Bog Myrtle & Peat

You can’t stand for long in the sea to the depth of your chest at this time of year. Even for the hope of a bass running inshore with the rising tide, the water’s cold and the moonrise sharp from the darkened land behind you. Cast into the night if you like, but you’ll soon lose the feeling in your fingers. Even the prickle of sandeels around your naked knees begins to fade as stars show towards the Isle of Man – the silver’s still at rush around you, but the sensation’s numbed to nothing.

Stags roar in the furthest slipshod corries; they sound like the wicked, piss-stained laughter of demons in the scree. The hinds and their calves are upended by the ceaseless chivvy and chase; there are always more contenders to come and roll their eyes to the haggs. Having crawled with my nose to the heather for many long yards, I killed a stag with a shot to the spine. He fell on the point of his nose with an almost-audible oof. Not long afterwards, my knife brought caul fat pouring from his blackened belly in skeins of berry pink.

Black grouse reach and clatter in the rowans; the fond and foolish birds are head-over-heels for the fruit they find up there. Far from the brazen exponents of April and May, they’re thick as thieves now – you could call their wariness cunning, but it’s more like a simpleton’s panic. There’s no strategic withdrawal in their vocabulary – only blind and reckless retreat. Then sleet falls to deaden the wood-edge and the bristle of myrtle where the birds have gathered like a midden of thrown-away bottles. Black shapes are the last to be lost in the gathering blunder of grey.

Scél lem dúib: dordaid dam, snigid gaim, ro-fáith sam:

Gáeth ard úar, ísel grían, gair a rith, ruirtheach rían;

Rorúad rath, ro-cleth cruth, ro-gab gnáth giugrann guth;

Ro-gab úacht etti én aigre ré:

É mo scél.

I have news for you: the stag bells, winter snows, summer has gone,

Wind high and cold, the sun low, short its course, the sea running high.

Deep red the bracken, its shape is lost; the wild goose has raised its accustomed cry.

Cold has seized the birds’ wings; season of ice, 

This is my news.

Anon. 9^th Century, Ireland.