Our lives could be so different today if a few of Richard Pockrich’s hare-brained plans had succeeded. We could be enjoying a glass of wine produced from vines grown in the bogs of Ireland, while listening to a host of honking geese.
Pockrich was born into wealth on the family estate in Aghnamallagh, Co Monaghan, in the late 1600s and he appeared to dedicate his life to coming up with the most outrageous ways of losing that fortune. Not all his inventions were bad, though, and probably his most successful one was the idiophone, or angelic organ as he preferred to call it.
He wasn’t the first person to try this but he did popularise the making of music by running a finger along an array of wine glasses. He performed to packed houses at home and in the UK with the instrument. If you are curious, an example of this can be seen in the National Museum of Ireland in Collins Barracks.
While that was successful, the entrepreneur got nowhere with other eccentric ideas. He believed that he could popularise wings for humans and eventually people wouldn’t dream of walking anywhere but would summon their wings like they would call for their boots.
Spoiler alert – his vision was not realised – nor was his idea to drain the bogs and turn them into vine-growing regions. He also lost heavily when he came up with a plan to turn Ireland into the goose capital of Europe. He bought thousands of acres of barren mountainous land in Wicklow and populated it with geese. He believed this country was ideally placed to cater for the goose requirements of Ireland, Britain and France.
Christy Moore famously sang about his plan to spend 10 years wandering among the Wicklow hills and perhaps it would have soothed his troubled soul, but alas for Pockrich, those hills brought the geese no solace. And, three centuries later, this State is no nearer to becoming the goose capital of Europe.
As someone who was regularly terrorised by the geese in our farmyard as a child, it’s no great pity that Pockrich did not attain this goal. I don’t know if our geese came from a particularly vicious breeding line, but they were permanently furious and extremely territorial.
The Guinness World Records database maintains that the fastest species of goose has a recorded speed of 142km but our gander was faster than that if you came within 10 metres of the goose house. Their beaks conceal a sneaky row of spiky barbs and they have a penchant for nipping the back of your leg as you flee from attack.
But far be it for me to tarnish the reputation of the humble goose as other people have had far happier experiences with this feathered bird. Offaly farmer John Dolan won’t hear a word spoken against geese, and one in particular – Concepta.
Geese typically have one clutch of goslings per year but the capable Concepta has produced goslings on three separate occasions in the past year. And now she’s hatching again, with another gaggle of goslings expected any week now.
“Ah, she’s a remarkable goose,” he told me when I inquired about his fertile, feathered bird. “Nothing she does surprises me any more. Although when I saw she was back laying again in March, I thought it was unbelievable.”
He believes Guinness might have played a role in sending her back to the nest. She won an award for being the most original parade entrant in this year’s St Patrick’s Day parade in Banagher. It was perfect poultry in motion as Concepta and her goslings chugged through the town in a transport box.
At one stage, a glass of Guinness was placed in front of her and she dipped her beak in it. Not long after, she went scuttling back to her nest to lay more eggs. “The Guinness definitely did her the world of good, whatever was in it.”
The good citizens of Banagher appreciate their burgeoning reputation as the centre for prolific poultry. They chose his hen Marmalade to be the grand marshal of the town’s St Patrick’s Day parade in 2018. Marmalade, who went to the great henhouse in the sky in 2019, gave birth to a whopping 181 chicks from 18 clutches in four years. Another hen, Sally, produced two clutches of live chickens in 55 days, which as fowl fanatics will know, is an impressive feat.
Now it is Concepta’s time to shine and he is preparing the case for her to be listed in the Guinness World Records database.
If it happens, well, wouldn’t that beat Banagher?
