The Burren is a remarkable slab cake of layered rock that dominates the north west corner of County Clare. We drove round it and through it, walked on it and over it, and meandered at its edges where it meets the Atlantic Ocean. Sheila captured some of the flowers in the rocks on the camera - more of these the morn.
One of the features of the landscape we saw is the dry stone dykes and walls. I've always wondered at the skill, precision, and artistic flair of the dyke builder. All shapes and sizes of stone, worked and cut to fit into a straight, stable length of wall, and without the use of cement or mortar. So walls are built, statements of separation, dividing lines of ownership or rights, symbols of ownership and its boundaries.
When I was a boy I used to accompany old Jimmy Welsh, (not the artist in stone shown in the photo), the tractorman and dyker at one of the farms where I grew up. Every summer he repaired the drystane dykes around the fields, and once built a new dyke alongside our farm cottage. I was his helper as a 7 or 8 year old. Never learned his skill, but have since seen the dyke years later, standing neatly, straight and testimony to a skill I hope we never quite lose from our countryside.
Looking at these in Ireland, I couldn't avoid the Robert Frost poem, with its line, "something there is that doesn't love a wall - that wants it down."And I was left with those mixed emotions admiring the skill and beauty of a well built drystone dyke or wall, and realising its function, to keep out, or to keep in. So I wrote a couple of Haiku - not to make any particular point. Just to note that there are important points that walls make.
1.
Hand built drystone walls;
mortarless human constructs,
neat, strong, exclusive.
2.
Hand built drystone walls;
mortarless human constructs,
neat, strong, inclusive.
3.
Hand built drystone walls;
low enough for shaking hands,
and conversation.
Comments