IRISH GARDENING 



105 



It appears to me that past history may have some 

 lessons for us on these jjoints, and it may be in- 

 structive and interesting to consider for a short 

 time the localities in which the old forests 

 flourished, the circumstances which caused their 

 destruction, and the attenij)ts which have been 

 made to repair or mitigate the misfortune of tlieir 

 disappearance, (la) 



Tliat the climate and soil of Ireland are natur- 

 ally suited to the growth of timber of nearly every 

 useful kind indigenous to Europe, and that our 

 island was anciently stored with woods and forests 

 of vast extent, is proved not only by the testimony 

 of all who have considered its physical and geo- 

 logical formation, l)ut by the statements of liis- 



are found in the names of hills and valleys, town- 

 lands and districts which are now bare of every 

 vestige of the abundant timber of which these 

 names have long been the only memory. The word 

 Kil, meaning wood, is mentioned over 700 times, 

 Munny occurs nearly 200 times, and the terms fih, 

 Eos. faussagh, Scart, &c., occur very often. Arboreal 

 terms abound in our index locorum, and contribute 

 to justify the term Inis-na-veevy, or woody island, 

 which is among the bardic names of Ireland. Over 

 and above the terms signifying woods, are those 

 wliich denote particuhxr trees of which Daire 

 (Derry), an oak wood, with its many variations, is 

 the most important. Over l.oOO names begin, and 

 innumerable names end, with it. (5) The 



The Northern Slope of the Rock G.\rden at Glasnevtn. 



torians and chroniclers, and the long list of topo- 

 graphical names and their meanings. The woods 

 of Ireland, and especially those formerly adjacent 

 to Dul>lin, were famous even before the coming of 

 the English. It was from the fair green of Oxman- 

 town, once covered with woods that extended w-est- 

 wards over the wliole of what is now the Phoenix 

 Park, that William Rufus drew the timber for the 

 roof of Westminster Hall. (2) And it was from 

 Cullenswood, on part of which Rathmines now 

 stands, that, only a generation after the coming of 

 the Norman, on the Black Easter Monday of 1209, 

 the Byrnes and Tooles made tlieir long-rememliered 

 descent upon the Bristol-men who had settled in 

 Dublin. CA) 



Giraldus Cambrensis states that the woodlands 

 of Ireland exceeded in his day the plains or cleared 

 and open land. (4) Anyone who looks in Dr. 

 Joyce's suggestive book on Irish names of places 

 will be astonislied to note the extent to which the 

 root-words expressive of woods, forests and trees 



" Annals of the Four Masters " contain numberless 

 references to the ancient woods of Ireland, which 

 prove that in a great part of the country a domi- 

 nant characteristic of the social system of ancient 

 Ireland was the forest life of the people. And if 

 we may accept as accurate a passage in the "Annals 

 of Ulster" for the year 835 a.d. (6) the acorn and nut 

 crop was so large in that year as to close up the 

 streams so that they ceased to flow in their usual 

 course. > 



That this state of things survived to an era well 

 within historical memory is abundantly demon- 

 strated by many authorities. Sir John Davies has 

 noted the degree in which the political system 

 adopted by the Norman colonists of Ireland, and 

 pursued, whether by choice or necessity, by the 

 English Government for many centuries, had the 

 effex't of preserving this feature. That system was 

 to drive the native population from the plains to 

 the woods; w'ith the result that the Irish territories 

 tended to become even more and more a succession 



