with the Maritime Institute, where a kindly Niall O Maoleidigh enlightened him. He has been eating vendace (in Latin coregonus albula), also known as pollan. Our familiar fish from Lough Neagh, but much bigger; for has anyone seen a pollan of 50 centimeters? Not in shops anyway.
So there you are, a creature he and others thought of as being as rooted in the North and as distinctive as a poem by Seamus Heaney, is well known in farthest Europe. For, according to information from our friend in the Maritime Institute, the vendace is found in the Baltic region, the area around Murmansk, the upper Volga and England and Scotland. Apparently it has not, declares one authority, acclimatised itself to European fish-farming conditions. The fish concerned was consumed by the lakeside of Annecy, and there isn't space today to do justice to the beauty of the area. But just one note of home interest.
The hotel where the fish was eaten couldn't take the scribe and family for a second night because they were booked out for a seminar - believe it or not, a seminar on whisky - spelled that way, for the hall was already being decorated, and a thistle was predominant. The overall bill of fare in regard to drink was long. It listed 19 brands of whisky, all apparently Scotch. It may have been slightly different in the bar, but time and curiosity didn't lead in that direction.