For years, In Time's Eye, the column devoted to the natural world, delighted readers of this newspaper. Tucked away on the Letters To The Editor page, the column ran daily from the mid-1980s until early this year. Its author was known to his devoted followers only as "Y". Now some of the columns have been selected and published in book form and Y reveals himself as Douglas Gageby, the distinguished editor of The Irish Times between 1977 and 1986 and naturalist extraordinaire.
Elderflower fritters, barbecued squirrels and tiger dung are some of the more recondite topics Y wrote about. But his real preoccupations are a tenacious concern for environmental issues, a passion for trees and a commitment to animal and plant conservation.
The column was started by Douglas Gageby and his friend Irish Times journalist John Healy. Healy, who died in 1991, signed his pieces "H". Together, they delighted readers with seasonal observations and alerted them to ecological issues.
Here are some extracts from In Time's Eye.
Ladybirds
May 7th, 1988
Are the ladybirds a sign of a fine summer? This spring has seen a very good presence of ladybirds in back gardens and in cold greenhouses. This insect is associated with warm weather and in a dry warm summer they seem to thrive. In one of the fantastic summers of the last decade the ladybirds swarmed over everything, including people sunbathing in back gardens and public parks. If the heavy incidence of the tiny insect is any guide, we appear to be in for a jolly fine summer. - H
Little Fish, Big Fish
August 17th, 1987
There they were, laid neatly in a row on the riverbank, shining and silvery and the pride of the visiting angler: eight salmon smolts, arrested, cut off in their prime on the way down to the sea. That was some weeks ago. A local man explained slowly, in basic English, to the delighted predator that these fish, if spared, would come back to the river in a year or two "like this" and he stretched out his arms to demonstrate length.
The same man has a good idea: every tourist entering the country, professed angler or not, might be issued with a coloured sheet portraying what fish may or may not be taken. There have been stories around the same area of one stranger boasting about a bucketful of the same fish, salmon smolts, to the number of 88. And, of course, most visitors claim to have been told that all fishing in Ireland is free. Local clubs are not amused. But, whatever the statistics say, every stretch of river, every lough and pool in Connemara, seems to have its complement of French, Belgian, Dutch or Germans, joyfully swinging their spinning rods. Someone, somewhere, must be getting something out of all this frenzy. - Y
Blackberry Hunt
October 12th, 1987
The hedgerow hunt for free fruit is on and the first weekend in October saw a lot of city children with an assortment of containers, biking it up the Dublin mountains in the search for blackberries. Southside children are envied because they have the mountains to pick, but the reality is that children on the Northside have a far better territory for blackberries and sloes than those south of the Liffey. The hedges of north County Dublin are far more productive and are generally sheltered while the few places where the blackberry bramble establish themselves on the southside lack shelter so that you get a hard, stunted and very dry blackberry. The higher up the hills or mountain, the drier the fruit: the blackberry is the one fruit which needs a lot of water to swell it out. The elderberry fruit similarly fruits better in lower ground or on hedges with good ditchwater. - H
Grow, tree, grow
19th March 1986
SO many schoolchildren spent so much time and effort planting during last week- Tree Week- and all the weeks before it; and not many of them got mentions in the papers. But it was worthwhile, and trees grow quicker than children may think. On St Patrick's Day, twins looks at a row of oaks that had been seedlings, just above ground level, two inches high, the week they were born in 1977. The oaks are now between 12 and 15 feet high.
That was fast for oaks. But the really impatient can plant willows. A few cuttings put down last February were recently clipped when they reached six feet, clipped so that the young trees would branch out and thicken. Then the bits cut off were replanted. This time next year, they will be six feet high and will be clipped and the clippings planted, and so it goes on. - Y
Poor Relations
April 1st, 1985
If you've got a bit of messy, wet ground you want to cover up, the usual formula is to put down sallies. For a change, mix them up with alders. They have to be the hardiest of trees and are among the fastest growing, though they don't normally reach great height. But their toughness, especially in wet conditions is formidable. As the water in the river has gone down in past weeks, the lower portion of the banks are seen for the first time in months. And there, in one bend of the river are scores of tiny alder trees, some no more than six niches, some over a foot, but with one thing in common - all have been entirely submerged on and off for months at a time. We all know about trees which do well with their feet in water: these have actually led a subaqueous life almost from the sprouting. Not beautiful trees, but in early spring their purple buds and dangling catkins are fine. - Y
A moan
October 23rd, 1995
"Haven't seen anyone playing conkers for years and years" he suddenly came out with " All that stuff went out with television. DO you remember how champions used to have special recipes for making the chestnut hard and durable. Putting it in the oven with lard on it. First steeping it in vinegar. That used to take up our early months of the autumn term at school. There was a time for everything, a sort of rhythm of boys and girls games. When did marbles come in for boys? Spring, was it? Hopscotch was mostly for girls, but lads did it sometimes. Skipping was a girls thing until athletes discovered it was a useful part of training for many sports. And spring was for kites, March. Though, with our climate, you could find wind at any time of the year. But these childhood activities had their own rules and rhythms. Spring was when you collected frogspawn to put in a big glass bowl and watch the tadpoles growing. Sometimes in the schoolroom itself, in what used to be called nature study. It would surely be incorrect, to say the least, to do it today. And as for old practice of bird-nesting, that is not just reprehensible but illegal. And, of course, where there were good pavements, great ingenuity was exercised in making four-wheeler miniature cars out of planks to run down sloping pavements and alarm the adults. The wheels came from old prams. Making huts out of sheets or whatever, or wigwams out of any kind of cloth was a great occupation. And there was a season for certain sweets- in the autumn and into the winter- toffee apples. Poor scrawny fruit impaled on unhygenic sticks from, again, the remains of old boxes. No, children today don't have a real adventurous childhood. They play organised sports or watch TV all the time. They don't have half the enjoyment we had."
