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Saturday 5 July 2008

A swift dip in the sea at Christmas

Old Ireland lives on in a frozen Christmas swim

Old Ireland lives on in an Ardmore village custom

You can take the path to the tar road that wanders down past the round tower and out towards Goat Island. My son and his friends love this route and their ‘ghost’ walks in the crumbling ruins of Ardoginna House, an early 19th-cent- ury mansion once owned — for reasons long lost to history — by a Marshal of France and after that by Sir Joseph McKenna, a Home Rule MP, who was buried with his wife in a tomb near the house. The tomb is watched over by the statue of an angel but it wasn’t enough to stop the grave-robbers who long ago desecrated the place. My great-grandfather might well have been one of those called in to investigate. He served the empire here as a sergeant of the Royal Irish Constabulary, happily reaching retirement age as the Anglo-Irish war began.

The entire coastline is ghost-ridden. Returning back along the path you will see the cliffs of Old Parish. When the winter light dies they become a black shape on which only a handful of electric lights sparkle. Most of the population here died in the famine or emigrated to celebrate their Christmases in Boston and New York. Reaching home after such a walk, one is glad for whatever shiny nonsense is on the television.

By St Stephen’s Day the roads and lanes will be thrumming with activity. The Lismore Harriers will be galloping across the fields as they have done for generations, and in far-away Limerick there will be racing. This is a part of Ireland which relishes its country pursuits. My own reputation in this regard has never quite recovered from the saga of the stoat and the rabbit. One afternoon I heard a screeching noise from the garden and rushed out to find a stoat busy throttling a young rabbit. I shouted and then picked up a stone to throw at the stoat. Happily it missed him but he dropped the rabbit and fled. The latter survived, though to say he hopped into the bushes would be an overstatement.

I recounted my heroic humanitarian intervention to my friend John King.

‘You did what?’ he exclaimed. ‘Do you have any idea how long that stoat might have been stalking that rabbit?’ I answered that I did not. ‘Well, you probably wrecked at least a good hour’s hunting for him. Leave the animals to themselves for heaven’s sake.’ By this stage readers will have noted from Mr King’s earlier observations on Christmas swimming that he is a man of great common sense. His view was supported by other friends including the Keatings, whose boy Seamus would have had every reason to disagree. He suffered a bite to his index finger when he stuck said digit into the wrong hole during a ‘guess which hole the ferret is in’ competition at a local fair.

Ever since the stoat business I think my neighbours have struggled to take me entirely seriously. It won’t matter come Christmas, though. We will arrive from London and be warmly welcomed. But as for the swim, I think I may listen to Mr King and join the shirkers this time.

More articles from: Fergal Keane | this section

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