A fascinating article by Daphne Pochin Mould on the Butter Road and the Boggeragh Mountains has been published in the latest issue of Walking World Ireland. Last year I wrote about the 250th anniversary celebration in Millstreet of the Butter Road, which ran from Killarney to Cork.
Butter exports from Cork began as early as 1636 but in May 1748 the British government enacted legislation ordering the building of the almost straight road that would run between Killarney and the Cork Butter Exchange, established in 1769. It had less to do with local infrastructure than commerce.
From there salted butter from Cork and Kerry reached the most remote edges of the British empire. In those days the Butter Exchange, near Shandon Street and the Church of St Anne's, built in 1722, with its famous bells, was all about the empire, all about supplying the troops. It would not have been uncommon for a lowly trooper in India to butter his toast with produce from west Cork or Kerry. And if he did, it came to him initially via the Butter Road.
Daphne Pochin Mould, an adventurer, writes about the wonderful and fascinating scenery and pleasurable walks to be found near the butter trail. "The Boggeraghs are a part of the mountain line that stretches from the Killarney Reeks through The Paps and Caherbarnagh and on to the Nagles, the actual Bogger aghs being the area from the Macroom/Millstreet road . . . you are here amongst very ancient things," she writes, going on to describe places of ancient ritual and the legacy of peoples lost not in the mists of history but in the mysteries of history. Writing about the Kerryman's Table she says:
"It is on the Butter Road, just short of the final rise over the hills from Millstreet - a much frequented resting place and meeting point." The so-called table is a fallen, massive standing stone. She writes also about the Coomeenatrish Boat. It was discovered by Ted Mullane, who farms near the trail. In 1992 he discovered a dug-out canoe which was carbon-dated to AD 340.
A new book on the Butter Road - At the Sign of the Cow, by Dr Colin Rynne, archaeologist and curator of the Cork Butter Museum at Shandon - has also just been published by the Collins Press. The foreword is by Dr Tony O'Reilly, who had butter connections long before his name became synonymous with beans.
"Kerrygold is written on my heart," he says. "It was, in a sense, a first. A first for the new board of Bord Bainne, for the Irish dairy industry and its nascent ambitions, a first for the Irish farmer and, of course, a first for yours truly at the age of 26 years.
"And yet, as this book superbly displays, it was not really a first but in fact merely the continuation of a long line of excellence in world marketing and distribution that defined Irish butter as the first ever major identifiable export from this country. Many can cavil with this but in fact, canned, branded Irish butter was available as far afield as the West Indies over 100 years ago.
"The butter roads of Munster are eloquent testimony to the growing tentacles of commerce in the 18th and 19th centuries and the wedding of the domestic farm with the urban export point. The Cork Butter Exchange, founded in 1769, was the first of its type in the world, and its daily quotations were as important then as the London Metal Exchange. . .
"If you reflect on the history and success of the Cork butter market and you consider that in beef and bacon products we failed to establish a consumer identity abroad - or one which enables us to command a premium for quality and packaging - you have to consider what an extraordinary achievement it has been for the dairy industry. There is virtually nowhere in the world you can go today that you cannot buy Kerrygold, and know that in so buying, you get a guarantee of taste, quality, standardisation and purity that goes with the best international brands - and to think it all started with the Cork Butter Exchange," Dr O'Reilly adds.