He had his say. - Y
Jealousy in Sport
January 27th, 1986
The trout season opens in certain areas on 15th February. Earnest anglers are tying new wet flies, though the more usual practice is to soldier on year to year with a particular cast that has proved successful. The fly may be ragged, the barb in need of sharpening, but as the whole operation is such a matter of luck in the early part of the year, that hardly matters. One angler who fishes only in the first couple of months of the year boasts that he has not even dismounted his rod not taken off last years cast. There it stands, ready for at least a ritual throw in three weeks time. There are certain constants in this game. One is that when you meet a fellow aspirant on the bank, and he shows you a good fish he has taken, you'll never know where it came from. " Down there , or round the corner" will be the answer. Not that they are mean, just jealous. For example, in reviewing a book on fishing experiences a recent reviewer had this to say " The trout the author catches are for the most part gratifyingly small," - Y
Smoked Eel For Preference
August 20th, 1990
A Paris gourmet says that he prefers Irish smoked eel to Irish smoked salmon- and he likes the salmon a lot. Not many of us would agree, but this is a man eho has eaten in all the best restaurants in most of the best counties. He may be seeing more of this favourite smokie in the future, for an expert on the eel, Dr Christopher Moriarty , tells us that eels are more abundant on the Shannon systen than on Lough Neagh, which is saying a lot. Lough Neagh has always been a big eel exporter. The Shannon now produces 100 tonnes of the fish while Lough Neagh has 700 tonnes. The current population of eels in Shannnon, it has now been found, is at least double the population in the northern lough and may evewn be four times its number. Dr Moriarty estimates that the produce coulf amount to 1,000 tonnes. Eels you eat, by the way, are between 10 and 20 years old; several times the age of the average salmon on your plate. All this on John Healy's magazine Environment Ireland, July- August issue, and much more on trees, on shooting, on coastal rights, not forgetting, as you might imagine a fair dash of politics.
Footnote to all those folk stories about eels. Mrs Beeton quotes one Sir John Hawkins on a comment on Izaak Walton's famous tome on angling. Hawkins drained a canal from which he had missed some young ducks. Huge eels wriggled in the mud, and "there were found in their stomachs the undigested heads of the quacking tribe which had become their victims." - Y
Yeats's Hypontising of Hens Explained
December 6th, 1996
You may remember an item here asking how Yeats hypnotised hens? It came from an account of Sunday's spent by Kathleen Tynan on her father's farm at Whitehall, Clondalkin. A bald statement requiring some development, you'd think: " Here, write John Cowell in his Dublin's Famous People, " on Sunday afternoons there would be a stream of callers with endless talk of poetry and Willie Yeats would hypnotise the hens."
Just that, no explanation,. Now, Dr Cowell, writes to expand on, if not to explain, what is was all about. " I grew up in County Sligo where I often saw it done. And, very likely, that's where Yeats learned about it. You gently fold a hens head beneath a wing, then hold the hen in both hands and rock it form side to side for a minute or two. Then put it on the ground. It will remain in that position until you "waken " it. Hindsight provides an idea: the cochlea of the human inner ear influences postural activity. It can be disturbed by swings, rough crossing and the like. Assuming the hen has an inner ear of some design, this may be the explanation. At any rate, it doesn't seem to do the hen the least harm". How do we know that making a hen seasick, as it were, does it no harm? Today Yeats might have the cruelty people after him, if that's what he did. And when you see a hen with her head tucked under her wing- that is, if you ever see a live hen at all- what is she doing? Thanks anyway, to Dr John Cowell for his explanation of a parlour barnyard act of long ago. But is hypnotising the word? Ah, Sligo.
Interesting, by the way, when the paucity of hens around the yard or seem rooting around the hedges was mentioned here not so long ago, how many people got in touch to say they still kept them, free range, as we now say. From personal experience, their eggs taste as no eggs today taste. Even when they have to be crocked, according to season, Friendly, nice things, hens. Postscript. Notice in meat and poultry shop: FREEE RANGE PHEASANTS. - Y