NATURE: Winters past at the big house in Moorehall

Nights such as this are the highlights of the year. The air is still, or nearly so and, to new ears, just as silent. It is only gently that sounds reveal themselves: crisp leaves barely lift under the most delicate breeze; scuffle of wood mouse in the undergrowth; shimmy of duck far out on the bay. And my own footsteps, boots slapping hard at frosted road, an arrhythmic stanza telling my story.
In an interlude, at the lake, I gazed upon a sea of stars. Water’s edge already crusted with rime. A flurry of wings from deep in the reeds, followed by the anxious wail of water rail, the most secretive and shy of our waterbirds. With her grey face, her orange eye and orange bill, that speckled chestnut flank and white scut of tail, she should be better known. It is only by her cry we know she’s there at all; she sings like a piglet, in protest or in pleasure, just the same.
Mist comes rising from the reeds to seep at my feet and soften my view of the world, while the moon glows warm and bright enough to throw shadows behind. It has been dark several hours. The days are at their shortest. Solstice (derived from the Latin ‘Sol sistere’) has just passed – the brief moment the ‘Sun Stands Still’ over the Tropic of Capricorn before swinging back toward us here in the northern hemisphere.
This annual fading of our sun was viewed by the ancients with a measure of consternation, as if it was displeasure on the part of the gods that caused light and heat to be withheld. In an attempt to put things right great festivals were held, these often accompanied by sacrifice of various animal kinds, even of humans.
In Celtic belief the midwinter sun stood still a full twelve days, and its return would only be facilitated by an adequate offering to a mixture of deities. This imagined twelve-day hiatus in the sun’s movement became the twelve days of Yule, and in time the twelve days of Christmas.
Various Celtic/Yule traditions endure to this day. The use of mistletoe as a token of good fortune goes back thousands of years, as does the introduction of evergreen foliage into the home. Gifts hung on or arranged beneath the modern Christmas tree evolved from offerings made to those same gods that might be appeased by human sacrifice.
The Roman Empire adopted and continued Celtic tradition with the festivities of Saturnalia in honor of Saturn, their god of Agriculture and Time. In the Julian calendar of Roman times the winter solstice was celebrated on December 25th, along with its adjunct of evergreen branches, gift giving, feasting and sacrifice. And behold! The sun, so long in abatement, began to return and once more give promise of more bountiful times.
We look forward now, to the reawakening that spring will bring. For the moment we have this brief but welcome snip of cold. Already we find leaf buds beginning to unfurl on trees and shrubs. If allowed to develop further these will be vulnerable to later cold and a properly green March, even April, will be unlikely. A good frost will arrest their development and keep the whole system in kilter.
I walked on with unusually crisp northern air biting deep into my lungs, exhaling clouds of condensation that froze into my beard. Trees towered unusually high; the path into woodland lay mottled in shadow, while my step remained dominant in the world of sound until deer went bounding away through brush below, sending panic-filled pigeons clattering from their roost in the pines.
When I stood on the drive to the front of the great house, a vision of winters past emerged from the ruin. For a moment the windows were glazed, reflecting stars and leafless trees. The roof, full slated, was matt black with the faintest sheen. The heavy door was closed, while inside fires blazed and filled each room with the light of merry flames.
A door opened to the iron balcony. Out stepped a lean, bearded man and his female companion. The two of them gazed beyond me toward the lake, sharing good humour through a quiet joke.
When they disappeared from view and closed the door behind them reality set in. Gone was that past glory, gone the man who made it, gone the silver and the gold, the books and more, the house no more than a still skeleton in December dark, its secret colder than the night.
As George Moore himself wrote, ‘There is a lake in every man’s heart’. How many nights like this had there been, at the turning of how many seasons?

Michael Kingdon, a naturalist and keen fisherman, lives on the shores of Mayo’s Lough Carra, Moorehall, the best example of a shallow marl lake in western Europe and therefore an SAC of enormous ecological and conservation importance.