Wordsworth said it for us: "The world is too much with us; late and soon,/ Getting and spending we lay waste our powers;/ Little we see in Nature that is ours;/ We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!".
And that was written nearly two centuries ago. Are we in Ireland going to forget some things in our euphoria at this Celtic Tiger? Certainly, some of our views of the past are distorted. We had our fill of misery, neglect, oppression, and the famine (the Great Famine, for there were others), yet in his Diary of an Irish Country-man or, in the original Cin Lae Amhlaoibh, Humphrey O'Sullivan tells of some fine meals and much enjoyment, and he was a schoolmaster, a decent if not luxurious way of living. Today, with big companies buying other companies around them, with financial triumphalism accounted by some as a heroic virtue, is there a danger that we are careless with that which we cannot replace? Certain types of birds are going or have gone from our countryside, which we cannot replace. Modern farming, it appears, cannot be adjusted to let them live. So often Humphrey O'Sullivan is a social commentator and historian; again, his diary is a record of the natural world around him. He is a sort of Gilbert White of Selborne or a Richard Jefferies.
Throughout the eight years covered by the diary (1827 to 1835) he never fails to see both social and natural world. In the first short entry Dark dour gloomy January, he notes that the only flowers are daisies and furze blossom along the river near Callan, where he lived and taught school. Then, last line, "I saw an otter catching fish". Not just an otter, but catching fish. In April, "The yellowish blue famine is all over the countryside. Fivepencehalfpenny for a miserable stone of potatoes, eighteen shillings for a barrel of oats. . .there are not even alms for the paupers. A collection was being made for them by Lord Clifden, the priest and the minister, the Chief Magistrate and the Callan merchants. . .The country cabin-dwellers eat meat on only three days a year, Christmas Day, Shrove Tuesday and Easter Sunday". Then on a walk with his love, "two snipe flew off like arrows from a bow." Another day he sees wagtails hopping and flitting and teasing a cat. "The grey plover is a beautiful big bird. . .better than three snipe or even four. I saw people digging stubble today." Life as it comes! He hears the corncrake and quail in July. "Not melodious, but good, because they come with the summer". Mercier Press. Translated by Tomas de Bhaldraithe.