SOME people think fairies don’t exist – but Dúlra can confirm that they are alive and well on the Belfast Hills. And here’s the photographic proof.
This week he came across the happiest family of fairies in Ireland sitting on a ring of tree stumps overlooking West Belfast. And they certainly brightened a dour winter’s day on Slievenacloy.
Dúlra came across them beside a hillside cottage on his way home from the mountain nature reserve – they’d probably been arranged to entertain some local children, but they certainly made Dúlra’s day.
Fairies, or the Little People – are a quintessential element of Irish culture who refuse to be killed off, even in our ‘enlightened’ 21st century. Country people still wouldn’t chance to annoy them in fear of being cursed and even city folk realise that it would be wise to give the whole issue a wide berth. What’s to be gained by dismissing them as fantasy when doing so is temping fate?
These little people are said to be descended from the Tuatha Dé Danann, who agreed to live underground as part of the terms of their surrender to the Milesians, our ancestors who arrived from Spain. After thousands of years, we still know not to anger the little people. They are fierce guardians of their abodes , usually fairy mounds or hawthorn trees, and anyone who interferes with their home will suffer terrible misfortune or meet a grisly end.
They’re so dangerous that they are rarely spoken of and when they are, it’s in hushed tones. The banshee is the one fairy you never want to see, or hear. Dúlra remembers his mother cleaning out the hearth one school morning and saying, in tearful whispers, how she’d heard the banshee’s keening in the middle of the night, fully aware of what it portended and dreading the morning. By the time she told the young Dúlra that story, she had already learned terrible news of the next door neighbour’s death.
Only once on his many travels has Dúlra actually for a moment believed he had encountered the little people. And it wasn’t a pleasant experience , in fact his heart was in his mouth. He was dandering along a forgotten lane near Wheeler’s Corner just past Hannahstown when he heard this incredible chattering coming from the ditch beside him. It was like a high-pitched argument between two tiny people in a foreign language. Could it be that fairies were inside that ditch, just yards from the Priest’s Hill standing stone?
Dúlra edged a tiny bit closer to the ditch and it was like the King and Queen of the fairies had got into a terrible domestic row!
You might think a hillwalker would want to find out more, to climb into the ditch even. But Dúlra had seen Darby O'Gill and the Little People and had no intention of being trapped inside a fairy fort. He took to his heels pronto and headed for home as quickly as his legs would carry him.
In the house, he feverishly flicked through all his nature books in the hope of finding a natural reason for the supernatural sounds. And eventually he came across it. That loud, life-like chattering likely came from an unlikely source – Ireland’s smallest mammal. The tiny pygmy shrew, dallóg fraoigh in Irish, was reported to occasionally make a series of “sharp squeaks, low purrs and high-pitched whistling sounds”, although for what reason, no one knows. It’s a weird combination of sounds that would spook Dúlra to this day if he heard it again on a country walk. Because at the back of his mind, he still has a tiny bit of doubt that that it's made by shrews.
This week, the Little People who had gathered on the fairy ring near Slievenacloy were a beautiful connection to an old Ireland that is too often beyond our reach. One thing is for sure: no-one would dare tamper with it. If we’ve learned anything from our ancestors, it that the fairies must be respected!
In years gone by, Dúlra used to write every autumn whether it was a good or bad year for haws: the berries of the hawthorn tree that feed so many of our winter visitors (and those Little People). Today, it’s a moot point because our hedgerow hawthorns are not now allowed to grow tall enough to produce berries. One of the few remaining authentic hedgerows is at Slievenacloy (only on one side of the road unfortunately, maybe that could be fixed). All around Slievecloy for many square miles, even as far away as Ligoniel, the hedgerows have been, – how else can you put it – destroyed by farmers. In places where small birds would dart in front of the car, even in winter, there is now none. The hedges they sheltered in have either been torn out or chopped back into bonsai-sized decorative relics. Traditional hedgerow birds have been banished from a vast area of land outside West and North Belfast in the last couple of years and that will have a knock-on effect on raptors that depend on them for prey.
And what do we do about it? Shrug our shoulders, it seems.
• If you’ve seen or photographed anything interesting, or have any nature questions, you can text Dúlra on 07801 414804.
